A Motor Like Mine: A Discussion On Romantic Love

[AMERICONORMAN]

A MOTOR LIKE MINE: A DISCUSSION ON ROMANTIC LOVE

By Jose Gainza

A friend of mine asked whether or not there could be love without sex? He named a love between kin, like that between brothers. He told of an acquaintance of his who had declared that he is obsessed with a man of higher financial stature than him. It is as if this man is his hero. I affirmed that there could certainly be a deep and intense love between two men. In my mind I had the picture of Howard Roark and Gail Wynand or between Akston’s three students. It led me to consider the difference between passionate “platonic” love and romantic love.

In an inquiry about the nature of romantic love, it is useful to differentiate between love as an emotion and the social relationship denoted by the concept “love”. The more fundamental connotation is that referring to the emotion. Love, as an emotion, is something unique to every individual in that every individual has the capacity to experience love. If one can imagine a boy on a desert island, able to survive on his own, observe that it is still possible for him to experience the emotion of love, even without other people for whom to feel it. Imagine him loving a friendly monkey, loving a certain fruit, or loving the vista.

SO IT SEEMS THAT LOVE IS A CONSEQUENCE OF HUMAN NATURE AND NOT POLITICS.

A distinctive attribute of love is that, as a feeling, it is a joyous one. It is possible because of the basic physical sensation of pleasure. Love, like all emotions, can be felt in the body. Love, as an emotion, is a sub-category of admiration; admiration is an emotion characterized by the positive evaluation of “liking what one sees”. Love isolates the intense admiration for an object. Regardless of the nature of the object, that which one admires, one feels pleasure for, and one knows one wants to seek it because one’s body tells one so in the form of the emotion.

(To use Aristotelian terminology to reveal my understanding of emotions: the material cause of emotion is physical sensation. The efficient cause of an emotion is reason’s value judgements. The formal cause of an emotion is: an intensified and complicated physical sensation implying the evaluation of an object, grasped by human consciousness. The final cause: is to draw the attention of consciousness to a perceived object).

Emotions—desire, admiration, love, courage, hate, jealousy, fear, nostalgia, sympathy, empathy, pity—however, are not the same as the sensations of pain and pleasure. I experience pain in the cold, or by a pinprick, or a punch in the face; pleasure, by satisfying hunger or thirst, or a body massage. Emotions are evaluations of some object as a subject of consciousness. The basic standard is whether that object is harmful or beneficial to my life. My desire for a burger king whopper, as opposed to a McDonald’s Big Mac, is ultimately caused by my evaluation that food will keep me alive, satisfies the pain of hunger, and is “tasty”. My joy for romantic literature is caused by my evaluation of the way characters act in a story, and curiosity aroused by that method. Another person’s joy for his work, let’s say a lawyer, is caused by a recognition that long-range life means to work, that efficacy is pleasurable, that the values one attains are important—and it shares these factors with MY OWN love and any other profession. A lawyer will also evaluate the idea of legal justice as part of his love for his work.

When I feel an emotion it comes with lightning speed, seemingly causeless. That I feel a similar emotion for various novels, for various types of art, for various types of professions, for various good men indicates that there is some common cause beneath any particular instance of joy for a particular object which is shared by other instances and objects. The novels of Ayn Rand have something in common, so do Rand’s novels and those of Victor Hugo. Atlas Shrugged and Michelangelo’s David have something in common beyond the common emotions that they inspire. I have evaluated them according to some standard. And the fact that before I had sophisticated standards, I felt the same similar emotions for two Art works, implies that I judged in comparison to something else that I find enjoyable.

I liked the television show LAW AND ORDER, and other similar shows of suspense, even before I read about philosophy and aesthetics. Now that I have studied art as a subject, I still feel joy for the drama series but it is a joy intensified, intermingled with the pride of wisdom. Today I recognize the function of “suspense” in Story-telling, of CONFLICT. Objectively, it is suspense that gives stories their effect. Aristotle said that the effect is psychological in that tragedy allows us to experience pity so we could get it out of our system; and continue with the joys of life. Ayn Rand said that, yes, the effect is psychological, but it was primarily philosophical in that the experience is an experience that confirms or denies one’s fundamental view of his/her relationship to existence as a whole.

