節錄從Peterson Academy上Dr. John Vervaeke的Intelligence、Rationality、Wisdom and Spirituality課中擷取的字句。
What is NOT love
Love is not an emotion. What? Love is not an emotion. When I love someone, that can make me angry, happy, jealous, sad, lonely, fulfilled. When you love someone, it makes you open to a whole set and range of emotions. Do you see that? Love isn't an emotion, and it's certainly not a feeling. The fact that our culture is trying to reduce love to a feeling is this big flattening of what love is.
如Dr. Vervaeke在課程中其他地方提到的，對於一件事物的定義，可以有它是什麼、它一定不是什麼、它跟什麼相反、它是什麼的果，又是什麼的因等等來廓清，這一段他先提出了愛不是某種情緒或者某種感受；反過來，情緒或感受可能只是愛的行為中的部分集合。
How to defind love
You're reciprocly opening to each other. That's how you fall in love, by the way—the work of Aron, not a last name, A-R-O-N. I'm not saying anything between us. I'm just saying, here 's a person, and if she discloses something to—what's your name?
Oriana. If she discloses something to me—she opens up a little, and I respond by opening up rather than staying impersonal and factual, or attacking or exploiting her—if I open up a little bit and then she opens up, you get mutually accelerating disclosure, reciprocal opening. That's love.
That's a participatory, perspectival thing. And we are binding each other to self-transformation, self-transcendence. That's what love is. Do you see what Murdoch is saying? She's saying, Love is mattering. It's religio. It's religio that's bound up into reciprocal opening.
這幾段說明中有兩個關鍵:
- Reciprocal opening. 對等的開放性，隨著運轉順暢而逐漸加速。要有這樣的過程，彼此的對話至少在某些場域必定得非常順暢，也意味著對於對方訊息的掌握從真實度、效率、回應正確性都要夠高才行。或者是因為這樣的理解，我會很直覺的認為這跟Dr. Vervaeke對於flow state的說明其實也符合愛的定義。
Flow state
- Participatory, perspectival這兩個形容詞是從第一堂課就介紹了，關於Intelligence中發展對世界的認知跟交互作用的四個recursive階段:
- Participatory - belonging
- Perspectival - Presence
- Procedural - Power
- Propositional - Truth
從這階層來看，愛的交流是很底層的，本質上是對上層更有決定性。
Why addiction is the oppisite?
My world's upsetting me. I drink some alcohol to remove. But what that does is, it reduces my cognitive flexibility. You understand what that means. My ability to evolve, my generative modeling, starts to degrade. As I do that, the number of problems I can solve in the world goes down. And so the world now becomes a little bit more threatening and narrower. And then I drink a little bit more alcohol and get a little bit more anxious. I can't solve it. Do you see what's happening? I reciprocly narrow down until I can't be any different than I am, and the world can't be any different than it is, and then I'm addicted. My agency is lost, and there is only one arena I am in, and I feel trapped.
這段我有嘗試解釋他人聽，但也覺得頗困難。該說算是一種套牢嗎? 受困於某種感官作用的循環? 還是佛家八苦中的求不得?
結論: 愛是要互相營造的，而且需要鍛鍊的，就像跑步要鍛鍊到進入心流要經過許多痛苦的階段，又需檢討跟驗證，愛要發生也需要類似的過程。如今我是這樣相信的，也能相當程度直觀過去的失敗何來。