Braindump 1: self-love

Maybe I’ve been thinking about self-love wrong.

What is love? Love, in my view, is not a feeling. It is a continually renewed commitment to do what’s best for the loved person. Love consists of acts, not feelings.

Now let’s apply that to self-love. I might say: “Of course I do what’s best for me. All organisms care about their own well-being. It’s in our nature.”

There are people who supress their own preferences and values, because they’re afraid to take up space, to impose themselves on the world. “But,” I would say, “I’m not one of those people. I honor my preferences.”

So I have self-love?

It’s not so easy. There is an aspect of epistemic responsibility in love. If you truly care about someone, it doesn’t suffice that you tell yourself, “I want what’s best for them.” If you love someone, you’re taking on the epistemic responsibility to figure out what is, in fact, best for them—whether your actions, in fact, lead to the outcomes you purport to seek.

We all know how parents fail at this. Most parents will claim to love their children, and yet many, with superficially good intentions, screw the kids up in very preventable ways. The parents don’t care enough to fulfill their epistemic responsibility.

So—I’m thinking—being self-interested in the regular, half-assed way we all are is not sufficient for self-love. Self-love is a serious commitment to figure out what is best for you, to care so deeply that you actually cut through your own bullshit and figure out what’s true, and then act on it.

Am I failing myself in this respect? I think so. I’ll work on it. This seems important.