Moving On With Life

It will come as no surprise that I agree with our friend Arthur Schopenhauer: "Love is just the instinct of Sex." And just what does that mean?

Firstly, Schopenhauer argues in the Metaphysics of Love that love is NOT an illusion--though perhaps it might be perceived as "ghost." It is a Truth existing because people have made it so throughout history. (Same as God exists a priori because we know the term.) I agree.

Second, he considers Love as fundamentally transcendent. This is the point at which he expresses: "Every kind of Love, however ethereal it may seem, springs entirely from the instinct of sex," and it is worthwhile to quote further: "Indeed, it [Love] is absolutely this instinct, only in a more definite, specialised and perhaps strictly speaking, more individualized form." After all, we are speaking of single units, not generic categories of humanity: man/woman. And again, I agree.

Schopenhauer specifies that Love focuses on the Next. The instinct centers on, quite simply, the will to Live: individually, and as a species. He contrasts this with an interesting counterpoint: if a man and a woman dislike each other, they can only bring into the world "unhappy being" ---whether in their own existence or in that of the Next. I disagree...

Here, I pause to reflect personally. Confusion and self-deception led my parents to each other; contempt within themselves drove them apart; and my father concluded that he had to suffer my mother, to have me in his life-- driving home the point that we do not know what is Next, we are merely compelled towards it. Our instinct may seem faulty, but the Universe is never wrong. The future merely IS, and we are in no position to agree or disagree. (*Arthur should know better as he published The Metaphysics of Love in 1851, and before in 1841 his Essay on the Freedom of Will.)

Which leads us finally to the metaphysical part of Love... that the instinct of the sexes need not result in anything physical, but rather an idea, and even better an Ideal. For that the noble hearted will expend considerable self-sacrifice... For personal honor.

(*Poor Arthur though is dire in his final condemnation of Love, noting that the stealthy "glances of longing" belie an underlying knowledge that lovers are "striving to perpetuate all this misery and turmoil [of Existence] that would otherwise come to a timely end." Mentally as much as Physically. )

Moving on to the rest of this challenge question: I've never cheated on anyone, nor been cheated on... That is in my case an impossibility, intellectually, as I begin with an understanding of our detachment physically from this reality. We belong to the Earth, which will bury us as we are, and what more positive sentiment we might cultivate in the mean time benefits the world as a whole, now and later. Some people couple easily, corporeality being no barrier in action. Would I be upset if my partner slept around? Yes and No. I would see it as a failing of Character; not as a personal offense. For myself, casual sex is an abhorrent waste, not worth the risk of what might be "leftover." My own sense of integrity, i.e. personal attachment, is too strong when it comes to commitment of the Soul, which I do believe carries on (as a worthy Next). I feel no need to "get over" my emotional attachments, nor do I try to-- I see these as forever imprinted on Universal memory. And I do think that's pretty sexy.