Justin DuJardin |O_o| |x_X| |-_-| |o_O|

Valentinius J Daysworthy, Kidnapper of realistic expectations, Devourer of self-esteems par excellence, at your service.

I think Love is a wonderful thing that should be celebrated, and to that end I’d like to wish all the lovers out there a great day with their significant others.

Confusing Love and Happiness

I take issue today with the institution of Valentines Day, which masquerades as a supporter of love, happiness, and all things good about personal relationships, concealing an insidious second purpose just beneath the surface.  VDay, with the help of our Advertising and Media, manages to juxtapose happiness and love for the purposes of making the argument that a persons happiness and fulfillment have a dependent relationship to love or, errm, relationships.

The Hidden Associations in VDay

To understand why I seem to loathe the existence of such a day we need only consider the long-held associations with it that reside silently in my mind.  To follow the somewhat chaotic jumping of logic below you must understand that the brain forms associations between all sorts of things and when you think about VDay it will look at memories from past relationships, heartbreaks, triumphs, failures, and anything remotely associated with your current feelings on VDay.

If you’ve ever been in a relationship during VDay your mind has not forgotten and will bring up the memories linked to relationships when you think about it, because it has formed an association between the two.  You can see then that if you’re in a relationship this year, likely thinking about VDay summons feelings of warmth and compassion, love, etc.  On the other hand if you’re single this year without a valentine, thinking about VDay may summon back unhappy memories from your collective pool of associated memories, perhaps a past VDay or relationship gone wrong.

The point here is that you, as a person, have an abundance of positive and negative associations already made up in your head for VDay, whether you know it or not.   Once you realize that, my argument that VDay sucks comes into focus.  Because within us all is the capacity to feel good or bad about VDay, the mere act of celebrating it suggests a good/bad relationship; you either have a valentine or you do not.

If noone is your Valentine on VDay, you are unloved

Once you’ve accepted my argument that associated past experience and memories are triggered when exposed to VDay’ish things, you need only look to the real world for examples of how knowledge of this can be exploited for financial gain.  Advertisers carefully craft their media to express to people very specific messages that support the argument that you NEED to participate or you don’t love your partner, or that you NEED to find a partner to participate with or you are not loved.

Defeating VDay’s Negative Associations

How can I defeat a day?   Well, I certainly can’t defeat February 14th as a calender day, I’ve tried that, it just comes back next year.    What I can do is choose to form new associations in mind with VDay.  In doing this, I can choose to respect the essence of VDay, which is the uplifting of love, without falling victim to it’s insidious consequences when viewed through a commercial lens.  What I mean by that is I have chosen today to be thankful for the love I have of knowledge.   The pursuit of more efficient ways to get things done, a deeper understanding of reality, a more complete understanding of my self; all these things I love to seek out, and this has been constant throughout my life.

So today I choose to show my love for knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, by associating this exercise in deconstructing my feelings on VDay with the day itself.

Singularly Triumphant

But why choose to associate writing this blog post with VDay?   Certainly it could be just by chance, but it has a particularly interesting feature in that associating this exercise with this day defines a sort of self-referencing association in that in this exercise I considered how I feel about this day, and in writing this blog I’ve put into words how I feel about this day.

Then again, perhaps “Gödel, Escher, Bach” actually is eating my brains.