Muttering

Everyone has their own needs. Relationships endure because both parties satisfy each other to some extent; when exchanges become long-term imbalances, needs change, or alternative options arise, the relationship may dissolve.

Love, friendship, loyalty, filial piety, identity, and credit are the stories and rules that humans assign to these relationships. People enter these narratives, playing roles such as lovers, friends, children, partners, and good people, then understanding their own actions according to these role scripts.

People particularly like to praise "unconditional love," perhaps precisely because real-world relationships generally have conditions, and humans are extremely afraid of being abandoned. Thus, we create an ideal: even if I cannot provide value temporarily, you will still not leave me. This is essentially a defense against the uncertainty of relationships.

However, I do not therefore view loyalty, credit, and love entirely as false decorations. They can also be seen as a mechanism for cooperation across time.

Ordinary exchange is:

You satisfy me now, and I satisfy you now.

Loyalty and commitment are closer to:

I accept that the relationship may be unbalanced for a period of time, because I believe we will not settle accounts based solely on gains and losses at every instant.

Therefore, loyalty does not necessarily mean one-sidedly satisfying the other party permanently, but rather both sides giving up the right to exit instantly and settle immediately. It reduces uncertainty, enabling people to engage in longer-term, more vulnerable cooperation. Of course, once only one party adheres to it, loyalty easily becomes exploitation of the other.

Love also undergoes a change that cannot be fully summarized by "exchange": sometimes, the other party's interests gradually enter one's own utility function. Initially, it might be "I take care of you because this allows me to gain your love," but later it may become "your well-being itself brings me satisfaction." It can still be interpreted as a need, but at this point, the needs of both parties have shaped each other, making it difficult to clearly calculate who pays and who benefits.

And "stories are constructed" does not equal "stories are fake." Currency, nations, marriage, degrees, and credit are all human constructs, yet they still genuinely alter human behavior and destiny. Stories are a social technology: they help large numbers of individuals coordinate actions and provide continuity to fragmented experiences. The issue is not that stories are artificial, but whether people forget that they are artificial, ultimately allowing the roles to consume themselves.

Those completely immersed may indeed feel more harmonious subjectively. They do not need to simultaneously play the roles of experiencer and analyst; they do not ask "why does dopamine make me happy" during moments of joy, nor do they constantly calculate "is this a need exchange" in love. Stories, identities, feelings, and actions align in the same direction, resulting in less internal friction.

Just like when playing a game, if a person fully identifies with their character, victory and defeat become tense and real; if they always think "this is just data changes on a server," the experience quickly fades. Ignorance sometimes indeed possesses a "protective effect on cognition."

But this harmony comes at a cost: the deeper the immersion, the easier it is to mistake the story for reality itself. Once a relationship breaks, an identity collapses, or rules change, what is lost is not just an experience, but possibly the entire framework of self-explanation. Immersion makes the experience more complete, but also makes people more susceptible to manipulation by the story.

The cost of clarity is the opposite: you gain distance, judgment, and the freedom to exit, but you may never again be able to trust without reservation. Analytical ability constantly intrudes upon experience, placing you outside life watching yourself live. Eventually, even happiness requires passing a review of authenticity first.

It seems tragic, but many things lack built-in meaning. The universe does not label learning, love, reproduction, wealth, or travel with an objective purpose. If humans do not endow them with meaning, they may simply occur.

Rewards look like neurotransmitters, relationships look like need exchanges, identities look like role-playing, and goals look like artificially set tasks. Once the mechanism is seen through, the original sense of immersion disappears.