The Matter of Love
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permanently conflicted,” Chris said. “Into this state our nature has evolved and will so remain forevermore. Permanently destined to be torn, we struggle between acting in our own interests, our sin, and acting on our virtuous community interests, our virtues.”
“Yet friendly communities survive the struggle better than communities of the selfish.”
“That’s being shown,” Chris said. “But without any caring signature...it’s all crap.”
“Is it?”
“Absolutely!”
“Has it always been?” Jamal asked. “For you Christopher Shuman?”
“When I was a kid it was easy.” Chris stared. “Jesus loves me this I know. On other days I hear story of the wicked witch. Pick your tale. At this stage of my life there’s no more heaven than happily ever after.”
“What’s heaven?”
Chris remained silent.
“Could it be an alternate concept? Love only?”
“Take historical Jesus and science.” Chris shook his head. “Take Christmas. C’mon, gift exchange fits any model of human survival instinct. And the late December winter solstice was a universal celebration at high latitudes. Isaac Newton was born Dec 25, not our historical Savior.”
“What about Jesus’ main message?”
Chris felt a once meaningful flicker, but that faded. “The Kinship theory can haunt any adult hope. Within families we measure significant altruistic behavior. Love appears there on the edge, but social instinct explanations can be made. Unless one questions the deeper origins of love.”
“God?”
“Or some version thereof.”
“Where is deeper love then?”
Chris pressed his lips together. Feeling the hanging weight in his pocket, he half smiled. Soon he would know. He could play or play along now. You found appeal—beauty—in your own species. Everyone deeply desires that someone feels for them. Yes. That a higher love exists is certainly an inner desire across humanity, past the social instincts. Even past the strongest human love. What rings in children’s laughter? More than our instinctive fear of being alone, our innate loneliness for social contact. The inexplicable perception of beauty in the sky, in the face of youth often came out in song. In any evolutionary tribal past you could feel the beat of the drum on the African plains.
“Music connects with the internal yearning of all people.”
“Where then?”
“Love is…in the raindrops, on the rooftops,” Chris to Jamal. “Another song says deep within or in the stars above.”
“Could it be both?” Jamal challenged. “Winston argues here for an up in the stars community selection.”
“What, in outer space?” He half laughed. Was he about to be tricked by psycho-analytics? He no longer cared; he would go with any tune, and bite any apple. Scant minutes remained here. “Tell me what he says.”
“He makes a case for the moral outlook of interplanetary ET.”
“We’ve no proof of extraterrestrial life.”
“Nor, he states, did we once have proof of planets beyond our solar system,” Jamal said. “Now, the exoplanet count grows by leaps and bounds.”
His mind wandered; his wife and children had often challenged his know-it-all attitude. The curse of intelligence.
“Space once was made up only of stars and galaxies, all visible to the human eye,” Jamal took the lecture podium. “Now space has dark matter everywhere, more dark matter than light matter. And dark energy. Winston principally argues we have yet to definitely detect the fabric of love, though we have the theory based on our own social structure.”
Chris felt a flicker rise. “A living community beyond human?”
“Winston argues ET would possess high level social intelligence.”
“That’s not an academic paper?”
“No, but by a well published academic scientist. The rational goes that an extrapolation of our terrestrial nature into a star wars mindset would not pass the evolutionary test. With a warlike outlook and advanced technology, a species would self-destruct before venturing far past its own solar system. An alien race out to colonize interstellar planets would be unlikely to succeed. Development of universal care, affection and benevolence would come about Winston postulates and he finds no more appropriate known analogy than human love.”
“Ahhh.” Who was he to claim discovery finished? He had challenged many a student. The princess explained?
“He argues humanity will develop in one of two ways—towards universal love or extinction,” Jamal said. “Based on that multi level group theory, affiliations of altruistic planets would beat out empires of warring colonizing planets. As historical facts have a record of being detected over time, so he poses the idea that the true energy, and matter of love have yet to be found. A theory for any scientist.”
“Any proposal on the fabric composition?” Chris placed both hands on the armrests.
“Emotional...possibly a super conscience.”
Chris felt his inner flicker spark, and unbelievably into low-flame re-ignition. A sense of relief washed over him, growing in profundity—there still could be a god. If he could not love his own children, a proposed extraterrestrial complex could. “The brain has never been definitively connected with emotion,” he spoke almost to himself. “Science finds implied association only.” His mind ran wild as in years before. The laws of physics could simply be a stage setting where emotive guidance came out independent of physics. All the world’s a stage, and we the players on it. The learning of love, onstage, as the play. People make their exits and entrances yet play many rolls in building that higher love. The unfeeling laws of physics would originate from some other source.
“Winston claims the theory of dark matter in the universe to be synonymous,” Jamal said. “The supplementing theory of unlit energy explains potential. His speculations better explain altruistic evidence he claims.”
“Ahhh,” Chris spoke as the counsellor had. For how long was humanity ignorant of the link between energy and physical matter...so elegantly revealed by Einstein’s relativity equation. The fabric, the matter of love, why not? Simply put, God or god constitutes love. Not a new idea, simply a modern viable explanation. And that universal higher love could be helping little cousin planet Earth grow in love.
“We suspect love energy through altruistic acts,” Chris read slowly. “People of faith find deep satisfaction in their cultural religious teachings.”
The purely evil witch fell in status to a background footnote. People had yet to conclude their inherent quest on the matter of love. What of night time mind wanderings? An angelic network could be linked through a network of dreams—religious teachings are rift with dream connections—all those angel versus devil confrontations in the Abrahamic faith. Intuition too required a deeper conscious source, and, he’d always wondered about the purer mind states of children. What the universal brothers developed out there could be shared with people in ways they have yet to understand.
Could not struggling civilizations, with competition and hate combined with cooperation and compassion and intermittent acts of true love have grown on many planets scattered among sextillion stars? And grown into a universal web of higher love? The idea so amazed him, he could picture a prophet starting a new religion...they almost needed one to translate the climate crisis into brotherly cooperation. Worship paid to their life support system, to Mother Earth would go a long way. Subsequent to the Big Bang the new scripture would teach of an organic Presence taking on form of love science. Look not for terms of endearment in the cold creation of physics, but find affection developed independently into a compassionate Being. Join in caring for self, for planet and gain interest in the social wellbeing of your own species.
He stood excitedly.
“Thank you so much counsellor.”
“Until next session Professor.”
As he walked out, Chris felt the bulge in his pocket bang against his side. That apple—he had almost forgotten. Waiting for
the elevator, he pulled out the witch’s trick, and hesitating but for a second dropped it into the waste bin. With a new theory and research to do, he would lecture on the path to that time when a grown up humanity could reach out into the universe in a mature way—not in war, but with a wisely outstretched hand.
End
Discover other Writings by Les W Kuzyk
If you like the ideas in The Matter of Love, check out Our Near Future for links to short stories of climate justice or lack thereof or other written fiction on social justice.
My soon to be published novel The Shela Directive follows youth in a speculative science fiction novel. The new adult characters in 2029 struggle with the social justice issue of the wealthy, of who owns the wealth and what wealth should really be used for. They had their needs met by the first woman president, but with her passing each felt their social world degraded in this near future urban setting.
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Les W Kuzyk
About Les W Kuzyk
Testing the waters of writing through a graduate university Anthropology and Religious Studies study, Les composed a thesis themed on a morals-based world order. Having thus learned of his passion for words and after publishing several non-fiction writings, he now focuses