In this age of rage and chaos tearing our civilization apart, I often hear people say that love can heal all wounds, bring peace, and create prosperity.

But when I ask how love can solve all our problems, they can’t give me an answer. I find it shocking that for thousands of years, people have made life and death decisions based on love, yet can’t explain what love is or does.

I believe love is important to our survival and the continuation of civilization. And we all need to understand love and know how it can transform our lives.

To correct this ignorance, I will start by explaining why love confuses people.

Then I will define love as a step-by-step process of activities that create powerful social relationships.

And most importantly, I will reveal how love resolves social conflicts, increases productivity, enables a civilization to vanquish all threats, and creates prosperity.

Let’s start by understanding people’s confusion.

Why does the word “love” confuse people?

Like most words, the word “love” has many definitions. To quickly get some definitions of “love”, I asked GROK, the Artificial Intelligence query engine on X (formally known as Twitter) for definitions of love. I listed GROK’s answers below.

• Romantic love: The passionate and intense love shared between two individuals in a romantic relationship.
• Erotic love: The love driven by sexual attraction, desire, and passion.
• Familial love: The deep affection and bond shared between family members, such as parents, siblings, and children.
• Platonic love: The strong, non-romantic love between friends, characterized by mutual respect, support, and understanding.
• Self-love: The love and appreciation one has for oneself, which is essential for personal growth and well-being.
• Universal love: The unconditional love and compassion for all living beings and the world as a whole.
• Jealous love or possessive love: a strong desire to maintain control over the relationship and can manifest as a need to constantly monitor the partner’s actions and interactions with others.
• Tough love: support in which a person is strict and firm with someone else, usually with the intent to help them in the long run.

Each definition of “love” is useful in discussing a specific situation. But note that some of these so-called loves could be harmful, such as erotic love, jealous love, or possessive love. The wide variations in definitions make languages flexible and more useful.

However, so many definitions can cause confusion. When you ask people how love solves social problems, they may try to apply the type of love they are most familiar with, such as erotic love. That certainly won’t help with global problems. Most people will become confused and give up on understanding how love can solve social problems.

To help find the correct definition, we need to know the following rules.

The meaning of a word is determined by its context.

To clarify the meaning of a word, provide physical world properties and activities that are significant to its intended meaning.

If you use these rules to review the list of loves, “universal love” is the best fit for the context of solving world issues. The others are too small in scope and therefore inadequate.

So, is “universal love” the answer?

Will “universal love” solve our social problems?

The thought of applying “universal love” to social difficulties will immediately bring up the following questions.

• Will love and compassion stop criminals from committing crimes?
• How can love and compassion solve complex social problems within large societies?
• How can love and compassion resolve global conflicts between different cultures?

In our age of rage and chaos, a policy of “unconditional love and compassion for all living beings and the world as a whole” is dangerous and impractical. Universal love is too simple to be successful in all situations. There are always people who will take advantage of unconditional love.

Even when people are rational and want to cooperate, old disputes between cultures are often too traumatic and complex to be washed away by unlimited love and compassion.

Understanding love as a solution to world problems turns out to be surprisingly difficult. How can we untangle this Gordian Knot?

Dissecting the complexity of love

The above definitions of love do not provide the tools to solve complex social problems. To help humans be civil to each other and get them to work together to solve their problems requires multiple social processes. This may sound overwhelming, but once I describe it in words, you will recognize it as the natural way people respond to social situations.

Now, a brief description of the social processes that can create global love and solve all problems.

Positive exchanging

The most fundamental social interaction is for person A to give something to person B and then for person B to give something to person A as an exchange. If both people consider the exchange fair and beneficial, it creates constructive changes in their lives and relationships. Positive social exchanges encourage future exchanges. Examples are bartering, trading, the Golden Rule, and exchanging pleasantries.

If either person considers the exchange unfair or harmful, it damages their relationship and harms at least one of them. Harmful exchanges and relationships are antisocial because they discourage future social interactions, destroy relationships, and prevent infinitely more beneficial positive exchanges. Examples of antisocial relationships are predator-prey, master-slave, and parasite-host. Since people resist being harmed, brutality and deception are used to force harm upon victims. Examples of deceptions are misleading concepts about entitlements, equal treatment, and birthrights. Good intentions and complex ideas often trick people. But the fairness of the exchange is physically real, easy to evaluate, and has greater influence over how people feel than theoretical ideas.

