Self-Deception About Love: Part 1


Our fear of being deceived causes us to be deceived in many ways, more than we would be deceived if we were not fearful of being deceived. There is a deep irony here, an irony that is tragic. We fear something and to protect ourselves from it, we open ourselves up to being ripped apart by something much more dangerous and diabolical. Perhaps certain phobias have this feature. Here’s a poorly-worded example that I have often thought about:

In order to protect myself from getting hurt by others I have decided to be cautious in all my relationships; cautious in who I open up to; cautious in who gets to know me; cautious in who I love and who I allow to love me.  

Sadly, I think this is a common way of being. I know that I have experienced it. But note that the person who says this will typically say the following: 

“Others should know that they can safely open up to me, they can reveal themselves to me. I will not hurt them as I have been hurt; I will not betray them as I have been betrayed; I will not abuse them as I have been abused. I will protect them. They are safe with me. I will love them.”

The person who says both of the above things, if you think hard about it, is actually placing themselves above others. When I say or think these kinds of things I am saying that others need not fear me, but that I should fear others. I will not hurt others but others will hurt me. I, it turns out, am not believing in love. I am not assuming love in others, but I am assuming it (or a form of it) in myself. I am not loving their neighbor as themselves, but are in fact saying that they are the one who loves rightly when all others or most others or many others do not. They are the exception to the rule. They are better than others. 

This seems to me to be a case of self-deception. I have convinced myself that I am a better lover but have refused to say that or to face what I have really done. I have elevated myself by using the mask of self-protection. What is really happening, in this case, is that I am trying to convince myself that I am a genuine lover but that no one else is. I can love others but others cannot love me. Such love is self-deceived because it actually sees others as less than they are. It is the kind of mistrust that SK says reduces others. So, by this kind of self-deception, my love of others becomes a way of diminishing them. And that ain’t love. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Problems of the One and the Many

As I mentioned in class the other day, there are a bunch of problems that can be categorized as being related to the problem of the one and the many. The basic issue is that when oneness is prioritized, manyness gets cut out and when manyness is prioritized oneness gets cut out. Or put differently, when unity is most fundamental, diversity gets eliminated and when diversity is most fundamental, unity gets eliminated.  Let’s consider some examples:  Ethics : Making individuals more fundamental than communities results in communities being sacrificed for the sake of the individual. My interests, desires, hopes, etc take precedence over those of the community. If the individual is most fundamental, then it is permissible for the individual to prioritize her interests over those of the community. Making the community more fundamental than the individual results in individuals being sacrificed for the sake of the community. The community’s interest, desires, hopes, etc tak...
Read more

The Intellectual Arbitrariness Objection to Religious Exclusivism: version 1

Here is my presentation of the objection: The objection here claims that we have an epistemic duty to treat like cases alike: if the evidence I have for p is the same (or similar) to the evidence that you have for ~p, then we should suspend belief with respect to p and ~p. Response 1:   The evidence will, in many or most cases, not be relevantly similarly. The phenomenology (the way the evidence is experienced by the subject) will be different, and thus the internal evidence will be different. Different rankings of evidence will be likely resulting in different overall assessment of the evidence.  Reply:  But those who deny (1) and (2) may have the same phenomenology and whatnot so that there really is relevant similarity—all the way down to how the evidence feels and is assessed. Think of two different detectives with the exact same evidence, same experience on the job, same level of intelligence, etc. and yet they each arrive at a different conclusion. I...
Read more

The Intellectual Arbitrariness Objection: Version 2

Suppose you had been born in Saudi Arabia. If you had been you would have been a Muslim. Suppose you had been born in India. If you had been you would have been a Hindu. Suppose you had been born... If you had been, you would have been... Considerations like these can quite easily give rise to the thought that your current religious beliefs (e.g. that God exists, that Jesus is his son and is the savior of the world, ...) are in some sense arbitrary. You are not justified in thinking that the religious beliefs that you actually have are true and thus that every belief that is incompatible with them is false. After all, you only believe what you do because of a kind of accident of birth. This gives rise to the following principle:  If  S 's religious or philosophical beliefs are such that if  S  had been born elsewhere and elsewhen, she wouldn't have held them, then those beliefs are produced by unreliable belief-producing mechanisms and hence have no war...
Read more