The Problem of Selflessness

The more people you love, the weaker you are. Queen Cersei (Game of Thrones)

Cruel and dark her words may seem to be but nevertheless no one can deny that
there is also some truth in it. She is right of course that we can and must do
extraordinary things just to make those people whom we love so much, happy and safe.

In the Symposium, Phaedrus and Pausanias both emphasized on their speeches
that love can push a person to such acts that may seem to be unimaginably stupid for
others but on the other hand noble in the eyes of that person who committed those acts in
the name of love. The person in love, they say, becomes virtuous and selfless in order to
make those people whom he cared the most, happy and safe. Love makes a person strong
enough to do and to be the extraordinary.

Such inspiring words these two men have, however if we reflect on their words
deeper we can see the truth behind the cold words of Cersei. If a person truly loves then,
according to Pausanias and Phaedrus, he will sacrifice everything even his life for the
sake of showing how much he loves the person or the people he cares about. Love in a
sense, takes everything away from you everything you have thus even your own self
that is why loving truly is called a selfless act. Your sense of self is reduced into a
shadow the self becomes less and less by loving. You become weaker.

Love therefore makes you think you are at your strongest but in truth you are at
your weakest.

Love in its purest and truest form is the selfless kind of love and selflessness is
best manifested when loving knows no boundaries loving not only your special
someone, not only your family, not even only your country but loving the world as a
whole. By appreciating the beauty of the world as a whole, love transcended the
physicality of it including the self. And as Diotima emphasized, one has transcended the
worldliness of love if that person can see love or beauty in every thing the form of Love
itself. This great appreciation of the beauty of the world is manifested through the love of
humanity, which was lived out by Jesus Christ.

Nonetheless by transcending the physicality of the world, one is giving up
everything including his own life, earthly desires and identity his self for the sake of
loving not just the people who are close to him but also others, people who may even not
know him thereby becoming selfless. This transcendence however weakens his self.

By giving our love to more people, the more we love selflessly but the more our
selves become weak.

Selflessness however if we reflect on it more deeply, does not only take
everything we have for the sake of loving but at the same time by its nature, imposes us
to give up everything for the sake of loving. It is this imposition that manifests the
ultimate power of love, a power so beautiful and so terrifying. It is therefore the
extraordinary force emanating from loving selflessly that makes us weak.

What is then this powerful force?

This force, I think, is an obligation created by the act of selfless love. It is a
motivation the feeling that you ought to be selfless for the sake of love and nothing
more that is devoid of selfish and immanent desires. If one is truly selfless, he is ready
to give out his love to countless number of people without any earthly inclinations but
only for the sake of loving the transcendent desire for the happiness of others. Then by
doing so it implies that he is willing to sacrifice everything for those people in order to
protect them and to keep them happy. Willingness or the sense of obligation runs deeper
and wider in a selfless person for he wholeheartedly carries the burdens of humanity.
Therefore obligation that is formed out of and emanates from selfless love is unbreakable.
Such examples of this kind of obligation are the obligation of parents to their children,
the obligation of wise rulers to their subjects, the obligation of the Pope to the flock. Such
kind of obligation can be rightly called the Noble Obligation imposition of and by love.

How does it weaken us?

Noble Obligation, as it is an obligation, is an unbreakable chain. It binds us
completely to those people whom we so care for and what makes it unbreakable is that it
is from selflessness it has no ulterior motive in a sense that one loves for the sake of
loving only and purely. So does it imply that we do not have any choice in loving? Being
selfless is being without choice? Well I think, we have a choice to love but once we are
already truly in love that choice disappears. Therefore once obligated by love to act
selflessly, a person has no other choice but to do so. We have no choice but to protect
them, to keep them happy and to help them at any moment and method required in any
means necessary. As a consequence, our means of fulfilling our Noble Obligation are
being drained in a manner worthy of being called stupid. It is stupid in a sense that by
faithfully fulfilling our selfless obligation the more we find it difficult to continue. Our
goods, emotions and our time will inevitably be exhausted by the obligation brought
about by our selfless love. Therefore it is our selflessness our love for humanity will
ultimately make us too weak to continue loving. Selfless love is self-defeating.

Of course Plato will disagree with me, for Love is not from the goods of the earth,
or from human emotions and capabilities but from itself Love is a form, an idea that has
an absolute existence. So in a sense, the spirit of love is still within us even without the
means to show it. We can still love. But what is the good of having love if we cannot
express it in its fullest form? After all the purest form of love is selflessness and one can
only be truly selfless if he is able to share the warmth of love to others. And obviously,
we all know that the only way to express it is to have both external and internal means to
do so. This only goes to show that the more we act selflessly the more we drain such
necessary goods to show our selflessness thus there will come a point when it is just too
much to handle.

Therefore loving selflessly is something that cannot go on for a lifetime. One may
try but it seems, loving in its most ideal form is more likely to have an unhappy ending.
But how does the weakening of the capability to love is connected to the self, the very
spirit of man? How such weakening weakens the self?

As we have pointed out earlier, the love motivated by selflessness gradually
drains our capacity of fulfilling it thereby such kind of love is doomed to fail for it makes
us weak to continue loving. The greater number of people we share our love the greater
number of people we are obligated to thus the greater possession of the means to manifest
and preserve that love is necessary but we all know that it is impossible due to the
limitations of the human person therefore love in its purest sense is doomed to fail. And
failing to love those whom we care for is the most terrifying experience one could
possibly have in his life. What good is our love if we cannot protect those whom we love
so much? And from such failure of loving emanates the terrible feeling of
meaninglessness that drains the human spirit in a scale unimaginable. So if we come to
think of it, those people whose love transcends the boundaries due to the virtue of
selflessness, whose love is geared towards the love of humanity as a whole, are the
people who are most vulnerable and most likely to suffer the feeling of meaninglessness.

That is the reason why selfless people are the weakest people; they are the most
vulnerable in succumbing to a life devoid of meaning. Therefore the more people you
love, the weaker you are.

So how must we love then?

The less people you love, the stronger you are. Such selfishness preserves our
capability and means to love thereby creating an unbreakable bond with those few people
whom we are naturally to be obligated upon. Natural for these people are bonded to us
not only by love but also by blood, they are the closest to our hearts since the moment of
our birth. Who are these people? They are none other than our families and of course, our
selves. Loving beyond your self and your family puts you in a vulnerable position.
University of the Philippines Diliman











The Problem of Selflessness
(The Vulnerability of Selfless Love)













Luis Jacob Retanan
Philo 198 (Plato)
Prof. Yasol-Naval
May 19, 2014