Life Without Love
Dear [Mentat],
No problem. I know I keep citing Maslow. Can you tell I’ve been intently reading Motivation and Personality? But his writings are so relevant to these discussions, and seem to describe my situation well. He refers to striving as a cognitive need that may itself have conative (biological, hereditary, or genetic) roots. And while he says that needs derived from sheer hereditary instinct have become pretty weak in modern humans, and that they’re easily overwhelmed by cultural influences, he still refers to their gratification as basic to physiological and psychological health. It would appear that a culturally derived need is about as formidable as a conative one in modern humans, and the overall best way he says to effectively eliminate a basic need is to gratify, rather than suppress it, denounce it, learn it away, and such.
In fact, he spends several paragraphs in this book arguing that a more enabling culture would make for a much healthier society — less mental illness, less stress and other physical ailments, less pathology when needs are thwarted, and so on. So, in this light, I’m doing what I must to preserve and enhance my overall health while at the same time writing about it, with the hope of helping other lovelorn souls with similar life purposes to mine, and who also have been thwarted in gratifying their love needs. Thus, not only am I looking to satisfy my love needs in this quest, but also to become more self-actualized in the process.
You seem to feel likewise in light of your letter last Sunday, where you said that finding a quality mate would be the best scenario for producing maximal happiness in your heart. However, due to the intense hardships discussed in that thread, you’ve decided to put that dream on the back burner until you’re better able to pursue it and accommodate its reality should it come true. It was good to know that we’re basically on the same page. Ultimately, we both want a good relationship. We just have differing views on the practicalities of it. So I shall endeavor to take a less adversarial tone in these posts.
Well, it’s understandable that you’d feel less need these days to find a mate, especially if your experiences drive the point home that success at such an effort is beyond your reach. Even the basic needs above level two in Maslow’s hierarchy can disappear, he says, if the individual becomes convinced that gratifying them cannot be achieved reasonably. I’m just so sorry that your love experiences paint such a dismal picture of its happiness prospects for you.
Perhaps I’m the dumb one for holding on so long to a hopeless dream, because I’ve mostly been hurt in love too. In all the time I’ve been questing for it, I’d say that only a year or two were brightened through involvement with women. I’ve been sad and lonely the rest of the time.
But as I said in other posts, I’m locked into this now. I know how fulfilled it can make me, and the fact that this happiness did occur means that it is possible to experience again. Thus, the love need survives and is stronger than ever. It’s more important than being rich, having a career, or anything else at all. This has become my new (and hopefully, last) career. The plan for the rest of my life is to quest, and then to write about my experiences in it, whether I find what I’m looking for or not, and hopefully, enough people will benefit from my work to give me a decent income again, and give me a noteworthy spot in our culture.
Understood. People have differing life experiences and even if they had the same ones, these experiences probably would not impress them all in the same way. My most intensely pleasurable experiences indeed did involve beautiful women though yours did not. So it’s no wonder you want woman less than I. I understand that neither of us is anymore righteous than the other for how we interpret the experiences. We’re both right. That’s diversity. I’d say affectionately however, that if you found reading books, attaining new insights, and meditation to be more thrilling than sharing body and soul with ladies, then my friend, you’ve been sleeping with the wrong women!
