The Law of Love

Tag: books

  • how the elements of the science of happiness relate to the elements of fulfillment in modern psychology

    In my last post I broke down some foundational elements related to the science of happiness. In this post, I look at some of what modern psychology has offered as essential human needs that must be met to find fulfillment. I analyze this by comparing the elements of the science of happiness with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

    Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a model of human motivation that shows how well-being builds in layers. At the foundation are basic survival needs like food, water, and sleep, followed by safety and security. Once these essentials are met, people naturally seek connection, love, and belonging, then respect and achievement, and finally personal growth and self-transcendence. The hierarchy illustrates that true fulfillment arises not from any single need but from satisfying these needs in a way that allows higher levels of meaning, purpose, and personal development to emerge.

    Mapping the Science of Happiness Framework to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

    1. Biological Foundations → Maslow’s Physiological Needs

    • Maslow: food, water, shelter, sleep, health.
    • Your framework: sleep, nutrition, exercise, nature, play, and exposure to beauty.
    • Relation: Both prioritize the body as the foundation for well-being. Your framework expands the basics with lifestyle and restorative elements.

    2. Safety / Stability → Maslow’s Safety Needs

    • Maslow: security, stability, freedom from harm.
    • Your framework: structure, routine, trust, and emotional safety.
    • Relation: Establishing predictable routines, secure relationships, and a safe environment supports psychological and emotional growth, matching Maslow’s safety tier.

    3. Relational & Communal → Maslow’s Love & Belonging

    • Maslow: friendships, intimacy, social connection.
    • Your framework: connection, compassion, forgiveness, acts of kindness, belonging, and contribution to others.
    • Relation: Both emphasize relationships, but your framework adds moral and altruistic dimensions — cultivating joy and meaning through caring for others as well as self.

    4. Psychological Processes → Maslow’s Esteem / Self-Actualization

    • Maslow: achievement, competence, respect from self and others.
    • Your framework: gratitude, cognitive reframing, flow, engagement, goal-setting, resilience, emotional awareness, growth mindset, hedonic adaptation awareness.
    • Relation: While Maslow treats esteem and self-actualization hierarchically, your framework highlights skills and practices that actively cultivate mastery, satisfaction, and personal growth at all stages.

    5. Existential & Spiritual → Maslow’s Self-Actualization / Self-Transcendence

    • Maslow: realizing potential, creativity, personal growth, transcendence.
    • Your framework: meaning and purpose, acceptance, surrender, alignment of values and actions, awe, transcendence, embracing and transcending negativity.
    • Relation: Your layers match Maslow’s top tiers but go further by emphasizing active cultivation of inner peace, purpose, and spiritual awareness, not just potential states.

    6. Integrative & Transformative Practices → Maslow’s Self-Actualization / Self-Transcendence

    • Maslow: self-actualization and transcendence describe aspirational states.
    • Your framework: meditation, shadow integration, SDT fulfillment (autonomy, competence, relatedness), identity coherence, reflective practices.
    • Relation: These are actionable practices that help a person reach Maslow’s top stages; Maslow describes what is possible, your framework explains how to get there.

    7. Meta-Principles → Overarching Theme Across All Levels

    • Maslow: doesn’t explicitly include guiding principles; top stage implies alignment and integration.
    • Your framework: balance of acceptance and growth, love as integrator, inner transformation over external accumulation.
    • Relation: Provides an overarching lens for navigating all levels, adding intentionality and integration that Maslow leaves implicit.

    Summary in Words:

    • Maslow provides a hierarchy of needs — a roadmap of what must be met for flourishing.
    • Your layered framework is a practical, holistic guide — a roadmap of how to cultivate flourishing across body, mind, relationships, meaning, and integration.
    • Maslow is mostly descriptive; your framework is operational and actionable, embedding skills, practices, and transformative work at each level.
    • Your framework also flattens the pyramid somewhat: biological, psychological, relational, and existential layers are interdependent, not strictly sequential.

  • embracing negative experiences and suffering, and prioritizing what’s important

    That’s a quote from Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It captures one of the central ideas of the book, which is rooted in a kind of practical, counterintuitive philosophy:

    “The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

    In essence, Manson is saying:

    Chasing happiness can make you more unhappy, because it reinforces the idea that you’re lacking something. Accepting pain, discomfort, or negativity can be freeing, because it removes the internal resistance and self-judgment that compound suffering. It echoes ideas from Stoicism, Zen Buddhism, and Existentialism—accepting life as it is, rather than constantly trying to escape or control every part of it.

