Deconstructing Love

“Human beings do not and cannot communicate – only communication can.”

-Hans-George Moeller (explaining Niklas Luhmann’s ideas about System’s Theory)

Bizarre, no?

Dear Readers,

Let’s examine this quote in the context of that most beautful of human utterances “I love you!”

According to Luhmann, when someone proclaims his or her love for us, we actually hear words, not love, for example. Our ears vibrate with a sound that our brain interprets. The words are not love or even the behaviors which might signify love. Words are just words: nothing more/nothing less.

Sure, words are words. However, I truly believe that our brains have to make a really interesting set of decisions when unwrapping the comments which enter into it, especially in this case.

The big questions are: Is love a real and true concept that exists outside of human cognition? Or, is love an expression that grows out of the personal narrative of a person’s life? Or, is Luhmann correct when he says that, our personal expression so tweaked and distorted by words that our internal state cannot be conveyed? 

Words are agreed-upon sounds that are supposed to stand for a feeling. This feeling, which everyone describes differently, may or may not have a basis in an objective reality. The belief that we hold clearly in our minds, as the listener, concerning whether or not there is an objective reality, though, has a huge effect on how we hear this proclamation of profound affection. From the post-positivist framework, if someone is saying that they love us, and we believe that there is an objective reality, then the words a true and authentic external meaning beyond the syllables and grammar which sent the message through the air from our lover’s mouth. Many of us want to believe that there is something profoundly eternal and constant about the love which we feel deeply within our hearts.

If we don’t believe that there is an objective reality, then we have to dig deeply to appreciate that this love, the words of which are formed on our lover’s lips, comes out of a deep analysis of one’s own story. This is the postmodern edge. In this perspective, there is no eternally permanent love; love is a deeply-felt personal emotion which no two people will ever experience in the same way twice, even from moment to moment. If we hear the message of love from our lover and we accept this narrated world view, then we understand that our lover is trying to box up something more profound than words which we cannot ever and will not ever directly experience. The words “I love you” are an artifact of our lover’s consciousness, which we, like careful archeologists, will examine, turning over for clues as to exactly what is meant.

Either way, we don’t know for sure what exactly this statement means and how it should reverberate through our own consciousness. Ambiguity abounds. Luhmann goes to great length to point out that there are certain processes which dominate us, even though these processes are developed through our own behavior. Communication, he says, dominates our ability to interact with other human beings. He says that the meaning gets twisted, not because of differing perspectives from the listener and the speaker, but because the communication has staked some kind of claim on another layer of which we may not be aware. Communication communicates directly; everything else has to cut around the edges of ideas and go through a vocabulary selection process which defeats the original message and leaves only communication I, but no meaning.

Whichever speaks to you, dear reader, I offer this silly analysis only in the spirit of trying to understand some very challenging frameworks which provide much of the framework of our world views, whether we think about them or ignore them.

For all of you out there interested in this blog, I’m sorry about yesterday morning. I seem to have had some odd computer challenges. I wrote this blog, but it never posted…

Z