(As an aside, a story that inspires joy and deliverance as its effect, does not have as its purpose to get joy out of one’s system. It is rather something one NEEDS to SEE.)

This is not a discussion on Art. I used art merely as an eloquent example. What my emotions imply that I recognize in an object, such as art, is its function in relation to my life. I am aware of the nature of a specific novel, of art as such, and the nature of story comprehension. I am aware that a certain novel as a unity, functions in a way as to cause me to like it or hate it. For food, I recognize the function of the food, which is that I basically ingest it and my body transforms it into a life force; food necessarily tastes good or bad. I like the job that pays my bills because I recognize its economical function in my life. I also like my efficacy in it and the function that succeeding in the workplace has on my self-esteem.

What is the function of emotions? They are part of a biological mechanism WHOSE FUNCTION IS TO GIVE US A QUICK WARNING, TO ASK OUR ATTENTION. If I were to confront a mugger, there would be an immediate fear and anger, because my life requires that I pay attention to this criminal. A well-trained and seasoned police officer will feel anger and a confidence in his ability to apprehend the criminal. For a child upon being picked by a beloved parent from school, the feeling would be joy in seeing the parent whom he/she hasn’t seen since morning, and the person who supports his/her life in body and spirit. The joy represents a desire to seek the loved object because of reasons recognizing the benefits to one’s well being.

This gets me closer to discussing the RELATIONSHIP between the actors in a love-relationship. The people one loves, the people one feels pleasant emotions for, are those whose existence functions as a benefit to one’s life.

A child loves his parents because they are the ones who keep him alive in the most basic manner. Parents are the ones who understand him/her the best because THAT IS THEIR JOB. From breast feeding, to changing of diapers, to the buying of clothes, and the furnishing of a home, and the interest in the child’s needs, and being the communicators of dialogue that keeps the child interested—all of this is presupposed by an emotion such as love for a parent. Some children grow, in all fairness, to hate their parent(s) and THERE ARE reasons for that hate.

Children who play together usually become friends. The sports playing of non-age, for example, are usually the environment where children get along. If exercise can be pleasurable over time, and still beneficial to physical and mental health, then those who experience this relationship to sports, and engage in the sports, will tend to be friends. The children will be similar in age and be engaged in the same types of daily activities. They will experience the same stages of biological and intellectual growth. They look similar in relation to adults.

It is obvious that common similarities are an important factor for friendship. I imagine two adolescent boys who met while playing soccer. They soon added baseball, hockey, and basketball to the list; and were even on the same teams. They went to the same school, and were often in the same classes. They lived in the same general neighbourhood and they were allowed the same level of freedom by their parents. In school, they liked the same subjects but one preferred math and science and the other preferred art and literature. They were both of the same moral type. They both respected honesty, efficacy, intelligence, benevolent humour, the work ethic, and heroes defeating villains.

How could they not be friends? So many factors in their life function together as a magnetic force keeping them together and desiring such a thing. If both are succeeding in life according to the standard appropriate to their age level, they will both have a positive outlook on the value of their own lives. When they meet each other, and discover that they share the same interests and those interests are the source of their respective success, they will recognize a mutual joy for each other. If those virtues and values that allow for self-joy are seen in another person, then one will feel joy for that other person.

Doesn’t each person love his own joy? If one is capable of joy, and succeeds at experiencing it, won’t one want more of it? If positive emotions have the survival value that they do, then won’t one assess that joy is good? If two people have reached a certain level of joy, will they not desire each other? If friendship is like seeing one’s spiritual self in the mirror, doesn’t self-esteem forbid the hate of such a like friend? The interest for another person, evinced by the positive emotion of admiration, is a reflection of one’s own self-interest. The old adage is true: you must love yourself before you can love another; or “before you can say ‘I love you’ you must know how to say the ‘I’” (THE FOUNTAINHEAD).

Love relationships, as all social relationships, are value-transactions. Proper social relationships are relationships among TRADERS. What is traded? Friendship is living together, in the sense of trading time. Two people communicate ideas and if the ideas communicated by one doesn’t interest the other, then not much attention can be expected. The circumstances of life allowing for time being spent together, communication is at the core of friendship. What can be communicated extends for the gamut of human knowledge. And thus the degrees of friendship are distinguished according to the level of intellectual interest shared by the two friends.