    —————–

    Here’s a concise summary of *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck* by Mark Manson:

    —

    ### 🌱 **Core Idea:**

    Life is limited, and so is your capacity to care. So, **choose wisely what you give a f\*ck about.**

    —

    ### 🧠 **Key Concepts:**

    1. **The Feedback Loop from Hell:**

       – Trying to feel good all the time makes you feel worse. Wanting a positive experience is itself a negative experience. Accepting negative experiences creates peace.

    2. **Happiness Is a Problem:**

       – Pain and struggle are inherent. Growth comes from solving problems, not avoiding them.

    3. **You Are Not Special:**

       – Reject entitlement and narcissism. You’re not owed happiness or success—you earn meaning through responsibility and values.

    4. **The Value of Suffering:**

       – Everyone suffers, but the *quality* of your life depends on what you’re willing to suffer *for*. Good values produce meaningful suffering; bad values produce avoidable pain.

    5. **You’re Always Choosing:**

       – You may not control what happens, but you’re responsible for how you respond. That’s the power of choice.

    6. **You’re Wrong About Everything:**

       – Certainty is the enemy of growth. Embrace doubt, question yourself, and keep evolving.

    7. **Failure Is the Way Forward:**

       – Action → inspiration → motivation (not the other way around). Do something, even if it’s small. Success is built on many small failures.

    8. **The Importance of Saying No:**

       – Boundaries define who you are. Saying “no” gives your “yes” meaning. You can’t care about everything.

    9. **And Then You Die:**

       – Facing your mortality is the ultimate clarity. It strips away trivial concerns and helps you focus on what matters most.

    —

    ### 💡 Bottom Line:

    Don’t try to be positive all the time. Instead, **care deeply about fewer, better things.** Live with intention, embrace responsibility, and accept that life is messy—but still meaningful.

    —

    ### 🌌 **1. The Power of Acceptance:**

    The paradox Manson presents—that chasing positivity breeds discontent, while embracing negativity can bring peace—echoes ancient wisdom. It’s what the **Stoics** meant by “amor fati” (love of fate) and what **Buddhism** teaches through non-attachment. It’s not about passive resignation, but radical presence: *to meet life as it is without flinching*.

    When we stop resisting discomfort, we reclaim the energy spent on avoidance and denial. That energy becomes available for deeper living.

    —

    ### 🧭 **2. Values and Meaning:**

    Choosing what to suffer for isn’t just good advice—it’s the foundation of a meaningful life. Everyone experiences pain, but pain that serves a purpose becomes fuel, not a wound. Think of **Viktor Frankl’s** insight: “He who has a *why* to live can bear almost any *how*.”

    Manson reframes this for a modern audience numbed by comfort and distracted by choice. Instead of avoiding suffering, ask: *What is worth suffering for?*

    —

    ### 🪞 **3. The Death of the Ego:**

    The idea that “you’re not special” sounds harsh, but it’s liberating. If we let go of the ego’s demands for validation and exceptionalism, we’re free to live more authentically. You don’t have to prove anything. You just have to *be*—and become better, one honest decision at a time.

    This isn’t self-loathing—it’s ego transcendence. The self gets quieter so that truth can speak louder.

    —

    ### 🧱 **4. The Growth Blueprint:**

    Action creates momentum. Not the other way around. Waiting for motivation is like waiting for the tide to carry you to shore when you have oars in your hand.

    Manson’s insight that you can *act your way into motivation* rather than think your way into action is deeply empowering. It turns life from a passive movie into a creative project—one failure, one effort, one “not giving a f\*ck” at a time.

    —

    ### 💀 **5. Memento Mori:**

    Death isn’t the end—it’s the compass. When we live with the reality of death before us, we prioritize better. We stop sweating the superficial and start investing in what outlasts us: love, legacy, service, and depth.

    So the final insight? **Don’t numb. Don’t overthink. Don’t flinch.** Accept your limits. Choose your suffering. Let death clarify your values. And care deeply—but about the right things.

  • a day in the life of sue, a libertarian

    A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SUE, A REPUBLICAN
    Sue gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.
    With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
    All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Sue gets it too.
    She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
    In the morning shower, Sue reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained.
    Sue dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
    She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
    Sue begins her work day. She has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Sue’s employer pays these standards because Sue’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.
    If Sue is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune.
    Its noontime and Sue needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Sue’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Sue’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
    Sue has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Sue and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime.
    Sue is home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
    She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn’t have to.
    Sue gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Sue enjoys throughout her day. Sue agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”