Very elegantly abstract and thus very general, but may therefore be very exact!
Elise de La Source has once suggested to define love as: 'Appreciation and Acceptance'.
Both definitions may be two sides of the love coin; the abstract vs. the composed. While in abstraction 'Expansion of self to include' has a place as an inner feeling, in it's practical expression love is composed of 'Appreciation and Acceptance'. Appreciation grows out of the 'expansion' root. Appreciated targets usually appear within entities composed of many parts. Not all parts thereof are loved on their own. In many parts we fail to realize how they are conducive to love or even view them as counter-conducive. Such parts are nevertheless accepted since they are conjoined to the loved parts, hence 'acceptance' joining 'appreciation' as a love component.
In the perspective of the three love stages: love, meta-love and post-love, I'd take Lazarus' definition for the first stage and expand it in the next two:
Love: Expansion of self to include
Meta-love: Expansion of selves into reciprocal relationships
Post-love: Harmony adhesiveness within the infinite spread
In this context of defining love, it is worthwhile noting the difference between friendship and love. While a peaceful cordial relationship is one of respecting boundaries, friendship is one of flexing the rigidity of boundaries. While cordiality has the element of account track keeping like: 's/he did that for me, so I'll do that for h/im-er', friendship is broader like: 'I'm there for h/im-er, like s/he's there for me'. In friendship there already is a flexing of boundaries since the account track keeping is broader and less precise than in cordiality.
Love (expansion) to a certain extent, is more like: 'I'm there for h/im-er, regardless of how much s/he's there for me'. This despite that in 'plain' love and even in meta-love, various forms of selfish interest still play a role as the causes for love. However, while both; friendship and love, are conditional, in love there is a partial collapse of boundaries and of account track keeping in the areas in which love exists.
'Unconditional' in the full sense of the word, belongs to the realm of post-love. (The level though is obviously determined by value, since virtue and depravity in themselves are not the same.)
While understanding that an ultimate unconditional (love?) attitude, can only exist within post-love, but then isn't this a state in which acceptance precedes appreciation? In post-love; it seems that all starts with acceptance of all-whole or the infinite (hole?), so anything is automatically appreciated!
'Post' -as presented by you- sounds like a passionless state of indifference in which everything is (not only ultimately resiliently, but already initially) accepted. While such a state may be an attraction for a very few aloof personalities, why should people in general seek such a state? Wouldn't they rather choose to remain in a blissful meta-love state rather than to 'gravitate' to an apathetic post-love state?
1. I indeed see it this way; that in post-love all is accepted and therefore appreciated - proportionately to it's value - while in love and meta-love, acceptance is a price to pay for the appreciated-loved.
2. Fully answering this question requires more elaboration about the love stages. I'd first put to rest its' main concern premise, by indicating that even schools of thought that held such premise like Stoicism and Apatheia did not necessarily advocate indifference but rather equanimity (see linked Wikipedia).
Love: Regular love starts with 'I', as Ayn Rand has said: “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’...". The moment that such love does not serve the ‘I’, the love is gone. At this level the 'expansion of self to include' is conditioned by the needs of the self who includes.
Meta-love: This stage is like the creation of a limited liability company (Ltd.) or a society anonymous (SA). Such company is limited to its' designed purpose which is a purpose of each associated self. In meta-love, participants' selves remain central to their association. However, meta-love co-passion for common goals and cooperation for the sake of mutual purposes is not hindered by each individual's other selfish needs. At a strong level of mutuality, it creates a sense of experience-intensifying togetherness between two living beings, which is the essence of meta-love
However, once it happens that an important part of one self is somehow threatened by another self involved in meta-love, it is like when a dentist hits a nerve; the meta-love just implodes. They may technically continue their association for the sake of such gains to which their love or plain motivation is directed, but the meta-love 'expansion of selves into reciprocal relationships' is gone. There still is appreciation for the initial reason of the relationship, but there is no more acceptance of the whole self personality that comes with it.
Post-love: ‘I’ - a condition to regular love - becomes an impediment to post-love. It's premise is based upon the recognition that selves are secondary to prime experience in which the highest value is to harmoniously integrate selves within the ongoing creation. Post-love is a state of adaptation that takes the non-finite into consideration, not ignoring away any relevant-to-will reality part. Such ignorance breaks harmony (consonance) into cognitive dissonance. This needs the recognition that no part of reality requires the denial of existence of any other part. The motivation to harmonize with all is like being in a construction site, not knowing exactly what the end purpose of the site's activity is, but nevertheless motivated to harmoniously participate in it.
