Dynamically Asymmetrical Dimensions of Human Love: Super-Holonic Human Development; An Introduction to the Love Value Orientation Model
Authors: Jentner Norman 
Published: August 2024

An unexpected, symbolic, vivid, and personally captivating experience led me to write this book. This involved my capturing many open-ended hierarchies of information associated with that intuitive experience. I was at first drawn to notions of “conditional” and “unconditional” human love. As I dug deeper into describing my experience, these notions transformed into the more specific terms of “conditional-only human interests” and “both-and human love.” Building upon published data and intuitive logic, I recognized that “conditional human interests” can and do often unfold without the presence of any altruism by social subjects toward their social objects. In contrast, the presence of human altruism cannot and does not occur without the simultaneous presence of “conditional human interests.” A ubiquitously-asymmetrical, holarchically-systematized, human-interaction dynamic has, since antiquity, dynamically characterized and circulated around this asymmetrical yet holarchical and hierarchical exchange among people. This is herein postulated and asserted to be operating cross-culturally. Data, utilizing an Integral, cross-disciplinary, socio-evolutionary perspective, helps organize this report. I assert that conditional human interests are universally recognized and/or offered among all people, in each and every social interaction or circumstance. In contrast, what is socio-evolutionary defined “love” will not always be recognized and/or offered within every interaction or circumstance. Accurate identification of “love” from a socio-evolutionary perspective requires a “both-and” quality between parties, meaning that personal interests AND altruism must both concomitantly occur to qualify as a “love” interaction. Love, described as “both-and” in nature, using Love Value Orientation (LVO) theory terminology, creates a uniquely different kind of inter-holonic interaction field in comparison to “conditional-only” human interest interaction fields. “Both-and” interaction fields afford parties an ultimately greater variety of satisfying and sustaining options. These will tend to be more aesthetically beautiful, inspiring, and ultimately more inclusively empowering options. These “both-and” options can also be more fine tuned than simply conditional options. Personal interests with altruism, when both evident within a given individual or population, will arguably occur in various kinds of balance. Strategic expressions of conditional interests and unconditional altruism, in various forms of balance, are argued to be cardinal ingredients of a simultaneously destructive, constructive, and creatively evolving human process of individual and collective development. Within this context, I ask:➢ To what extent are conditions for human dignity being included, locally, regionally, and world-wide in what we humans are individually and collectively creating? Humans are unique. Among all biotically embedded holons known to humankind, people possess, by far, the most complex capacities for interior and external perspective-taking and information-processing. Given the ubiquitous presence of people in relation to each and every human affair, the uniquely cardinal role of human consciousness — individual and collective — can be noted in regard to virtually all human interests. The heuristic nature of intuitive human-to-human love consciousness is explored as a common, relatively stable predisposition across social circumstances, yet what can be a fluid and situation-specific dimension of interaction associated with altruism. To what extent might this intuitive “both-and” human-to-human love consciousness represent an increasingly conscious -- and increasingly cross-cultural -- aspect of the human pursuit and organization of successful human affairs locally and globally, short-term and long-term? Integral clarifications will be particularly advantageous here.