Araz Gholami

One of the toxic byproducts of modern knowledge is confusing understanding with mastery. In other words, we think that if we understand something, we can control or master it. While this assumption isn’t entirely wrong, as I mentioned, it creates the false illusion that knowing something is the same as having mastery over it.

For example, consider depression as a disorder in brain function. Regardless of the countless theories about depression, even if you’ve read all of them and they’re all accurate, in practice, depression doesn’t allow you to intervene in the disorder or heal yourself. Because, inherently, you are depressed, and depression is more or less synonymous with incapacity.

Another example is love. The most materialistic definition of love ties it and its behaviors to the best possible genetic compatibility, suggesting that you fall in love with someone to produce the best possible next generation together.

Simply understanding the nature of love doesn’t allow you (or makes it extremely difficult) to control it and tell yourself that “this person” has influenced your thoughts merely for optimal genetic compatibility, and that now, because I understand what love is, I can move on.

Beyond that, there are questions this theory doesn’t answer convincingly, like being content with a beloved’s happiness with someone else, or suicide due to unattainable love. This makes love seem less like a natural mechanism for optimal evolution and more like a “disorder” in that process. We have hundreds of mental illnesses that conflict with evolution (assuming evolution means better and more adaptive), so why shouldn’t love be one of them?

With this perspective, should we treat love? Ignore it? Or embrace it fully and let go of the “world”?