eThoughts : Love as a Construct: Just because it may be basic to the universe, doesn’t mean it doesn’t manifest in many forms.

Is love some absolute, a fact of the universe that can be discovered and copied onto and into human lives? Or is love an abstract, by definition, ambiguous? If it is an abstract, is that movement from ambiguity into form a construct and, like any construct, a representation? Or, perhaps love is an absolute that can only appear as a construct.

I was reading a book not too long ago authored by physicist João Magueijo about his concept of a variable speed of light. Traditional physics accepts the speed of light as a constant (at least in a vacuum). The idea that light has a variable speed would greatly upset some basic tenets regarding the organization of the universe. I’m no physicist, but I think this constant speed of light thing is a bit suspect, if for no other reason than I cannot figure out what a vacuum is. It’s easy right? A vacuum is nothing.

Hmmm, if something is running through a vacuum, how is that a vacuum? When something is in nothing, it’s no longer nothing.

Ahhh, you say, a vacuum, like space, surrounds things. Therefore some-thing and no-thing are two separate parts of the universe (and, by implication, our lives). A some-thing needs a space to be. Well, it is my understanding that the universe is not composed of parts of something and parts of nothing–apparently physicists think there is only energy (which by definition both emits, attracts, and moves). So there are only degrees of something, there is no true nothing (or no thing)–a vacuum is merely a form of energy.

What does this have to do with anything?

How about abstraction versus manifestation? We can abstractly believe in something like a vacuum or love, but what if it is brought into being (out of something, something)? I’m guessing its energy signature changes. And if that’s the case, why would we hold onto the abstraction when discussing the manifestation?

The idea that love is some constant in its manifested form seems like an attempt to keep the emphasis on the abstraction. This seems like a bit of creative accounting on the same level as the Enron scandal and Arthur Anderson’s bookkeeping procedures.

Humans do have a propensity to fix positions and calculate units of measurements (as Magueijo noted). Important? Maybe. An accurate picture of a dynamic universe? Hardly, except in a very temporal way. Sure, a fixed position and a way to calculate distance to that location, as well as the size of what is being located and so on, has some linear, Euclidean, temporal reality when dealing with that which can be given such measurements and quantities.

But what about concepts that defy quantification? What about love? Do we deny ourselves the many variables of love because we impose the square peg of a linear, Euclidean reality on something that is so constantly shape shifting that we cannot even call it a round hole with any accuracy or certainty?

Yet this has not stopped humans from attempting to quantify and make love concrete, as though the abstraction can be directly measured. We’ve got road maps (and we forget a map is not a place): love is forever, love is constant, love is never having to say you’re sorry, love is never having an affair, love is knowing who you are and allowing others to be who they are, love is proximity, love is sex, love is beyond sex, love is age appropriate, love is nurturing, love is responsibility, you only love once, and on and on.

Perhaps love manifested in reality is a construct. Perhaps the abstraction of love is only the basis for the manifestation. If this is true, then perhaps the litmus test of love is the manifestation and not the abstraction. That is, perhaps our manifestations are the mirror of our abstractions. Maybe our abstractions are not the be-all and end-all of our striving. By attending to the manifestation, we can realize our true abstraction, and then shift it so that the manifestation is altered. But the manifestation is the true barometer of the quality of our abstractions. In other words, when we compare our abstraction of something like love to our manifestation, our manifestations will never measure up. When we compare our manifestations to our abstractions, we have a way to indirectly measure the quality of our abstraction. In this way we can see the nature of our creations. In this way, we have a way to measure up.

Personally, I think love pervades the universe and beyond because I see creation as a case of original blessedness as opposed to original sin. In that way love is an absolute. But the manifestation of the absoluteness of love varies. And the manifestation is not based on the absolute, but on the abstraction–the human notion of the absolute.

Perhaps the idea of love doesn’t thrive so well in rigid realities about marriage and partnerships and expectations. Perhaps the present idea of love is actually fear-based, and as such, is prone to marking territories, defining boundaries about what and what is not appropriate. Love does not exist in a “vacuum,” so love is variable and it can have quantified manifestations if we so choose. But we tend to mistake those choices as absolutes, as a permanent quantity, an edifice that we can refer to as that which defines love, an altar on which to sacrifice those not in compliance with our construct.

I think the idea that love has a constant manifest form or behavior has been the grand human mistake, the great pain generator, the mother of crusades, the basis for delineating good and evil and thereby creating opposing forces for which we need to take sides. It is a great illusion.

I don’t get it. Opposing forces don’t demand choosing between one or the other do they? That’s like demeaning one leg as it moves backward while the other moves forward. Biologically speaking, opposing forces work together. I understand the universe works in a similar manner. Is there a parallel?

Love looks like what we’re looking at. Just because we don’t see it that way doesn’t mean it isn’t that way. Maybe we’ve lost an ability or maybe we just haven’t found it. It can be tough all right during the death of something we hold dear–we’ve “lost” that which we love. But maybe that’s another construct we don’t quite have a handle on.

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