H03 Love Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Since no one is above the law, we all must submit to every authority.

OR

The ultimate authority stems from being able to function well enough to respect each other.

Anankelogy

The more your needs fully resolve, the less of any role authority plays in your life. When social love incentivizes you to respect the needs of others in ways inspiring them to respect yours, you fulfill the purpose of authority.

You model a greater authority. The more your internal motivation of love enables you to fully function, the less you require any external motivating pressure of authority.

Rational-legal authority typically assumes an extrinsic motivation. You’re expected to respect the requirements of law out of fear of punishment if you don’t.

Once drawn to a situation, authorities typically doubt your respect for needs that laws exist to serve. If they must get involved and you’re assumed to violate some rule, then you must deserve some kind of harsh treatment to motivate your conformity to law and order.

Consequently, law enforcement typically overlooks intrinsic motivations. Such authorities generally presume that you only respect the needs of others if facing a reprimand. Such a presumption gets baked into law enforcement culture. Which easily blinds them from your intrinsic love-incentivizing motive to treat the needs of others as your own.

Need-response

Need-response seeks and encourages need-responders with a love-inspired intrinsic motivation to more fully resolve needs. Especially among lawyers and counselors disillusioned by the shortcomings of law-based and psychological-based services and institutions.

If you’re motivated more from a platonic love to honor the needs of others as your own, you’re naturally less concerned about minutia of laws or arbitrary demands of authorities. You see beyond mere cognitive processes or social order.

You habitually fulfill the purpose of laws—which is to serve needs—by how you routinely and properly respect the needs at hand. The purpose of authorities then gets intrinsically fulfilled.

With intrinsic motivation of your love, you likely rise above the minimal standards of law. You stretch beyond the law’s emphasis on harm reduction to resolve unmet needs that cause harm. You intuitively realize how resolving needs more fully removes cause for harm.

The more incentivized by love, the more compelled to transcend those social norms that limit full human potential. If necessary, you risk transgressing some social taboos to properly resolve needs. You may even be willing to risk jail to stand up for a cause of systemically overlooked needs. Love compels you to a higher standard than mere law and order.

Reactive Problem

Shortsighted authorities abound. Confirmation bias and tunnel vision easily blinds them to their own projected ethical issues, projected moral failings, projected cognitive biases, projected cognitive distortions, project logical fallacies, and their own projected extrinsic motivations.

Nature compels balance wherever imbalance creeps in. The more a society slides toward imposing social norms, the more nature compels some within that society to counter such repressive norms. They find some proactive way to respond more effectively to the needs those norms exist to serve. Wellness compels it.

Shortsighted authorities may easily misinterpret these norm-defiers as lawbreakers, and totally miss their higher commitment to transcend imposing norms to directly serve our needs. Instead of appreciating the deeper love motivating this fulfillment of law’s purpose to serve needs, such authorities may seek to punish such need-serving nonconformists, to coerce them into line as they expect others would force them into fearful conformity.

Their rush to squash need-serving nonconformists blatantly squanders the human capital to develop more of our full human potential. The lawfare against Julian Assange despite the lack of evidence that he ever induced Chelsea Manning to leak provides a clear example, after he helped alert us to U.S. war atrocities in the Iraq. Fully resolving needs often goes against the grain of law.

Responsive Solution

Anankelogy recognizes many need-serving nonconformists as “transspirits”. I am one. A transspirit intuitively transcends divisive social norms to connect at a deeper level, to resolve needs. Even if resisted by the authorities.

History provides many examples. Dr. King. Ghandi. Saint Paul. Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama, Lao Tzu, Hillel the Elder, and many more. Each transcended established norms to connect deeper with life, to address needs more fully and directly. Even if risking retribution from the authorities.

As Jesus put it in Matthew 5:27: “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” To properly resolve the inflexible needs which laws exist to serve presents as a greater authority than merely complying with arbitrary social norms. To resolve needs incentivized by love works far more effectively than placating authorities out of fear of possible punishment.

Such transspirituality prioritizes

love to resolve needs that supports improving wellness

over

law to relieve pain that risks perpetuating unwellness.

Need-response asserts the higher effective authority of such transspirits, of those mastering love over laws. It assesses authorities’ responsiveness to our needs. It accredits authorities with “earned legitimacy” when their impact results in improve wellness outcomes among their constituents.

Need-response empirically rates any involved authorities at the lowest level of earned legitimacy, which is offensive illegitimacy. If processed in a need-response action, this could warrant a more severe response enforcement.

Any self-righteous reaction, no matter how violent or nonviolent, can be deemed as validation of need-responders dedicated bravery to resolve needs over power-hungry self-serving authorities lacking legitimacy to impact the public.

By sharp contrast, the transspirit seeks to properly resolve needs with love. Properly means they make sure resolving one set of needs does not negatively impact other needs. Love means they honor the needs of others as if they were their own needs—recognizing we are all connected, so the needs of others ultimately are their own needs.

In short, there is no greater human authority than properly resolving needs with love.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• The more I try to respect others, the more some offensively disrespect me.

• While some authorities may indeed by shortsighted, I hate to be in a world without authorities.

• How can I tell the difference between a need-serving nonconformists and a selfish lawbreaker?

• I’d like to see how this works for others and the reactions they get before I stick my neck out.

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.