Achieving Utopia

Determining the best world.

All actions are products or results of other actions �" all a response to another set of stimuli. All actions affect how one interprets the world as every action changes the world slightly and this interpretation of the world shapes how we feel in a current moment. These feelings influence our actions and that then influences future acts by both ourselves and by others.

So, actions come from feelings, which come from our interpretation of the world. Then what if one were to ask what one would desire to change about the world? Among several individuals, I received multiple instances of things which they would change. Such examples included: social irritants, impossible goals, ignorance, jealousy, and corruption. All these have a singular trend within themselves �" they are a negative aspect of life.

This is not entirely too surprising, as the very nature of seeing the world and the interpretations we have of it would be naturally improved (or so we believe) were we to remove that which causes negative interpretations and, therefore, feelings. The things listed above, though, are awfully specific and, if removed individually, would not grant much of a shift in the individual’s interpretations of the world as the grand majority of other things would still remain.

Then there exists an underlying question: which would remove the greatest amount of ill feeling from the world? Which of all things in existence, when removed, would result in a greater amount of good feelings? Let us find the answer:

As actions are logical extensions of the feelings, then one would determine that ill actions would stem from ill feelings and if ill feelings were removed, the ill action would as well. We may then say that we could judge our solution as being the thing which, when removed, results in the greatest decrease in ill actions. From this point, it is mere observation and stipulation of social interaction. In order to save time, I will propose my answer for prime removal: I propose to remove love. As calloused and ill-thought out it may seem, removing what is thought to be the chief positive force, take a moment to look at the effects:

Were I to remove love, I would, by necessity, remove all the effects of love’s absence. I suffer from no delusion that love causes a grand portion of positive feelings and positive actions, but equally so I am not deluded to think the absence of love causes much ill. By removing love I remove the feeling of being unloved. I also remove the ability to hate, as hate is a mere inversion of love. I also remove love-based jealousy, which accounts for much of evil seen. By the removal of love, I solve much of the most ill feelings possible.

As the most basic instinct and base requirement of all actions by a individual is that the individual continue to live and to have a more fulfilled life, we may then assume that life is the chief end of actions. If life is the chief positive end of actions, then if something being added or removed adds an abundance of life, we may assume that by that fact alone it is causing the greatest benefit. Therefore, I conclude that by removing the feeling of being unloved - I successfully eliminate most suicides, by removing the capability to hate - I remove practically all murders, and, by removing love-based jealousy �" I remove a great majority of wars not stopped by the removal of hate. Therefore, the removal of love results in a great reduction of death and, by extension, the greatest increase in positive feelings.

Surely if the removal of something causes a net increase in positive feeling and action, the thing being removed must be seen as a negative force. Therefore I must conclude with some level of certainty that love is a negative force in society.

Unless we consider the following:

If we remove love, and this causes us to also remove the negative extensions of love (such as those listed above), we must assume that it removes also the positive extensions of love, which would result in a loss of resistance to any and all resistance to the taking of life as well as the desire to preserve it, aside from one’s own life. In fact, life would in essence be devalued to such an extent that murder would be seen as nothing more than a neutral force.

I suppose in order to support the prior claim of life becoming meaningless I should show why we value life. As said before, feelings are influenced by the way we interpret the world, and the world is influenced by action. Action, in order to exist, requires life. Therefore life is the motivating force for there to be a world for us to interpret, and, by extension, feelings for us to experience. Were all life aside from our own to cease to exist, feeling would also be limited to only that which we could enact.

We appreciate life because of the feeling which it grants us. Yet we also see life being disregarded as useless and invaluable by some. This often, if not always, results from the culmination of negative feelings toward the individual(s) in question. Therefore, our value of a particular life is judged by how much positive feelings are produced from it toward ourselves.

Love, in it’s very essence is our ability to care for particular things. Topping the spectrum of care, if we remove love we also remove all ability to care about particular things. This then means that we lose the ability to care about the individual’s causing the positives and only care about the positive feelings in themselves. Were the individual producing the positive feelings be instantly replaced by another just as capable of producing the same level of positive feeling, we would then cease to regard the prior person whatsoever, assuming we did before. They would be a means to positivity, rather than an end in themselves, resulting in us no longer seeing them with human value or of equal life worth. If they are not of equal value to our own selves, then murdering them should not bring about any ill feelings in our own selves or any other individual aside from the one being murdered.

This disregard for life, were love to cease to exist, would arguably cause all positive feelings cease to come about as it would be likely humanity would eventually, with enough time, die out as the society we would create would become isolated individual pleasure seekers solely concerned with their own selves.

Then I would argue this: all negatives and positives which have an opposite cannot be removed from society or else they cause a decrease in quality of life, which is the chief of all positives. For example, if we remove jealousy, we must also remove appreciation and gratitude, as jealousy is the negative manifestations of such. As I would argue all things have their opposites, then the resultant thing which must be removed in order to achieve a world with the greatest amount of happiness is: nothing.

Interestingly enough, when I asked others what they may remove, one did suggest to remove nothing. Although unaware of the end result of my aim, “nothing” is the accurate answer to what may cause the greatest, best possible of potential worlds to exist.