Post-love means not beyond love, but beyond the levels of pronouns whether starting with ‘I’ or with 'we'. It is post-pronouns, which actually means post-regular-and meta-love. Its' attitude therefore comprises love to any part of creation relevant to will. It is neither a love that expands from ‘I’ to another self as in regular love nor one that expands from 'we' to a common purpose like in meta-love. It is a decentralized love stemming in motivation and directed to no specific boundary end, but to the infinite varieties of existence. Hence its' definition: 'harmony adhesiveness within the infinite spread'. Love in post-love does not ex-pand from a central starting point outward, but functions as an adhesive of parts within infinite experience proportioned to appreciation. Such love is unbound to any starting or ending, anchoring or centralizing point and even not to reciprocity.
Post-love by loving all, necessarily loves selves (confluences of aspects), but not as finite targets. Post-love sees selves in their proportions within beyond-self experience. Post-love by loving all, does necessarily not deny neither any passion and feeling nor any discriminative levels of appreciation. It appreciates wisdom over absurdity, diligence over lethargy etc... in harmonious proportion, thus non-dual.
Post-love is about inclusion not exclusion, in the sense of each part being included in it's proportionate order in the infinite spread. In post-love, the greatest beloveds, will not love each other as an expansion from i to you (regular love) or from i to we (meta-love common purpose), but from finding each other in strong adhesive proximity in the spread of Being.
@Aron Mueller There is a saying that 'ideal human is one who is plugged-in to infinity'. Now reading here the 'spread' point of post-love, points to 'plugged in' being a kind of anchoring while infinity points to no plug. Infinity is no substance, it is just a word that points to the opposition to finiteness - 'in-finity'. Let's thus rather say that:
'ideal human is one who is unplugged from finiteness'.
This is a difficult but worthwhile endless quest. Paraphrasing Philip Tetlock: 'We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to anything that centralizes'. Tetlock ended his saying with: 'we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need', which is one strong form of centralization.
Having understood the theory of 'decentralized spread' vs. finiteness, isn't seeking harmony only possible by adhesiveness between finite parts?
If understood correctly -
Regular love, while being an opening to the other, it serves the first person.
Meta-love, while serving a common purpose with the other, it remains subservient to the first person.
Post-love, while all loved is integrated as part of the first person, it is independent of what it does to the first person. The following quote illustrates the idea:
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. - Og Mandino
Although speaking above (in my Feb. 18 reply to Marc) about when 'the transition to post-love is firmly over', it was also noted that 'practically it is of course a far fetched situation'. Thus, in the transition period which is usually not over in a lifetime, one may be at all three levels depending on issues at hand. A conjugal partnership that usually has at its center a common household and/or family, is driven by meta-love. Children who by their intense closeness evoke a high level of empathy, have a good chance of bringing out the post-love level. Being in post-love does not yet mean that it outweighs more intensive meta or regular love. The interchangeability of those levels is as complex as human nature that stimulates it.
Concerning the Mandino quote, I'd say that an even sharper test of post-love is if you:
treat everyone you meet as if YOU were going to be dead by midnight. Such thought brings out the motivational factor of post-love, which is to adapt oneself harmoniously with all what is without knowing where it leads to. (See the construction site analogy about post-love in my Feb. 3 response to you.)
Another insight about the above mentioned three levels.
First let's quote from above:
Post-love is about inclusion not exclusion, in the sense of each part being included in it's proportionate order in the infinite spread. In post-love, the greatest beloveds, will not love each other as an expansion from i to you (regular love) or from i to we (meta-love common purpose), but from finding each other in strong adhesive proximity in the spread of Being.
While post-love is not directed to specifics, but to the all inclusive spread of Being, the 'adhesive proximity' of specifics within post-love can include the intensities of regular and meta love. Appreciated qualities attract meta and regular love on a post post-love level. While pre post-love regular and meta love are self centered, post post-love meta and regular love directed to appreciated qualities are purely of decentralized spread, extensive and intensive at the same time. If one identifies qualities within every creature then all have a place within post post-love. (A way to test the higher level of qualities is by how much they are missed. Physical and communicational distance do not diminish mental and emotional presence of yearned qualities!)
This is an interesting point about post-love that it doesn't exclude the intensities of regular and meta love. but on the contrary, purifies them to be genuine and untainted by finiteness.
This insight alleviates a concern that comes from an impression that post-love creates aloofness which detaches from caring and nurturing. Those who profess to love everybody but actually care about nobody are typical. With the above insight one understands that appreciating qualities within post-love cleanses of fake caring!
Very elegantly abstract and thus very general, but may therefore be very exact!
Elise de La Source has once suggested to define love as: 'Appreciation and Acceptance'.
