Alain de Botton is a pop philosopher and writer, who writes about pretty much everything. I follow him on twitter

Anna is an old colleague and a friend. We live 5 minutes from each other, and therefore keep in touch.

Greater Theory of Love is the combination of their two statements.

Alain de Botton tweets. Sometimes, I think they are one liners from his books, of which I’ve read only one (The Architecture of Happiness). But that’s not relevant. What is relevant is the tweet. It said, among other well-worded nonsense: “true love can exist, the chances of it happening to you: c. 5%.”

Shock and horror!! While I think I’ve already established that humans don’t generally work like some movies want us to believe (love at first sight in a slow-mo scene), still, the chances of finding true love might seem too low.

Until we combine this with Anna’s axiom about going out. She said something to the effect: you can just pick a random person, go to coffee, movies or dinner and see whether you like that person, and then you’re already dating, etc.

Greater Theory of Love: thus we can assume that most people who are in a relationship, are in it for the thrill of going to the movies for free (or paying for the movie if you’re a masochist). In other words, most people starts having rather meaningless, casual and arbitrary.

Q.E.D.

However, this theory still has a few loose ends. Can an arbitrary relationship grow into true love? What is the difference between “true” love experience and the “OK-whatever” love experience?

Whatever, not like I’ll ever find out. I’ve already found my true love. Me. I’ve been told I’m a narcissist, you see.

Peter