Working for money and buying things are types of positive exchanges. Imagine not being able to buy the things you need and not being able to buy the tools and energy to make what you need. Without exchanges, what would you have? This shows the power of positive exchanges.

Positive exchanges enable and support the social processes explained next. If exchanges become unfair or harmful, then all higher social processes will collapse.

Trusting

After enjoying positive social exchanges, people will trust each other. The amount of trust is proportional to the fairness, benefits, and quantity of exchanges. Note that the amount of trust is always changing and is based upon the properties of the current social exchanges.

A high level of trust is required before the following higher social processes can occur.

Agreeing

When people trust each other, they will share information about themselves. They will discuss personal issues, goals, and common beliefs. When they discover similar beliefs, they feel comfortable with each other and start agreeing on goals and activities. They can acknowledge and accept minor differences. This creates close friendships.

A high level of agreement enables the following social processes.

Team-working

If people have developed close friendships, they can then agree to more serious common goals and commit to making personal contributions to a joint effort. When working together on projects, they adjust to each other’s skills and optimize their exchanges to maximize the efficiency and productivity of the group. They are now a team.

Teams amplify the productivity of each member by sharing. For example, imagine five men setting up camp in the snow-covered mountains of Alaska. One man would select the campsite, clear it, and build a simple lean-to shelter to protect the team during the freezing night. Another would search for and collect firewood, start a fire, keep it burning, and do the cooking. One member would hunt for game, berries, and roots to feed the team. Another would fetch water for the team and maybe catch fish. The last member would maintain tools, clothing, and equipment for everyone. By sharing the abilities and production of each member, a team is many times more productive and successful than if they worked as individuals. There are many more ways teams amplify the productivity of each member. Read "Need help? 10+ ways to boost your productivity with powerful team strategies."

After people learn how to work as a team, they can create the following social processes.

Organizing large groups

People who benefit from teams will be confident about their social abilities and will attempt larger projects to achieve greater benefits. These projects will require more people, advanced social and organizational skills, more accurate coordination, greater commitments, and greater risks of personal losses if the project fails. An organization could be so large that it would need multiple layers of sub-teams. In very large organizations, some teams may have to work independently.

A well-run organization will apply many of the same principles used by teams to amplify the efficiency and productivity of each member. As an organization grows, the value of its production can grow exponentially.

Successfully managing large organizations will enable the next higher social process.

Wait just a minute, what is love?

When I started this article, I wanted to show how love could solve all problems, even global social problems. But after describing “organizing” I realized that there is an important difference between love and organizing. Love is an intention, a goal, or a wish. Love exists in your mind or, if it is really strong, in your soul. In contrast; organizing, team-working, and exchanging are physical activities that change physical world conditions. Love and organization affect each other, but they can function independently and you will have much better control over each if you focus on one at a time and not confuse the two.

Love has limitations in that no matter how much you want to help people, they may not improve. There is a well-known saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” To transform good intentions into physical reality, you need powerful physical processes. Organizing is just that, and it is the perfect process for creating social change.

I don’t want to diminish love. Love is an intention that provides the goal for people to focus on and emotions with energy to drive people. And maintaining love through all the trials and tribulations is a Herculean task. But love’s energy must drive the correct activities. Organizing is the only activity that can solve social problems and is powerful enough to move anything on Earth.

So the solution to world problems is more complex than I had thought. We need love and organization working together. With this understanding, I will continue defining organization.

Civilization organizing

People in a geographical region usually merge into a cultural organization with a common language, beliefs, and customs. A successful organization will last for many generations and grow very large. The complexity of managing a large organization will force it to develop a formal social structure with many levels and subordinate organizations, each with specialized skills and responsibilities. It will also need a writing system and a historical record of events, facts, and knowledge to inform members and coordinate activities.

A well-organized civilization is like a very large team. It must apply positive exchanging, trusting, agreeing, and team-working; otherwise, the organization will collapse. Organizing will reward them with a multiplication of the productivity of each member. Since a civilization can have millions or even billions of members, the productivity could be enormous.