Reviews

[Meeks]

Hate isn't necessarily the invert of love.
According to CNN, moral dilemmas are resolved by certain neurons firing in the frontal cortex. Positive outcomes, which can be paralled to love, usually consist of a specific grand finale that can be identified and is similiar throughout.
If this combination of neurons where to be disrupted by transcranial magnetic stimulation and rendered impossible, only the negative outcome would exist.

However, love isn't yet completely found, and a positive reaction to a moral dilemma is to closest thing we can document so far.

So if love were to be removed, hate would remain. All of the weaker forms of love would be gone as well, which would create a very irritable and easily angered human. This proves that love can only be positive, and the breaking of feelings that many couples experience wouldn't be love going bad, it would be sadness or anger at the person. The love would still be there, which is why we don't punch our newly divorced ex right after she denies us.

[Apebble]

You're talking in a much more biological rather than philosophical sense. While this may be simply because your beliefs cause philosophy to be a mere extension of the biology, it nevertheless changes the situation.

Whether hate is the necessary biological invert of love, in terms of the neurons firing, is not my point. It is rather that we are discussing the ideas of removing the abilities. Essentially, what I was saying is this:

Were we to remove love, which is essentially our ability to care towards things in a positive light, we would then remove our ability to care about the negative as there would be no scale on which to deem something as negative. Were we to remove the concept of love, hate, though still biologically possible, would never "activate" as we would never be able to interpret the stimuli as negative.

[Meeks]

No. Now you are talking about removing caring, which would encompass both love and hate. This is about removing love.

I love myself a good debate in the comments...

While I do admit that this is philosophical, philosophy is simply yet another science in the realm. If I want to use physics to prove something in chemistry, well, why not? As long as it's a truth, it is compatible.

And so, how would you imagine removing the ability to love? Exactly like I demonstrated, by disrupting positive formations brain waves in the frontal cortex. That would leave you with hate.

[Apebble]

Had you read the piece thoroughly, you would know I equated the two to being roughly the same (or at least saying that by removing love, what one is essentially removing is the ability to care for particular things).

And although biology can be used philosophically, the simple nature of the fact that this is a hypothetical question removes it from the realm of scientific observation, which you are residing in and places it into a much more black and white arena.

And how I plan on removing it is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter (theory of the matter?) is that by removing one's ability to love, that would then translate over to an inability to gradate the stimuli as something deserving of the act of hate (which aligns with the first paragraph).

[Meeks]

Again, you are trying to remove love, not caring overall. Love is, by definition, an intense feeling of deep affection. If one removes that feeling of intense affection, the feeling of intense hatred still persists.

So I have proved that love and hate are different in two different sciences, biology, and linguistics.

And yes, if one removes love, one removes the ability to positively care about things. What we're arguing about is a factual error, that single word positively which I added to your definition.

So, is love positive or neutral caring? You say neutral, yet when a salesman counts money from a purchase, he doesn't do it out of love and one cannot possibly call it love, either for the person or the money. Love cannot stay neutral, much less negative, but it is positive.

There. That's your philosophical proof.

[Apebble]

Interestingly enough, in that definition - intense feeling of deep affection - just so happens that the word "affection" has a synonym: care. So, now let's substitute: an intense feeling of deep care toward another. Can we be done with semantics, now?

Were one to remove the intense positive care (or affection) for another, then all that would exist would be, yes, negative. But since the entire spectrum of good would cease to exist, what was once perceived as negative would simply become the state of being and would shift into neutrality.

And I fully recognize love being a positive spin on the word care or affection. I simply find that irrelevant of an aspect. For example, the most obvious answer one would think to my question in the paper would be to remove "ill feelings." This would then, theoretically, remove all negative outcomes.

I disregard that as by the fact that I remove all negative interpretations, I remove the gradation. All interpretations leave love as the highest and some other measure of positive care as the lowest. But since one can no longer compare the idea of being loved in opposition to something which is the opposite, the individual ceases to appreciate the love and grant it any semblance of worth. If all things are positive, there is no reason to appreciate positivity and grant positive feelings toward it.

When aligned with the first paragraph, this causes a lack of positive actions and therefore a less positive world. Translate the same logic to love, and there you have it.

[Meeks]

So, what you are saying is that hate is objective. It surely is, but not to the point you come to. It's called morality, and I think I was talking about it earlier, but not in this sense.

We, our ego and our superego, do not find what is right and what is wrong by comparing it to other things that we have seen or done. Instead, we compare it to what could have been done, which allows us to adapt and decide in totally knew situations.
Removing the ability to love would make hate a bit more neutral, but that ingrained sense of morality would still be there. Love, the reward for good moral decisions, wouldn't exist, but we would still be able to figure out when something else is bad. The boundary might be pushed back a bit, but hate would still be.

Morality is mostly ingrained, not determined.

As for your notice on semantics, you do realize that linguistics is a necessary evil? I dislike semantics, yes, but in this situation it is totally understandable. In a philosophical debate, simple things should be defined as clearly as possible to allow the debators to expand easily.

So I hope you wouldn't mind if, instead of a synonym, I gave the actual definition of affection: a feeling of fondness or liking. The full definition now reads: an intense feeling of deep fondness or liking.

Interesting argument though. Never thought of it that way.