From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Subject: Re: What is Love?  _The Story of O_
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 06:12:29 GMT

From article <1992Sep9.155906.27289@mips2.ma30.bull.com>, by fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper):
> 
>  (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR):
>    I thought you were just saying it was selfish.  Your distinction
>  between the feelings and policies of love does not help the matter.
>  IF love is a loss of self-control, a loss of power, how can it be
>  selfish?    If it were truly selfish, then it would hardly
>  be a situation anyone would want to be in.  
> 
> Burt Voorhees responds:
> In this entire discussion I haven't seen any real consideration of the
> distinction between love and feelings.  I would like to suggest that love,
> as love, is not a feeling at all, but a recognition.   That all the various
> feelings that we associate with love are just our particular individual ego
> responses to a recognition.  I'm using a definition of love that I originally
> got from Oscar Ichazo: "Love is the recognition of the same consciousness
> in another as in oneself."  There are a couple of corollaries to this: 1)
> so long as a person is caught up in their own individual ego processes
> they cannot fully recognize consciousness in another, and cannot fully
> love (think of the lust crazed teenager who looses interest after 
> satisfaction of desire); 2) to develop ones capacity to love it is necessary
> to clarify one's consciousness beyond the ego controlled state we spend
> most of our time in.
> 

Frank Casper:
> 
> On the whole I think Burt has the correct approach. Depicting love
> as selfish robs us of what is quite possibly the only power among us
> that truly lures us toward an affirmation of real mutuality. 
> 
> Love helps us manage and overcome these tendencies. It empowers
> us to be ourselves by reinforcing a sense of self control. It reinforces
> equality, not enslavement. 

  I don't know how many of you are familiar with _The Story of O_
by Pauline Reage, but I think it is important to bring up in this 
context because it represents an attempt to define love in a way
that might seem anti-intuitive.  Because of this, we shall find that
Burt's analysis, provided mine in terms of the problems of the "selfish"
aspect, will prove to have remained more seriously in tact.  I want
to give Mr. Casper an obstical to move around.  The obsticle really
only comes up in his last paragraph about love reinforcing equality
not enslavement.  I want to show that this is not the necessary outcome
of the breakdown of the ego, which would in Burt's view, allow for
a  recognition of consciousness of another.  In Casper's own view
he claims that love is such that it "lures us toward an affirmation of
real mutuality."

  Here is an extremely brief overview of the _Story of O_:

    1.) O, the heroine of the book, is turned over to a training clinic
to train her to be a sexual slave.  O's boyfriend is the one who turns
her over to this clinic.  He claims he is doing this out of love.

    2.) IN the training, O is taught that anyone can have access to 
her body in anyway that they feel.  I will omit the particularly 
gory details to avoid creating a commotion.  Thus, we have the begining
of a bondage story--yes, it has whips, chains, special suits, etc, etc,
to make her more available and more disciplined in her availableness.

    3.) O is put up in an apartment and kept there with specific
methods of dress to keep her available.  She understands that she
can at ANY TIME leave this bondage and regain her normal life if
she so desires.  She is not COMPELLED nor EXPECTED to continue on in
this fashion unless she so desires.  For O, this desire she calls 
love.

    4.) O is then given over to a friend of her original boyfriend
who now has perfect control over her as well.  She is told by her boyfriend
that he still loves her and that if she chooses to accept this other
man and this other man's control over her it will confirm to him that
she loves him.  Thus her self-enslavement to this other man, and to
her boyfriend in the first place, is always one that is done out
of "love."

    5.) The new partner that O has then begins to do even worse things
to her body than before.  Again I will omit details.  She remains
obediant to these actions for two reasons:  1>) for the love of her
initial boyfriend, and, 2.) for a new found love for this new man.

This is an extremely rough sketch of the book, however the parts I am
most interested in are given above.  The question is, in what way 
can we accept love to be one which provides ground for freedom from
enslavement if we find that O in this situation has done nothing but
enslaved herself for the SOLE reason that she is attempting to break
down her ego for the purpose of accepting the consciousness of another
and to achieve real mutuality?  I think we shall find that the definition
of love given by Burt is more capable of explaining this phenomena than
the latter defintion given by Casper.  Some have argued that this
is a mystical book on the grounds that she has achieved a complete
breakdown of the ego and of the sense of "person"(by means of
her body) for the sake of personal transformation under the notion
of Love.  I disagree that this is mystical in so far as I believe
O derives to much pleasure from the activities.  As such, I catagorize
it as a form of asceticism using perverse sexual methods.  In any event,
what we find most striking in this story is the breakdown of the ego
for the sake of love and connection.  So I ask, in what way can this
be something that is regarded as: 1.) Selfish, and, 2.) Freedom from
enslavement?
> 
> fjc

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III  Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
Graduate Student in Religious Studies           onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu
University of Chicago
 
"N'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas trop"
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