On Love, Friendship, Brotherhood & Coverage
Friends are super important.
Friends tell each other things.
Things they don't tell their parents.
-Stranger Things (Netflix)
Sam Harris recently joined the Lex Fridman Podcast for a wide ranging, three+ hour discussion. Towards the end Fridman asked Harris about love — how he defines it and what he thinks it is. Per usual, Harris's response did not disappoint.
Sam Harris on Love
Harris says love is a game of mutually shared interests. People in loving relationships are on the same team — their lives and fates fully intertwined. More than just wanting those you love to be happy, love is about actively contributing to their happiness and well-being. That in a truly loving relationships there should never be any daylight or conditionality between our own needs, wants, and desires and those of the people we love. Similarly, he says that the needs, wants, and desires of those we love should be equally important to us as our own, with same standing and equal priority. Finally, Harris says that friendships and loving relationships should be places of refuge, trust, and unquestioned safety — that no relationship can be considered truly loving absent these things.
On Love & Friendship
There is nothing more sacred in life than our loving relationships and the deep-seated commitment, loyalty, and love that hopefully fuels them. In my view, love is the most meaningful emotional experience we can have — it's sacrosanct. But, to my great surprise and disappointment, it seems we no longer respect, protect, and covet our loving relationships they way we used to. The more atomized our society has become, the less central our most loving relationships appear to be.
On What Love ISN'T
Love and friendship isn't a simple or ordinary matter. As such, I've given quite a bit of thought to these subjects over the years. To begin, I fully and wholeheartedly agree with everything Harris said about love and truly loving relationships. Sometimes when I'm thinking deeply about a particular subject I find it helpful to look at its inverse. So, in the case of love, I think there's a lot to learn by asking what love isn't.
...LOVE ISN'T CONDITIONAL because conditional love is an oxymoron
...LOVE IS NEVER ZERO-SUM because loving relationships defined by winning and losing is also oxymoronic. This unfortunately is all too common in many families and friend groups.
...LOVE IS NEVER A COMPETITION because, by definition, those we compete against are on the other team and those we love are on our team. This is also a lot more common in both families and friend groups than I ever wanted to believe was possible.
Three Concerns that Love is Beginning to Lose
Concern 1: All too often I see intimate relationships, friend groups, and families devolve into unequal hierarchies of misaligned interests with one party's goals and needs taking obvious precedence in terms of time, focus, attention, and resources. It is my strong opinion that loving relationships, by their very definition, should be devoid of hierarchy. PERIOD!
Concern 2: It's possible, even likely, that loving relationships always had a competitive score-keeping element to them. This phenomenon of score-keeping isn't new, but it does appear more common these days. Relationships that keep score, tally contributions, and compete based on who did what for whom are necessarily conditional. Relationships based on conditionality inevitably devolve into power dynamics that prop up some, hold down others, and manipulate the rest. All this relationship kryptonite, which starves relationships of oxygen, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of love and loving relationships.
Concerns 3: With the fast ascent of commercialism, materialism, and the idolatry of wealth and fame over the last several decades, it seems that the very idea and everyday practical consideration of viewing our most important and intimate relationships through a truly loving and supportive lens, has been overlooked, misunderstood, diminished, even lost. At the core of this problem is the degradation of the meaning, responsibility, and importance of the family unit and the traditional role of community in the western world. Our now watered down and overly promiscuous view of meaningful, loving relationships in our society has been hastened along by globalization, institutionalization, and materialistic profiteering. Love and friendship are long overdue for a comeback.
Some Words on Brotherhood and 'Coverage'
COVERAGE is something my younger brother and I came up with as teenagers, decades ago. It was a simple but powerful idea: knowing that when you were out in the world — at school, on the court, or especially at night — you were surrounded by people who had your back. Unconditionally. Without hesitation. EVER.
Over time, though, coverage grew into something bigger, broader—something far more important. No longer just about physical protection, coverage was now deeper, more unshakable:
- Knowing with certainty your people would never betray you.
- Never doubting the loyalty of your family and closest friends.
- Feeling, at the soul level, that they would always be your island of safety and refuge.
Was coverage naive? No. We always knew that as we got older and life grew more complicated, our code would be tested. That was the point — test it all you want; it won’t break, because it was designed not to. Coverage wasn’t just a belief. It was our omertà — not a code of silence, but a covenant of brotherhood.
Today, covenants like these — among friends, family, and communities — are breaking down. The reasons are many, but chief among them is this: We stopped voting for each other. We stopped counting on those around us. We atomized, drifting into solo journeys. We turned inward, staring down at the cocaine silicon and mirrored glass in our hands — away from the flesh, blood, grit, and ground of the real world.
Too many of us now pull that hollow, synthetic lever over and over, prioritizing digital illusions over the real, beating hearts standing just off to the side, out of view. Technology promised more freedom, more opportunity, more community. Instead, we got a zero-sum, winner-takes-all free-for-all that hasn’t just turned us away from one another — it’s turned us against one another.
Coverage was our code. You, no doubt, have your own. I can’t imagine having lived my life without it. So when I see data showing the collapse of young people’s friendships, their dwindling time spent with others, and the drastic erosion of social spaces, I’m stunned. Saddened. Maybe younger generations aren’t looking for what we once coveted — though I doubt it. The explosion of depression, anxiety, and suicide among teens and young adults makes it painfully clear: something is very, very wrong.
We need to get back to basics. And there’s nothing more basic — or more necessary, especially for the young — than deep friendships, tight-knit groups, and broad, varied social bonds. The tighter, the better. The more coverage, the best.