An important productivity booster available only to civilizations is the ability to retain and use the contributions of previous generations. Cities, railroads, highways, manufacturing plants, and other physical structures get passed on to multiple generations. In addition, civilizations also accumulate inventions, knowledge, and wisdom. A good example is the Laws of Physics contributed by Sir Issac Newton. This useful and powerful knowledge benefits every human in our civilization and will continue to enrich future generations. And it is essentially free. No one has to pay Sir Issac Newton or take care of him. This productivity amplifier allows civilizations to have unlimited growth in abilities and knowledge. A well-organized civilization could solve all problems.

Another superpower that only civilizations can have is the ability to invest enormous resources in individuals and projects. A well-organized civilization produces more than it needs for its survival. A wise use of the surplus is to help talented individuals enhance their abilities. Or identify and fund construction projects that will provide benefits that far exceed their costs. These investments and resulting prosperity increase people’s gratitude toward each other and the civilization, creating love.

We can learn a lesson from the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for at least 150 million years. But an asteroid wiped them out because they never developed a civilization powerful enough to destroy asteroids. Our human civilization is very close to having such an ability. Humans have traveled to the Moon and dream of populating Mars. We know we can become masters of our solar system. But we haven’t yet recognized that the key to our past and future successes is organization. And if we don’t continue to organize and evolve our civilization, then we are making the same mistake as the dinosaurs. Once you understand the necessity of organizing, to do less is to accept eventual human annihilation.

Overview of social processes

Humans can be unethical, psychotic, emotionally disturbed, selfish, and some are downright dangerous. Even worse, people have faked good intentions for decades and then cheated others. Harmful social interactions are a fact of life. People learn to monitor their exchanges for any unfair or harmful treatment. Positive exchanges must be continuous and substantial, creating a solid foundation for all other social interactions. Since each social process must support the next higher process, this creates a pyramid-like structure. And since every level of a civilization is constantly exchanging, it is like a living organism, similar to the human body.

Objective thinking

People instinctively interact with others according to the pyramid social structure described above. But they normally do this subconsciously. And habits, emotions, and prejudices can easily mislead the subconscious mind; causing them to make poor decisions. Even worse, psychological attacks can target mental weaknesses and force them into antisocial and self-destructive thinking and actions.

The solution is to move your thinking into your conscious mind. Your conscious mind thinks by using words. To mentally represent a social issue with words, use the context or scope of the issue to choose one of the social processes described above. If you are concerned about organizing a camping trip with six of your friends, that is a team activity. If you are a high-level manager in a large corporation, that is an organizing activity. If you are trying to understand a dispute between nations, that is a civilization-organizing activity.

Once you have identified the social process, compare its characteristics and activities to the real-world social situation. Now you can use your conscious thinking and logic to study issues and contemplate corrective actions to improve conditions. You can write down your thinking, logic, questions, and conclusions based on facts about the relationship and the characteristics of the social process. Or mentally verbalize your thoughts about social issues. Apply all the intelligence of your conscious mind, such as multiple types of logic and viewpoints. You can even identify and nullify your habits, emotions, and prejudices. To validate your thinking, compare what is happening in the real world with your predictions. This use of words to describe physical reality and then study that model with logic is called objective thinking.

The pyramid of social processes is a representation or model of physical world processes. Mental models of reality can never exactly describe the real world because reality is infinitely more complex than your models. You will need to make adjustments and add more detail to the social models to fit your situation.

Conclusion

I have discovered that love provides the goals, intentions, and emotions that drive people to help others. But love must use organizing processes to achieve its social and physical goals. Organizing processes interact and support each other, forming a pyramid-structured mechanism that can take any number of unrelated people and organize them into a civilization that can solve all problems.

I have also realized that most people start from ignorance, not love. They start with the lowest social process, such as bartering, which teaches them that fairness can be profitable. And if they are smart enough and rational enough to recognize the ever-increasing benefits of working up through the pyramid of organizing processes, they will also discover love. Organization and love will nurture each other

Now you have an explanation of how love can solve all problems. Yes, numerous details need to be worked out. But we have shattered ignorance and revealed the path.