Love is a declaration of dependence
A few years ago I watched the movie Her (2013) in a screening room full of people. It’s a film about a man who falls in love with a talking computer called an OS, an Operating System. In a discussion after the film, the audience was divided into two camps.
On the one hand, you had the people who find it no problem if in the future we live in a world in which the technique is developed so far that we can buy a robot or real doll that cannot be distinguished from a human being. Which does exactly what we say. In other words: an ideal lover, or friend, or nurse. They see people as autonomous, independent individuals. At least that is the goal. Technical aids can be used to realize this aim and to keep our satisfying needs in our own hands as much as possible. I call them the Solos. In addition to technology, Solos are often also fond of romance.
On the other side, you have the camp that finds this a frightening specter, a world where no difference is made between a robot and a human being. They have the feeling that something is irreparably lost. The people in this group believe that in the first place we are social beings that depend on each other, who need each other to survive and live. They, the Socials, answer the question “Can you fall in love with an AI or OS?” with an emotional: “No, that is not possible!” They see that the pursuit of the impossible can cause much damage.
And I agree with them. Because love does not work like that. That’s not how people are. We are not solitary, independent individuals. We are social beings, not in the sense that we find it pleasant to hang around with each other, but more fundamentally: without others we do not even know who we are. There is no me without someone else.
Ask yourself who you are. I can say: I am a son. I can only say and experience that because there are others who recognize me as such. I can say that I am a great lover, but if I am the only one on earth who thinks so ... For our deepest sense of who we are, we depend on others. Our identity is a social construction. We cannot do it alone. That is why we have to ask ourselves the question: “Who are we without the ones we love?”
If you look at the movie poster, you only see him while the movie is called Her. She is not there. And he is not happy. He has a broken heart, he is abandoned, hurt, and I think it is no coincidence that in that state he is receptive to a computer program. A program that gives him the illusion that he has contact with another person. And is it a coincidence that the OS is called Samantha? Samantha Operating System: SOS.
What matters, and I find it almost unbelievable how easily we forget that, is that you cannot replace a person. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows this.
Why do some people find the promise of a life in which we need no one, so attractive? Why are we taught that we should be independent and that it is a good thing if we’re happy on our own? Is it the illusion of invulnerability? If we do not need anyone, no one can hurt us. If we are alone, no one can leave us.
In this connection it is very revealing that our ideas about love are often very romantic. I think romance and love are two different things. For a love story you need at least two people. For romance only one: me. Me and my imagination - oh yes, and an attractive figurante (or reall doll) that fits perfectly into my picture. Love is being together. Romance is loneliness.
You might think that this romantic vision of love is an invention of Hollywood, but it is already much older (in fact Hollywood is committing plagiarism all the time). About two and a half thousand years ago, the poet Aristophanes tells the story of the circular man, a self-indulgent creature who is cut in two by the gods and has since been filled with the desire for unification. Exactly that is the romantic definition of love: the desire for unification, to merge with your true other half.
This romantic unity myth still affects us and gives shape and direction to our desire, whether we know it or not. Okay, a little bit of Hollywood: What does Tom Cruise say to the woman he loves at the end of the movie Jerry Maguire? Answer: "You complete me.”
It is a beautiful story, that of Aristophanes, and I think we can certainly learn something of it, namely that we are incomplete beings who lack something that we cannot possibly find in ourselves, how much personal effort, self-help booklets or technical tricks we try to use. But the remedy, unification, is a romantic misunderstanding, an antisocial misunderstanding.
Romance has something violent, that intense desire to become one with another. Love, in real life, is more than me and my desire. Love is more than my feeling. Love is a relationship. And for a relationship, you have to be at least with two people.
That sounds logical, but why do we forget or deny this again and again? In my opinion, not because we are necessarily malicious or naturally selfish. But we are children of our time, and our time is romantic. Thus so are we.
And, not unimportantly, we are consumers. We have learned to look at the world as if it were a shop or catalog, always looking for the best buy. And of course: always keep the receipt! If the car or phone or loved one is disappointing, we can exchange it for a better copy.
If we continue to see our dependence as a weakness, if we continue to try to find all love and happiness and safety exclusively within ourselves, we will lose the ability to love. And that means losing ourselves. We don’t need any more romantic consumption. We don’t need any more insulating technology to finally realize our complete emotional independence.
We need dependency statements. Love is a declaration of dependence. I love, so I am dependent. Being a person is being a walking dependency statement. I am dependent, so I love.
I choose the side of the dependent. When I lie awake in the dark night, I hold on to the idea that there are people who hold me and that there are people I have to hold. That is the true fabric of which I am made, the true blanket under which I can sleep peacefully.
I hope that nobody will ever save us from vulnerability, incompleteness and love. I declare myself dependent.
And you?