Both definitions may be two sides of the love coin; the abstract vs. the composed. While in abstraction 'Expansion of self to include' has a place as an inner feeling, in it's practical expression love is composed of 'Appreciation and Acceptance'. Appreciation grows out of the 'expansion' root. Appreciated targets usually appear within entities composed of many parts. Not all parts thereof are loved on their own. In many parts we fail to realize how they are conducive to love or even view them as counter-conducive. Such parts are nevertheless accepted since they are conjoined to the loved parts, hence 'acceptance' joining 'appreciation' as a love component.
In the perspective of the three love stages: love, meta-love and post-love, I'd take Lazarus' definition for the first stage and expand it in the next two:
Love: Expansion of self to include
Meta-love: Expansion of selves into reciprocal relationships
Post-love: Harmony adhesiveness within the infinite spread
In this context of defining love, it is worthwhile noting the difference between friendship and love. While a peaceful cordial relationship is one of respecting boundaries, friendship is one of flexing the rigidity of boundaries. While cordiality has the element of account track keeping like: 's/he did that for me, so I'll do that for h/im-er', friendship is broader like: 'I'm there for h/im-er, like s/he's there for me'. In friendship there already is a flexing of boundaries since the account track keeping is broader and less precise than in cordiality.
Love (expansion) to a certain extent, is more like: 'I'm there for h/im-er, regardless of how much s/he's there for me'. This despite that in 'plain' love and even in meta-love, various forms of selfish interest still play a role as the causes for love. However, while both; friendship and love, are conditional, in love there is a partial collapse of boundaries and of account track keeping in the areas in which love exists.
'Unconditional' in the full sense of the word, belongs to the realm of post-love. (The level though is obviously determined by value, since virtue and depravity in themselves are not the same.)
@Aron Mueller - 2 questions about post-love
While understanding that an ultimate unconditional (love?) attitude, can only exist within post-love, but then isn't this a state in which acceptance precedes appreciation? In post-love; it seems that all starts with acceptance of all-whole or the infinite (hole?), so anything is automatically appreciated!
'Post' -as presented by you- sounds like a passionless state of indifference in which everything is (not only ultimately resiliently, but already initially) accepted. While such a state may be an attraction for a very few aloof personalities, why should people in general seek such a state? Wouldn't they rather choose to remain in a blissful meta-love state rather than to 'gravitate' to an apathetic post-love state?
@Lazarus Katz
1. I indeed see it this way; that in post-love all is accepted and therefore appreciated - proportionately to it's value - while in love and meta-love, acceptance is a price to pay for the appreciated-loved.
2. Fully answering this question requires more elaboration about the love stages. I'd first put to rest its' main concern premise, by indicating that even schools of thought that held such premise like Stoicism and Apatheia did not necessarily advocate indifference but rather equanimity (see linked Wikipedia).
Love: Regular love starts with 'I', as Ayn Rand has said: “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’...". The moment that such love does not serve the ‘I’, the love is gone. At this level the 'expansion of self to include' is conditioned by the needs of the self who includes.
Meta-love: This stage is like the creation of a limited liability company (Ltd.) or a society anonymous (SA). Such company is limited to its' designed purpose which is a purpose of each associated self. In meta-love, participants' selves remain central to their association. However, meta-love co-passion for common goals and cooperation for the sake of mutual purposes is not hindered by each individual's other selfish needs. At a strong level of mutuality, it creates a sense of experience-intensifying togetherness between two living beings, which is the essence of meta-love
However, once it happens that an important part of one self is somehow threatened by another self involved in meta-love, it is like when a dentist hits a nerve; the meta-love just implodes. They may technically continue their association for the sake of such gains to which their love or plain motivation is directed, but the meta-love 'expansion of selves into reciprocal relationships' is gone. There still is appreciation for the initial reason of the relationship, but there is no more acceptance of the whole self personality that comes with it.
Post-love: ‘I’ - a condition to regular love - becomes an impediment to post-love. It's premise is based upon the recognition that selves are secondary to prime experience in which the highest value is to harmoniously integrate selves within the ongoing creation. Post-love is a state of adaptation that takes the non-finite into consideration, not ignoring away any relevant-to-will reality part. Such ignorance breaks harmony (consonance) into cognitive dissonance. This needs the recognition that no part of reality requires the denial of existence of any other part. The motivation to harmonize with all is like being in a construction site, not knowing exactly what the end purpose of the site's activity is, but nevertheless motivated to harmoniously participate in it.