There is some empirical truth to the stereotype that jocks relinquish science for their prerogative. But there is such a thing as a renaissance man, and he doesn’t have to be a genius. It depends on the economy of time and effort. A friendship based on some sports activity has a lower stature than a friendship based on career interests in addition to that sport activity.

A friend who embodies more of one’s own personal interests than other friends will be a better friend, will be more esteemed, more loved. A romantic lover will share as many values and virtues with the romantic beloved as that beloved’s closest friend. What is different? The potential for sex, i.e., the mutual sexual desirability among the lovers, is what is required. In this context, it is absurd to pretend that it is appropriate to love a friend and ridicule the sexual lover. The LOVER should be more valued than any FRIEND in a ROMANTIC love relationship.

Sexual desirability differs. But in the sense that I’m thinking, the essential factor is the moral nature of the soul. Although physical beauty is important, one cannot differentiate among beautiful people without the function of the beautiful person’s soul in his/her life. Without regard for the spiritual character of people, it would be impossible to choose an exclusive sex-partner among only beautiful people—if one’s standard were merely beauty. The selective nature of human relationships is worth noting. Ayn Rand eloquently wrote once that, “Love is exception-making”. If this is true, and physical beauty is one’s sex standard, and one encounters others with the same standard, one is hardly making an EXCEPTION in having sex with them.

One’s best friend will be that for whom one has made the most exceptions. When the choice was made between with a friend and not be being alone, one chose the friend, more often than any other person—for the reasons indicated in the foregoing. Since all humans have the capacity for rationality, intellectual activities is not a category where one can make an exception for the romantic lover relative to one’s friends. A friend can conceivably be as intellectually interesting than the romantic lover, although that may not usually be the case. The exception is that one consciously chooses to have sex with the romantic lover and no one else.

Disease is certainly NOT the reason for exclusivity, given that there are such phenomena as science, medicine, and technology. One makes the exception because that one person is one’s favourite, alone at the top of the pinnacle which is one’s hierarchy of valuable people. What is so special about the act of sex that it leads one to exclusivity? Sex is the greatest activity of joy possible for human beings! If one ignores the before and after of sex, one will be struck with the fact that sex is the most intense, complex pleasure possible to a person, mind and body. Add a person one loves to talk to and whom one has actively integrated into one’s daily existence, and the inherent pleasure of the pure physical act is intensified, and it takes on a psychological and emotional character.

If such a thing as a game of tennis between competent players, as a legitimate end among friends, is enjoyable, then certainly it is important to be selective in sex. It is absurd to consider that friends regularly like and choose to engage in enjoyable activities together, and that sex is something that is appropriate among people who hate, or are indifferent to, each other. Sex is a value just like everything else. Its distinction is that it is the metaphysically greatest pleasure possible. THE GREATEST SPIRITUAL DESIRE SHOULD INSPIRE THE GREATEST INTENSE PLEASURE. Sex is what one reserves for one’s favourite person; the person who one admires the most and finds sexually appealing. In the emotional realm, Love is a subcategory of admiration; in the moral realm, Love is a subcategory of Justice.

It is personally fraudulent to desire someone sexually who does NOT admire you as you admire him/her. Either, you are not just with regards to your self-worth, or you haven’t reached that other person’s level. Conflicts of moral values are possible and common among men, but it is possible to know human nature, and to know a person well enough, to predict the moral potential of one’s romantic sex-interest—and then FIGHT for the prerogative of taking him/her into sexual ecstasy. It is interesting that Dagny Taggart’s love for Hank Rearden grew stronger when she discovered that he loved her.

The greatest form of Romantic love is that kind where the loss of the beloved necessitates the suicide of the lover. It is hard to imagine a love that is as vulnerable as an infant is without a guardian. Imagine loving someone so much that they are the reason for living. Ayn Rand never loved Frank O’Connor that much, or that little, and that is not to take away from the legitimacy and greatness of their love. Simply, she didn’t commit suicide from the torment of losing him.

