On Love and Selfishness

In Bokononism, they have a term: a sin-wat. A sin-wat is a person who is greedy and wants all of a person's love, which is, according to the ideals of Bokononism, meant for everyone and meant to be shared. Unless, of course, you exist in a duprass, in which case, you have much bigger problems than wanting all of someone's love.

But this term brings me to today's thought. Is love selfish? Does love have a right to be selfish? Do you have to be truly selfish to really love someone else? And is it wrong to want all of someone's love to yourself?

I used to promote myself as a Bokononist. It's a religion (stemming from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle) surrounding the ideals of pleasure, free love, and living by the innocent lies which allow you to be happy. One of the major ideals of this hedonistic view is very similar to the slogan of Huxley's Brave New World: that "Everyone belongs to everyone else."

I guess, recently, I've deviated from this ideal, because I've started to want very much to become the sin-wat that Mona Aamons Manzano would hate. A friend of mine said that to love anyone, you had to be selfish to truly want to make them happy: that to be in love, you had to put your interests, and thus the interests of your greatest interest (them), above anything or anyone else.

Aside from that, they say you have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone. Isn't narcissism inherently selfish?

So does love really require selfishness and greed? Or is love meant to be shared and spread? Should we or should we not be sin-wats? Is it fair to categorically decide that?

I'm still not sure.

With love,
Rachel Leigh