(Forgive me for the rambling nature, but it will make more sense as you read.)
All concepts are a layer to explain a portion of the human condition. An attempt to explain an already existing underlying “human path.”
Love as a concept exists apart of the human condition, but literature, movies, and other forms of media have crystallized it to mean other definition separate from Truth.
It is True that humans can feel love.
It is True that humans can feel loved.
It is unity / dedication between beings that is a universal to the human experience.
It’s from this biological capacity that forms of media embody, not the other way around.
The same applies with emotions.
We have the biological capacity to feel pleasant and unpleasant, but it is through our culture these ideas are crystallized into-- rage versus despair, fear versus anxiety, anxiety versus excitement. This is backed by Lisa Feldman Barret’s Theory of Constructed Emotion in which she discovered that emotion concepts, fit with differing forms of expression and definition, are individually constructed based on past experience and culture.
(I can see the argument that anger is a biological Truth as it’s an evolved form of unpleasantness)
This idea is similar to Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and his archetypes. The belief that there’s a layers of fundamental concepts we all share as a part of the human condition.
Within us all are the archetypes of the Mother, Father, Fool, Jester, Child... They are all just expressed in different ways. Some repressed, some amplified, some transformed productively or unproductively.
While Jung’s focus was on cognition this “collective unconscious” layer can be applied to any pervading concept developed in societies: emotion, love, death, consciousness, religion. This is what I call “the human path” of concepts, the fundamental, biological form of an idea.
It’s through understanding the distinction between the human path and our culture’s Coloring of it, that we can examine more acutely the origin of our inclinations, values, and morality.
(Let me denote terms on the human path as Capitalized and the typical cultural usage and definition of terms uncapitalized.)
Take Productivity for example. It is True that fundamentally Productivity is a desirable quality to be expansive in the expression of the self and desired living. It comes about adjacent to Desire, intrinsic to the human condition. Yet to be productive can mean to provide, care, and/or be healthy. Our culture has taken this fundamental concept and turned it into our new concept of productivity. Sloth being one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It’s shameful and looked down upon to be an “unproductive” member of society. Humanity has attached morality and social stigma to aligning with productivity. So it is not that productivity shouldn’t be striven for and is an arbitrary rule, but that the original roots of Productivity have largely been lost in translation and development of various cultures, millennia after millennia. The Human Path covered by dust and grime. Therefore, to critique those striving for productivity as ‘being a mindless result of their environment’ is really an oversimplification as it completely misses the Human Path. While it’s true that all who strive towards productivity don’t understand it’s roots, to dismiss it completely would also mean to dismiss Productivity, which is, in short, an inaccuracy.
Clothing. Language. Health. All concepts that have an underlying Human Path. Clothing to symbolize protection, warmth, distinction from others, or connection to a group. Language to symbolize communication and connection. Health to symbolize the preciousness of life, the fleeting, and changing nature of existence. By focusing on these underlying concepts as a default, I believe anyone can begin to accept the Truth without judgement, with nuance, and without contempt.
Great read!