3. Love: Best of Both Worlds

So I am trying to construct a level whereby we can love from the Best of Both Worlds.

To love from a position of "I-in-not-I" and yet experience "Hypersentivity".

But then I realised that the only way to make this possible is to reconstitute "Hypersensitivity" since this is born out of an inability to handle the subject-oject dialectism so this would only serve to negate the first level.

What then will take the place of "Hypersensitivity"?

"Hyper-consciousness" will take the place! And this is highly in line with the apprehension of the subject-object dialectism of reality.

Why so? Allow me to explain: with an understanding of the subject-object dialectism, this posits us in a state of "Hyper-consciousness" and in turn we will recognise the fragility and finitude of all our actions (romantic relationships included)


The inescapable finitude of romantic relationship arises because even if both parties understood how to overcome the subject-object dialectism as individualsm they would still be bounded/ enacted upon by an object (individually or as a couple-unit collectively).

Sounds pretty bleak? Ah, there is where the weak-willed give up. In fact, it is in the presence of such finitude that true selfless love can occur.

Hence, we will overcome "Vulnerability" when "the absence of Romantic relationship" is understood as a condition that gives meaning and gravity to the presence of "Romantic relationship".

This will in turn inform reciprocal appreciation and result in honest and valued actions. There will be then be no need for emotional games and leveraging.

Another positive aspect to be born out of this is Spontaneity of action since in light of finitude, we would "love like everyday was our last" and "as if we have loved once and wrong before."

If we ever think that this is of a purely unrealistic level, Nishitani Keiji reminds us while it appears “higher”, it is in fact the most immediate and down-to-earth form of experience.

2. LOVE: Romantic Love

After I had done a little investigation into "Puppy Love", I considered "Romantic Love" in yet another invigilation session.

I understand it as "Love" between mature-aged individuals who have had prior romantic experiences before. Once again, this is for conceptual and working simplicity.

Love, I find, takes on a greater tinge of selfishness once we hit a more mature age and look upon our partner to be able to fulfill some basic requirements.

Then what is the End goal of being involved in a romantic relationship, I ask? Since this informs the requirements that we have of our partners.

For many, it would be marriage. For some, it would be fun. For others, it would be to achieve a sense of self-worth. All of these end-goals do not sound overtly selfish in a sense. That was what I felt initially as well, until I applied myself more.

Then I realize a very crucial question, "Would we love if we do not receive?"

When we demand something/ require something of our partners, we basically objectify our partners. They become not a subject who possesses a unique will but an object that is the medium to which we receive certain requirements. They become an object, something which you enact your will upon.

This comes from a very ego-centric standpoint, as a subject (with prior judgment, motivations and bias), whereby you enact your will to acquire love as an object from your partner as an object.

So love becomes objectified as well. When in essence, it is meant to be a reciprocal and spontaneous set of neutral actions between people.

Love, when properly understood, is in itself selfless and self-emptying by nature.

It was then that I realized that the only pure form of love was selfless love. And that romantic love as many people experience it has a long way to go.

How then do we achieve purer love within the earthly constraints of romantic love?

The very first most contingent realization that we must come to is that we should not achieve a sense of self-worth and security through romantic love.

The full comprehension of ourselves as subject is the healthiest experimentation that we can give ourselves. And this must go through self-discovery and self-consciousness. Only from the basic position of a self-confident subject can we hope to overcome the subject-object dialectism of the world and all its encompassing experiences.

When we remain in a position as a diminished subject who has to survive by relying on a partner as an object to fill in the part of our missing subjectivity, then we are not truly loving our partner as a subject but rather as an object/ tool. And secondly, we are blocking our progression to become more fuller entities.

Acceptance of our partners as subjects also means that we should not enact our wills upon them to the extent that we diminish their wills and in the worst case situations, we render them into objects again.

What about the changing of our partners' bad habits? If these habits are self-hurting in nature then it would exist as an irrational act of will. Thus coupled with the motivational point of your desired will to correct the particular self-hurting will as a "Free-agent", it would make justifiable sense to aid in the elimination of such bad habits.

But this only exists justifiable to a extent. We as subjects should avoid enacting our wills up to the point that it does not diminish our partner's will.

Thus ultimately, acceptance of our partners as subjects exists at the purest/highest level of reciprocal action/acceptance and neutral judgement. With acceptance then comes appreciation and with appreciation of our partners as subject with unique wills, we in turn learn more about the subject-object dialectism and appreciate our finitude better as a subject.

So far, we have "self-confidence", "acceptance" and "appreciation" which all work in combination to a better understanding and overcoming of the subject-object dialectism and towards selfless love.

Now I am ready to move onto an investigation on my desired position.

How do we love with the "Hypersensitivity" of "Puppy Love" but from the position of "I-in-not-I"?

1. Love: My investigation into "Puppy Love"

Ah, the "Roller-Coaster Ride" of "Puppy Love"...

Being in a profession where I am in constant contact with and proximity of young couples, I often look at them and think back about the "Puppy Love" experiences of my peers and myself.

And we often sigh and marvel at the intensity of experience. So what is it that makes "Puppy Love" such a strong experience?

So whilst I was invigilating, I applied myself again.

I understand "Puppy Love" as the first romantic experience that an individual encounters. Though the contingent variable here is the romantic experience of the individual, the age technically does not factor into the equation. Of course in reality, the age of the individual does play an important factor. This will be extrapolated further upon later. So for working and conceptual simiplicity, I understand an individual who is experiencing "Puppy Love" to be of an adolescent age group and also the romantic experience should be his/her first.

Firstly, I can describe the experience of being in "Puppy Love" as one of "Hypersensitivity". There is a magnificaton of emotions and this is predominantly informed and influenced by the high level of "suffering" involved in the experience.

