Daniel Silveyra dot com

In which I create a framework to count the ways in which I love thee

Here’s a way of describing the different ways in which we might like someone:

1. Because they are a living being and/or a human. This is a floor value, common to the person we like the most and the person we like the least in the world. Call this dignity value.

2. Because of the experiences and/or services they provide which others can also provide. They might be a mailperson which always delivers on time. Or they might be a friend who gives us rides to the airport, or can be our emergency contact. I call this practical value. You can also call it transactional value, but I prefer not to because people usually think of that word as demeaning.

3. Because of the experiences and/or services they provide which only they can provide. AKA because they are who they are and we just get a kick out of that. It’s not just that they listen to us (many other friends can listen to us) but the way in which only they do it that we like. I call this aesthetic value. 

Dignity value is table stakes

Depending on your values and worldview, you might have different ideas about whether every single human being has a minimum value. Most religions say something about people’s intrinsic value, but often they weasel out of making this universal – e.g. “only the people that belong to the religion have dignity” etc. 

Then came along the concept of humanism and human rights to say: no, everyone is entitled to being treated a certain way. Accepting this means the rest of us need to invest whatever resources and effort are required into making sure that every single person is treated this way.

Most people I bump into (myself included) are for the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is a great start! 

Sometimes people have a hard time with dignity value. For example, where I live people are for human rights but we sure don’t invest enough in housing for homeless folks or good services for Indigenous folks.  Other examples of struggling with dignity: people often get angry at criminal defense attorneys, or are sort of OK when someone else is cruel to an awful person. 

Aesthetic value means we are not interchangeable

Human beings are individuals. Most cultures and belief systems accept that we are each unique in the way we experience and engage with the world, and that there’s something precious about that. To love someone deeply, according to many people’s view, is to know them deeply, to see the little nooks and crannies of their personality, their wabi-sabi soul. Aesthetic value is the way we all want to be loved, at least by those most important to us (some of us narcissists want EVERYONE to love us this way).

We want to be seen deeply, to be appreciated for who we are outside of any practical benefit we bring and for what we feel makes us special. That’s why we feel appreciated when someone loves us because of inconvenient things like being forgetful or being late or talking too much (I am all three) rather than in spite of them; it’s sort of hard proof that someone sees us as a whole work of art, that even the “ugly” parts are necessary for who we are as a whole. 

It doesn’t cut it to be loved just because we’re alive and human beings, either. That’s a thing they say about the blissed-out hippie folk at Burning Man – “everybody loves you but no one gives a shit about you”. We want to be appreciated for the elements of our person that we most identify with, that feel the most “us”. 

(If you want to go into a rabbit hole, take this idea and then the Buddhist idea that there is “no fixed self” (or even “no self”) and see where that leads you. Later!)

Practical value is not that bad

Human beings are eusocial animals; we can’t survive on our own, and we definitely need others to thrive. We need a lot from each other.

In the big bad world of capitalism and commerce, evaluating the experiences and services others provide us is cut and dried (AKA transactional): I need the power company to provide my office with electricity so we can do our work. If they don’t provide it in the right way, that’s bad. If they’re reliable, if their repair person comes quickly when something breaks, if they are honest in their dealings, then that’s good.

In interpersonal relationships it often feels bad for people to think in practical or transactional terms, because it feels like we’re forgetting about people’s individuality. I think it is possible to hold both elements (maybe even a third piece, too!) in our heads at the same time. 

It is OK to appreciate that a friend gives us good media recommendations because we like someone else doing the discovery work for us. It’s even OK to appreciate that service if we can get it from some other friend (like that Huberman Labs podcast which half of my friends have suggested I listen to).

Sometimes relationships don’t work very well even if the aesthetic side of things is fantastic, and that’s often because the practical side of things isn’t. We can be in love with someone because we appreciate their unique soul deeply and be equally deeply annoyed because they won’t do their share of the cleaning. 

Practical and aesthetic value are on a spectrum

Most of what we value in the people in our lives is some mix of practical and aesthetic. I’m lucky to have several friends that can help me unpack difficult emotions, so that, if one friend is unavailable, I don’t have to just deal with it by myself. The kind of support I will get from each of those friends will be a bit different, but they can all broadly help me fill that need. 

Many relationships are very practically oriented and positive: a gym friend who has similar goals, as at a similar level than we are, and has a compatible schedule, for example. We might not have a lot in common outside of that, but that’s OK! I know people who love having board game friends who they don’t need to get to know; they just get right down to the business of destroying them. If all your relationships are this way, though, you have a big problem!

On the other hand, many of our relationships are absolutely impractical but still so valuable to us. The extreme example of this is children – from what I can tell, they are the least practical people to have in your life, at least when they’re young, but everyone absolutely adores them. I’m sure you can think of many examples that are somewhere in between.