Opinion/Editorial
TOUGH LOVE
Tough love. Does it really exist? It’s a tough phrase, and maybe it’s a coherent concept. It sounds good. You can be tough, and you can love someone you are being tough with…which sounds a whole lot like the definition a whole lot of people use to justify treating other people badly. It’s like the word redact. Where did that idea come from? Redacting is where they give you a document because they are forced to, except they then black out all the data they were supposed to give you, but are allowed to keep out because…well, just because. You got the letter, the document, or whatever, so shut up. “We did what we said we’d do.” It’s like the floor mats I got them to throw in on the Chevy I bought used years ago. I fought hard for those floor mats. When I went in to pick up the Chevy it had floor mats, as promised. They were Ford floor mats, with that brand’s name stamped in red on their black rubber surfaces. I was angry. The manager was called. He looked at the whole deal and then showed me where the words ‘floor mats’ had been written in before I signed. He pointed out that the kind of floor mats written into the deal hadn’t been stipulated. Ergo, I got the door, or the gate, or whatever. Human cultures are filled with those stories of small measures of injustice mixed in with the rest of human behavior. We are a culture, and a species, of deception. Tough love. In most cases, in those states where they have no fault divorces you could just write those two words in if there was a place that bothered to ask for a reason for the divorce. Tough love, would be the words, and the discussion after that might be about which word won out.
Today, the polarization of American politics is all about the phrase ‘tough love,’ without anyone really mentioning it. “For your own good,” might be words that would be spoken if the things motivating this substantial and deep chasm that exists across America were openly discussed. Some people believe that providing goods and services of almost any sort for free, or without draconian charge backs, is a form of enabling and only creates an entire class of people that become dependent upon those who have supposedly worked really hard for everything they have, not to mention might have had some good fortune. Inheriting in our nation, for example, is not considered outside of that ‘hard work’ definition. Sixty percent of American wealth is inherited. The inherent unfairness of such a system, running directly against the concept of pay for merit and justifiable wages for hard work, is totally overlooked and never discussed. There is no real work ‘ethic’ governing opinion or worth. There is only having, and not having.
Time after time it has been written in articles appearing in this newspaper that humans are all fighting for survival, and that fight for survival is every bit as hard, mean, contentious and competitive as it has ever been since the dawn of man. The competition is over propagation, and the genetic transfer and continuance required to stay alive and to reproduce. Recently, a very funny article appeared in the New York Times about something new called ‘sapiosexuality.’ That would be the seeking of a sex partner by selecting toward intellect. It might be defined as a physical attraction to intellect. Nothing could be farther from the truth in the real world of genetic transfer, however. That includes dating, engagement, marriage and having children. The whole process has to do with love. Love, in this case, would not be defined as ‘tough’ although nothing is tougher. Love would be defined as selection to maximize either the ability to have as many spawn (children) as possible, or to select toward supporting the survival of a few spawn at a higher qualitative rate. The first group of spawn-seekers are called men. And the second are women. Any (and the studies are definitive) any romance, attractiveness, or coming together of men and women or boys and girls, is about the production of spawn. Everything else tossed out here about love and desire is a deliberate lie. Each sex lies about its intent because mankind learned millions of years ago that deception is by far the most effective practice in order to maximize fitness. And fitness to have, and then provide for children, is what humans are all about. They just say they are about all kinds of other things, so what the real motivators are remain blocked to others, or so everyone hopes.
American, and all politics, are about these sociobiological survival strategies, but none of those are mentioned, ever. Clinton, Obama and Trump are all social leaders, and very successful leaders, at that. They wanted to maximize the survival of their spawn first and foremost, and all did a fantastic job. In fact, their conduct was, and remains, only about that. And yet, the masses of humans surrounding them and watching them on television, have no clue. All political leaders are in their positions for their own reward, and that of the ‘tribe’ of humans around them who can also maximize the survival of their own spawn. The ‘leading for the good of the many,’ as portrayed as the motivator of any leader of humanity, is merely a very effective deception.
There is nothing wrong with selfishness, unless you believe unselfish behavior should somehow be the standard everyone is measured by. But we are not. The real standard is money, and when it’s not money, it’s fame, which is merely another name for money. Tough love. It does exist, if you believe in sociobiology, and it is tough indeed.
