EMPTY NOUNS

Morality is a useless noun with no immediate referent. So is love. This to say that these terms not only point to nothing, they are unnecessary interpositions between our consciousness and real life experiences. Morality is simply one group of people saying to another group, "Let's you folks do things our way." We would be clearer in our aims and likely to meet with less resistance if we merely point out the incorrectness of a postion or the impracticality of a proposal, instead of praising or denouncing an impulse or act because it does not conform to ways we want others to behave. In reality, we need no better guide to behavior than sheer practicality. The easiest way to deal with other people, collectively or singly, is to be completely honest. Any deviation from simple honesty inevitably creates confusion and error, which then have to be addressed in their own right. As old Ben Franklin said years ago, "Honesty is the best policy." Truth, honesty, and human decency are all the guides we need. Interposing a noun such as morality between these values and our actions not only confuses, it asserts a superior attitude that may very well arouse antagonism.

Love, too, is a meaningless noun interposed between our response to another person or thing that adds nothing to the experience or our understanding of it. Only two species are capable of the experiences to which we normally attach the word love: humans and dogs. In humans, what passes for love takes a masculine and a feminine form. For males, love refers to the desire for sexual control, nothing more. For females, love is behavioral control, nothing more. We experience both forms of control directly, and the interposition of the noun love only adds a verbal layer without enhancing the experience or our understanding of what is taking place within us.

Among dogs, what we call love is simply dependence. We need no other noun to indicate this.

Both morality and love are products of our noun-making ability. We can and do invent nouns all the time that have no referent in the real world. Advertisers do it with abandon. Ever try to figure out what "Gusto" refers to. I submit that we would be better off to drop most of these useless nouns and focus attention directly on the impulse or experience at hand. Too much generalization just fogs up the mind.