H02 Love Principle

Which do you value more in your life right now?

Being smart.

OR

Being loved.

Anankelogy

Anankelogy introduces social love. That’s the act of prioritizing a proper response to another's need as being as important or more important than your own need(s). Whether you feel like it or not. This can inspire others to respond better to your needs.

You affirm another’s need, independent of your feelings. And independent of their emotional reaction. They could be resentful toward you, even hostile, but you still take the bold step to identify and address their inflexible need or needs.

You leave rationality out of it for now, because needs exist independent of rationality. Rationality or intellect applies best for how we respond to any need. Not to the inflexible need itself.

Your emotions convey your needs with little regard for reasoning. And the more threatened you feel, the more intense your emotions. While challenging, you can dispassionately respect another even while feeling disrespected. It’s a worthy discipline.

While feeling upset, you can still affirm their needs. You could still feel a bit defensive at the time. You give them reason to drop your guard. You show them you’re not so hostile toward the needs they cannot change. You cultivate trustworthiness to be somewhat more honest, a little more vulnerable, a bit more exposed.

You drop any rational arguing that no longer serves you in this moment. You shift gears. You switch from appealing to reason to appealing to their potential to be more loving, more empathetic, more gracious, more understanding, and more patient.

You do the same for them, to encourage them to drop their rational arguments. To give them the confidence to no longer hide behind reasoning. You reach deeper to show how much you care about the inflexible needs inside them that require not reasoned defenses; they simply are.

The power of this social love can break down barriers, heal emotional wounds, respect the unseen impacts of trauma, and draw out more of humanity and potential to be more loving to each other. No reasoned arguing or rational decision-making proves necessary.

Need-response

Emotions get a bad rap when acting upon our more intense emotions. But the bulk of your emotions guide your daily routines. They rarely lead you astray, as your emotions report what satisfactorily worked before.

Your emotions effectively convey your needs moment by moment in your routine situations. When an unmet need compels your emotions to urgently do something, you may regret the decision. You wish you took a little more time to consider your options. You wish you would’ve been more rational.

Rational decision-making applies more to novel situations than those routine situations we face minute by minute each day. For example, you rarely make purely rational choices when driving to work each day.

You typically get to work on automatic pilot, following your gut instincts. Your emotions get you there because you can trust your emotions to report how to safely get you to work following the same effective routine as every day before.

Rational thinking kicks in when you must take a detour. You then have to focus more and make a decision on a different option.

Rationality emerges as important in a modern society rich with novel situations. But most of our decision-making has less to do with rational choices than optional choices.

If we see no option to fully resolve a need, we opt for the next available thing—automatically. Usually with little if any reflection. And often with little if any bad consequences. We ride with our instincts on what seemed sufficiently satisfactory as before.

Reactive Problem

Modernity presents many novel situations. What worked before suddenly applies poorly in many of the new situations we face. We now must stop and think about it more often. And handle the regret when past gut reactions lead to frequent trouble.

Our propensity to keep things manageably simple spurs us to generalize. So we emotionalize our rational thinking. We give rise to hyperrationality, which ascribes socially plausible reasons for our need-driven emotions.

Then we cling to this idea that people are easily persuaded by disinformation and misinformation, or even malinformation. That itself is misinformation, or perhaps disinformation, or maybe even malinformation.

• misinformation = false information not intended to harm or manipulate

• disinformation = false information is intended to harm or manipulate

• malinformation = true information out of context intended to harm or manipulate

Such hyperrational thinking ignores the deeper more vulnerable truth of our needs. Actually, we are less persuaded by the information itself and more by what in it that seems most responsive to our needs. Focusing on the information alone easily feeds the problem of hyperrationality that ignores our vulnerable needs. But who benefits?

Who gains by selfishly denying our underserved needs in ways that fuel our desire to spread compelling narratives? To whose advantage do we normalize selfishness and self-righteousness as rationally good? Who profits the most when overrating rationalities while undercutting our potential to be more understanding and loving toward each other?

Or put another way, which powers that be could be most threatened if we resolved more of our needs? Who’s incentivized to thwart us from responding more effectively to one another’s vulnerable needs?

Responsive Solution

It doesn’t take a genius to spread warmth with a caring smile. All our expectations of intellectual prowess easily miss the greater potential for our deeper human connections with each other.

Yes, intellect matters. But intellect alone does not keep families and communities meaningfully together. The deeper qualities of life that holds us together costs little in rational capital. The young exuberant child with a learning disability, for example, can spread far more love than the cold professor too preoccupied to warmly smile at his anxious students.

Love can resolve far more needs than mere intellect. Anankelogy recognizes love as a character refunction along with other noble responses like gratitude, grace, resilience, empathy and patience.It doesn’t require deep knowledge to thank others, to try to understand others more, or to be patient with them. It simply demands more love of honoring the needs of other as our own.

Yes, having intelligence for how to think about our needs is good. Having wisdom for how to respond to our needs is much better. Having love to uplift our potential to resolve each other’s needs is unbeatable.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• I find it easier to love others once I know at least one personal unconditionally loves me.

• What some people call love seems more like appreciation, or desire, but not actual love.

• I still value good reasoning over feigned love, but I get the point.

• I sense social pressures pull us to value rationality more than our personal views about it.

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.