This high level of "suffering" is in turn caused by "hyper-Confusion" and "hyper-Vulnerability". I will explain more about this later when I explore the subject-object dialectism that young lovers encounter.

Returing to the idea of high levels of "suffering", this in turn leads to corresponding high levels of "pleasure" as the "negation of suffeirng". Thus the "pleasure" that young lovers experience is in correspondence to the
"suffering" that they have to endure.

Now, I am going to apply the Kyoto school's theory of "Subject- Object Dialectism" to analyse the phenomenon.

Firstly, young lovers have little or no comprehension of themselves as objects. They hence do not see/ understand the influence upon themselves by "history". (Here, "History" is understood as the sum total of Mankind's understanding of "love" and "romantic relationships")

Since they do not understand the external influences of "history" upon them as objects, they cannot resist such influences and clearly delineate what is it that they want of a romantic relationship and what it is that "history" has informed them to "want". Thus "hyper-Confusion" ensues.

Yet, as a Subject, young lovers also experience difficulties. They are still in a stage of self-discovery thus they are not true masters of the enactment of thier wills. Also, due to thier age, they may be in underpriviliged positions in society to be enact certain wills. They are bounded then. This leads them to feel "hyper-Vulnerability" and as if they are "Flotsam in a world of Greater Fate".

Hence, the subject-object dialectism confronts young lovers very harshly and they are unable to love and experience love from the standpoint of "I-in-not-I". Due to this, they experience "hyper-Confusion" and "hyper-Vulnerability" and due to a combination of these two factors, they experience "hyper-Sensivity" and hence the Roller-Coaster Ride of "Puppy Love".

1. What is the SOUL?

Now I should not waste my thoughts so I will include it as an entry. I posed myself this question while invigilating 2/6 one day.

I understand the soul as the realm between and of the mind and the body.

Our SOUL is the agent that is truly you that is operating from within a physical shell.

The SOUL is however, closer to the mind. It encompasses of our memory (if deficient, it must at least be functional to be able to remember of ourselves as an entity), thoughts, feelings and our mind's voice (self-awareness).

Our SOUL exists in a private realm within which we possess a private identity and undergo private experiences. This private realm is very important as it separates us on a level from the external world and allows a calm space in which we can exist as a entity with a rational WILL.

I think that the existence of our Soul is given a push with Language and thus our Mind's Voice. Language arms our Mind's Voice with conceptual tools to term our experience, to give it meaning (direct or laden).

Without Language, emotions and experiences would and may be stuck at basic feelings.

Thus from here, we can see that Language (semantics) plays an important role in our interpretation of emotions and experience and thus our idea of our SOUL as well.

How many times have we heard the expression, "An old SOUL"?

So far I have only been analysing the idea of the SOUL from a very physio-psychological view point. More importantly, do I believe in the SOUL as an entity that is seperate from our physical body. I will be back later to write about this. I have to consider more about this.

Schopenhauer: On the Suffering of the World

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim.

It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance.

It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.

This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful.

Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives?

every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence

However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain.

man is not better off than the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind of pain.

In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows.

in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute.

Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things than he considers necessary to his existence.

man has the pleasures of the mind as well.

Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state

hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. It is thus deprived of any share in that which gives us the most and best of our joys and pleasures, the mental anticipation of a happy future,

their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.

In the same way, too, evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic weight; whereas with us the fear of its coming often makes its burden ten times more grievous.

two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular

we might well consider the proper form of address to be my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres!

This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life - the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.

Nishida Kitaro

I have never touched Japanese philosophy before. But I have always wanted to. So this was a very lucky and so far has been a very enlightening discovery.

And I know that I was halfway through "The Wretched of the Earth" but I will be back to that shortly.

Now Nishida Kitaro is one of the three leading philosophers of the Kyoto school, philosophers of Nothingness. How does this then relate to my theory of "Moral Man", you ask?

Well, I think I have found the mental key to enabling "Free agents" but of course I need to read more and think more. But this is what I have so far.....


"Reality is One, it has one single principal that makes it one. It is not a static unity but unfolds in Time.

The unity is refracted in a plurality of items that are transient and interrelated.

The cutting edge of the unity is human consciousness, or as fully conscious that a human can be.

It is to achieve a unity that mirrors the ultimate principle of reality and mirrors it from within the dynamic unfolding process itself.

His goal was to overstep the subject-object distinction built into our language of experience.

And talk of experience as pure and direct itself. It must be pure empiricum, without data or meaning of any kind.

It is then a strategy of rephrasing philosophical questions.

Pure experience would be of no prejudice, no judgment, no deliberation and no intention.

This contrasts itself with Knowledge since all knowledge requires an express distinction between the thing and one's own self.

"A "self-awareness" that the knower has transcended the subject-object world..the only way to confirm such an intuition was to achieve it oneself."

"The Wretched of the Earth"

Finally, I have found and bought this book.

Yum, Let me first start with Satre's powerful first two sentences in hi preface to this book.

"Not so long ago the earth numbered 2 billion inhabitants, i.e 500 million men and 1.5 billion "natives". The first possessed the Word, the others borrowed it."

Intellectual Orgasm. Nice.


I will do a summary on the main points that Fanon touches on in "On Violence":

1) the disparity between Universalist Humanist values and their actual implementation.

2) the muscular tension with which the Colonized wait to take the place of the Colonizer

3) force is no mere exercise of the will but has to depend on very real preliminary conditions. Force by the "weaker" colonized only and will succeed in this condition of the Cold War

4) Violence is invested with positive and formative features in the hands of the colonised and only by escalating it into the condition of a necessary evil will the colonised rehumanise themselves and gain their freedom