John Galt, however, said that he WOULD die without Dagny. If the Washington boys were to kill her, he would end his own life. After her, there would be nothing left for him to achieve in the world. He had already achieved his own greatest professional creation. He created the motor. The process of creating that motor was more important and enjoyable than to sell it, watch it be manufactured, and see it flood the market, though these things would still be enjoyable. The ideal society has already been created with Galt’s Gulch. The destruction of the rest of the world is advancing. The only thing left for him to accomplish is to fall in love, to win something as a celebration of his grand achievements.

Ayn Rand couldn’t commit suicide after Frank O’Connor’s death because she was in a conscious battle to bring Atlantis into existence. To relinquish her life would be to relinquish Atlantis. So long as she lived fighting for it, she was living in it. “Those who live for the future live in it today,” Miss Rand once wrote. Romeo and Juliet, considered the greatest love story ever told, ends in tragedy. The lovers kill themselves precisely because they think that they have lost their beloved and could not bear to endure without them. They were also mere teenagers and their love was mere infatuation. They did not give themselves time to rationally confirm whether they were soul mates or not.

The O’Connors were married for over fifty years. I don’t know the intimacy of their relationship but I know what Frank O’Connor stood by. He was there when she was struggling to make it in Hollywood and learn English. He was there when she was struggling to write WE THE LIVING, and there, when she had to face the antithetical climate in America. He was there during the success of her play PENTHOUSE LEGEND. He was there during the writing of THE FOUNTAINHEAD, the rejection from publishers, and the inevitable success. He was there when they purchased their ranch. He was there when people were asking her to teach them her philosophy. He was there during the writing of ATLAS SHRUGGED. He was there during her groundbreaking philosophical discoveries. He was the man to whom she went to bed and the man she woke up next to.

It is interesting that Frank O’Connor was an actor who must have understood Rand’s approach to story telling because there were no roles in Hollywood that he wanted to play. It is a treat for a writer to have an actor as a spouse because an actor is the one who can re-create the writer’s creation with his own person. It is also a treat that he would discover his passion for painting later in life whereby he could paint the sense of life that she too exhibited in her work. Frank read her work as it was done and she said that he was her most severe critic. Imagine a marriage, the essence of which is the complementing and celebration of the couple’s career and moral character.

In a light-hearted lecture on Love by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, he stated that the nature of friendship and Romantic love is different in kind. Their difference is not a matter of mere degrees. That idea was what I was considering in this inquiry. The key difference is the moral value of sex. The exclusivity of sex, the reservation of that act for someone different from EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW and better than them, is the distinguishing feature of romantic love. They are better by the standard of one’s central purpose, the purpose that integrates all one’s other goals. Romantic love sheds light on the fundamental nature of having a career one loves. It is based on loving this earth and loving the efficacy that is required to remain in this joyous life. I am confident that Frank O’Connor understood the virtuosity of Ayn Rand’s craft. He was perhaps her best student in aesthetics and literature, I don’t know.

But let me leave you with some simple questions. Those of you who want to be philosophers, don’t you want your beloved to understand philosophy as profoundly as you do? Those of you who want to be a doctor, and if you love medicine, don’t you want someone who can understand that science and engage in dialogue that you personally find thrilling? It is no coincidence that students often get crushes on teachers; or adult students fall in love with their professors. It is no coincidence that the person Galt loves is the person who needs his motor the most and who can best appreciate its value. Don’t you want someone who worships your motor because your motor is the closest one he/she has found to his/hers?

[Dagny]

That was beautifully written. You're a great writer and I often enjoy reading your replies on the forum. The last paragraph is great too because it gives one something to think about. In my own life there were only two men I ever loved one was my high school crush who went on to Stanford and study medicine. The other my husband who very intelligent and studying computer science. I never understood those who would fall easily in love with just anyone. My values and standards were always so high...well so far only two men I've met in real life have reached them. Though I must say the great thing about this forum is that its given me the opportunity to find others with my same values.

~Isabel

[Durandal]

Wonderful post. I'm sticking it on my bedroom door.

[AMERICONORMAN]

I will reply to both responders presently.

Dagny: Thanks for the compliments. The recognition from you was welcome. So in your experience, a complementary career is crucial? Although, I am impressed by the essay, I'm still not satisfied with the conclusion. I reached a plateau better than where I was before. I have reached principles that will come up easily when next tempted by Dionysus. However, there is something missing. I don't think I have reached the kernel yet but am a few steps away.

