some of my thoughts and notes

Eros and Agape

We all know Eros. It's the same drive that makes you join a project, follow a common idea in a conversation, merge in one experience.

In it's essence we experience this drive in our sexual drive when we join in one shared and lived experience, and it does actually have the power to create new life, a new integration and a new differentiation, on all levels of existence.

This newly emerged holon would have its own drive for self-preservation and adaptation, and for transcendence and dissolution.

In this inner transcendence, we experience Eros within ourselves. It corresponds to a new way of structuring and organizing consciousness, of adapting it further to reflect the actual reality common to all beings.

The opposite drive, looking down or back in evolution, recognizing with compassion all stages as adequate and valuable, is what I think is meant with Agape.

Freud saw the negative aspects of the holarchy as the opposite of Eros, which is actually not quite correct. Yes, Thanatos also looks down, but it can also get so infatuated with the past and the more fundamental stages that it wants to regress into them. This we must avoid at all cost. If we fall back into archaic-mythical, magical modes of consciousness, that would likely bring us back to the suffering of the past.

Eros on the other hand, pointing up in time, can become detached from the lower stages and become Phobos, which disregards the lower levels and seeks presence only in the highest stages. The key, it seems to me, is to try to expand consciousness in both directions.