The Semantics of Love © (2002) by nilum.com The following is my first try to wrap up some personal thoughts about the meaning of love, an essay I want to complete as soon someone tells me more about this subject. :-) So please don't take it too serious; the text should be regarded as personal opinion. If that still offends you, simply read it as pure fiction playing in a fantasy world called "civilization" at the edge of collapse. The actors are human animals who call themselves "homo sapiens sapiens", an adjective so nice, they had to use it twice. Any similarity with existing persons or organizations or nation-states is accidentally.

the coward is hiding behind sunglasses! click on the photo to enlarge the portrait of Scrutinizer

Semantics is meaning. does love have a meaning? I'll only consider heterosexual relations in the following, since others can't reproduce.

love is a boolean function l with two parameters l (m,f), with m and f being the male and female genes, respectively of the pair of hetero-humans to be examined.

definition: two persons love each other if l(m,f) equals TRUE.

the goal of the male/female (so-called sexual) recombination is to allow the newly created life to explore the genetic space between the father's and mother's genes. then evolution works through natural selection of the fittest in a given environment.

since genes are blind, they need sensors to check the courting mates. usually females do the selection, males do the courting. (like a revenge, her children inherit the instinct of the father and the intelligence of the mother.) once courted, a human female today mainly use a bio-optical sensor, i.e. the eyes, to map an image of the male and associatively compare this image with what she believes matches the imagination and acceptance of her peers and parents. these criteria are not necessarily identical to her own imaginations - if there are any but illusions.

other qualities like intelligence, character, and ethical values are recently losing importance. the optical valuation of the phaenotype alone dominates, because it is believed that beauty is often paired with a good character and success in profession.

so the formula for love can be modified to

l (m, f(p)) = TRUE

l (f(p(m))) = TRUE

in its scale, evolution had not enough time to develop a sharper selective function and given the odds for mobility and communication of the population only a few generations ago, there was not much choice to be selective with partners.

this means, love can not be much more than an illusion invented by evolution to seduct two hetero-humans to proliferate and thus serve the evolution.

evolution has no goal, does not know from where it came from and where it wants to go. although some unused remainings are contained in the genes transmitted, the history of evolutionary changes is not stored in the genes. given geographical time, evolution mighty correct this default to that our genes could learn from history and avoid dead roads.) evolution can only destroy life through natural selection. in an ideal world -- necessarily non-socialist, because socialism destroys natural selection - which is why socialism is inhuman -- the less fit will not survive or will not proliferate. in contrast, only mutation can create different forms of life. sometimes such explosive machines like Friedrich Nietzsche are created and what mother would not be proud in such a case - not knowing that she only served fortuity.

love which is only based on random recombination and mutation must be an illusion which only serves our blind genes to experiment with. so the meaning of love is enslavement of the humans who would without the illusion of love not make an effort to proliferate.

I'd consider deep friendship based on mutual trust and admiration for achievements, coupled with sex, much more important than love. love can be very exciting, love can last longer than life, love can be the experience of life, but love can also hurt deeply when it's gone.

friendship is based on ethical values which are founded on rational thinking, free of contradictions.

love is based on non-rational emotions filled with mutual expectations, such as paying constant attention for each other, otherwise jealousy and mistrust starts.