Post-love means not beyond love, but beyond the levels of pronouns whether starting with ‘I’ or with 'we'. It is post-pronouns, which actually means post-regular-and meta-love. Its' attitude therefore comprises love to any part of creation relevant to will. It is neither a love that expands from ‘I’ to another self as in regular love nor one that expands from 'we' to a common purpose like in meta-love. It is a decentralized love stemming in motivation and directed to no specific boundary end, but to the infinite varieties of existence. Hence its' definition: 'harmony adhesiveness within the infinite spread'. Love in post-love does not ex-pand from a central starting point outward, but functions as an adhesive of parts within infinite experience proportioned to appreciation. Such love is unbound to any starting or ending, anchoring or centralizing point and even not to reciprocity.
Post-love by loving all, necessarily loves selves (confluences of aspects), but not as finite targets. Post-love sees selves in their proportions within beyond-self experience. Post-love by loving all, does necessarily not deny neither any passion and feeling nor any discriminative levels of appreciation. It appreciates wisdom over absurdity, diligence over lethargy etc... in harmonious proportion, thus non-dual.
Post-love is about inclusion not exclusion, in the sense of each part being included in it's proportionate order in the infinite spread. In post-love, the greatest beloveds, will not love each other as an expansion from i to you (regular love) or from i to we (meta-love common purpose), but from finding each other in strong adhesive proximity in the spread of Being.
@Aron Mueller There is a saying that 'ideal human is one who is plugged-in to infinity'. Now reading here the 'spread' point of post-love, points to 'plugged in' being a kind of anchoring while infinity points to no plug. Infinity is no substance, it is just a word that points to the opposition to finiteness - 'in-finity'. Let's thus rather say that:
'ideal human is one who is unplugged from finiteness'.
This is a difficult but worthwhile endless quest. Paraphrasing Philip Tetlock: 'We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to anything that centralizes'. Tetlock ended his saying with: 'we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need', which is one strong form of centralization.
Having understood the theory of 'decentralized spread' vs. finiteness, isn't seeking harmony only possible by adhesiveness between finite parts?
'When a mosquito lands in your eyes, your attention is devoted to solving the problem without resorting to violence' - (Adapted from) Confucius
The point of post-love then, is to make your whole world; your eyes!
If understood correctly - Regular love, while being an opening to the other, it serves the first person. Meta-love, while serving a common purpose with the other, it remains subservient to the first person. Post-love, while all loved is integrated as part of the first person, it is independent of what it does to the first person. The following quote illustrates the idea: Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. - Og Mandino
Although speaking above (in my Feb. 18 reply to Marc) about when 'the transition to post-love is firmly over', it was also noted that 'practically it is of course a far fetched situation'. Thus, in the transition period which is usually not over in a lifetime, one may be at all three levels depending on issues at hand. A conjugal partnership that usually has at its center a common household and/or family, is driven by meta-love. Children who by their intense closeness evoke a high level of empathy, have a good chance of bringing out the post-love level. Being in post-love does not yet mean that it outweighs more intensive meta or regular love. The interchangeability of those levels is as complex as human nature that stimulates it.
Concerning the Mandino quote, I'd say that an even sharper test of post-love is if you:
treat everyone you meet as if YOU were going to be dead by midnight. Such thought brings out the motivational factor of post-love, which is to adapt oneself harmoniously with all what is without knowing where it leads to. (See the construction site analogy about post-love in my Feb. 3 response to you.)
Another insight about the above mentioned three levels.
First let's quote from above:
Post-love is about inclusion not exclusion, in the sense of each part being included in it's proportionate order in the infinite spread. In post-love, the greatest beloveds, will not love each other as an expansion from i to you (regular love) or from i to we (meta-love common purpose), but from finding each other in strong adhesive proximity in the spread of Being.
While post-love is not directed to specifics, but to the all inclusive spread of Being, the 'adhesive proximity' of specifics within post-love can include the intensities of regular and meta love. Appreciated qualities attract meta and regular love on a post post-love level. While pre post-love regular and meta love are self centered, post post-love meta and regular love directed to appreciated qualities are purely of decentralized spread, extensive and intensive at the same time. If one identifies qualities within every creature then all have a place within post post-love. (A way to test the higher level of qualities is by how much they are missed. Physical and communicational distance do not diminish mental and emotional presence of yearned qualities!)
This is an interesting point about post-love that it doesn't exclude the intensities of regular and meta love. but on the contrary, purifies them to be genuine and untainted by finiteness.
This insight alleviates a concern that comes from an impression that post-love creates aloofness which detaches from caring and nurturing. Those who profess to love everybody but actually care about nobody are typical. With the above insight one understands that appreciating qualities within post-love cleanses of fake caring!