Durandal: Thanks. But what does sticking it on your bedroom door signify? Will you be sticking it on the inside or outside of the door. Will it be a warning for passers-by or will it be a reminder for yourself and guests? It sounds like a great compliment.

Americo.

[Dagny]

  So in your experience, a complementary career is crucial? 

Yes. When I was younger I wanted to study microbiology and had a crush on a future doctor. I then met a physicist who changed his major to computer science which has so many applications. I have always considered the idea of someday employing the skills of my husband to my career and have him write a program which would better accurately forecast the economy. If you really love the person its inevitable that you'd be interested in their career and want to learn more about it. I'm taking a programming course in C++, for example, ...just to learn the basics. My husband is taking an economics course and is coming to realize how important a role it plays. We both admire each other for our abilities and support each other.

~Isabel

[AMERICONORMAN]

I was looking for an old document and stumbled across this "manifesto" that I forgot I had written. It is obviously the predeccessor of the essay, A Motor Like Mine ....

Enjoy,

Jose Gainza.

I posted it because of eloquence of style, given that I was eighteen back then. Now I'm twenty six, and the feature essay of this thread represent, until I post something new, my better thoughts on the subject.

J.G.

My Manifesto on True Love

True love is to acknowledge an honest desire for another person; a love based on virtues that you value in another person, and virtues that this person values in you. True love is mutual desire -- not infatuation. In order to value a person, you must know what you value, but you must first value yourself. You must have self-esteem: confidence in your efficacy and worthiness to attain your values. Therefore, true love requires that the person whom you claim to love, loves you as well; who sees you as a value -- something he/she desires to gain and/or keep. As a result a loss has painful meaning to both of you.

These value-judgments automatically eliminate a great deal of prospective candidates. Because these judgments are made by your mind, what follows is that you necessarily fall in love with another person’s mind (i.e., ideas) and - as a result of those ideas - his/her actions, proceeding his/her emotions, which evoke emotions in you, informing you of your feelings, which require an action on your part in return.

Physical beauty is a great virtue that people possess in varying degrees. It is you that makes your own individual standard, who decides what you find beautiful, who chooses your value. But physical beauty only serves as a compliment to the beauty and attractiveness of the mind. True love is not as simple as valuing physical beauty. It goes much deeper than that. A person who knows about true love, is not moved primarily by physical beauty, but is moved by the consequences of the subject’s knowledge of what makes you -- the object-- move. But this knowledge takes time and effort. It presupposes an individual self-concept --implicitly or explicitly known -- respectively. True love is the desire to know another self -concept. These two individual souls will have essential similarities, complimentary differences, as well as conflicting characteristics that must be resolved: all three must be brought into harmony and balance.

The more powerful and vivid the music harmonized by this -- two instrument -- “orchestra of love,” the greater the bond and dependence on each other. In this case, dependence is not a vice but a virtue because of the value in the end, and the constant triumph on every horizon: Ecstatic music. Hence, a partnership is formed in search of the greater benefits that would other wise have been defaulted.

Imagine the symphony when these two bodies unite along with their inseparable souls. And imagine the symphony when these are two beautiful bodies complimenting two beautiful souls. And imagine the symphony when these two bodies are complimentary different. Or imagine the symphony when these two bodies are essentially similar. Ecstatic pleasure and laughter is the result in both instances. But both instances are mutually exclusive: A new life is possible by the first, and impossible to the latter; but a new connection, a new bond, a new kinmanship, a celebration of that common essence is unique to the latter and impossible to the first. However, the reward in either symphony is an ecstatic state of consciousness that all men deserve if they individually earn it.

The following is an a complimentary poem for the aforesaid:

A possible myth

To practice what we preach

I want to give you a private Atlantis

Something physical

Something real

True for you and me

I want to reward our paradise minds

Produce the freedom

Independence requires

Enjoy intoxicating excesses

Possible to reason

Certainly for sure

Not run wild

Like lower animal forms

In a logical reality

Yesterday

Today

Tomorrow

[mailegreene]

A very original and thoughtful post. I enjoyed reading it.