I received this reply to my most recent post in an email and thought it deserved some space:
I liked this blog…but I didn’t love it.
I’m afraid I may well be one of these quasi-philosophers that impose their scrooge-like cynicism upon the rest of the kind-hearted souls of the world, but this isn’t because I don’t want people to be happy. We all know that the world may appear a better place through rose-tinted glasses, but that doesn’t mean that it is so.
I think that the reason that ‘romantic’ love is targeted so much is because of the ideologies that society places on it. People frequently talk about love in the same breathe as ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’ and coin the phrases ‘meant to be’ and ‘the one’, speaking as if the magical forces of the universe have united their souls with another. It has become a form of religion, where this mystic force is the saviour of the modern world; it can perform miracles.
But a religion needs a god. For us tiresome atheists there must be a source for this ultimate power. Unless the likes of Cheryl Cole and her contemporary counterparts have been brought to Earth from another planet, preaching their gift of love through the medium of song, then who else is there to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love? Without a benevolent god beaming his love rays upon us surely the evolution of love can be explained pretty neatly through said Darwinism and the analysis of the human psyche.
As you suggest, this does of course suggest that one must analyse all emotions in such a way, and although this is never an easy train of thought, it does follow a line of logic. It is not the fact that we feel an emotion that is in dispute here, but what causes it. I’m sure I would shit many a brick if locked in a cell with a lion, but as you snidely comment from the safe side of the bars “don’t worry, you aren’t really afraid; it is just your genes telling you to be scared in order to keep their host alive until they can spawn”, I’d frantically rebuttal “actually, I am terrified, but you’re right as to why…now get me out of here before I get eaten alive!” There must be complex psychological reasons behind our emotions for we are indeed complex psychological monsters; love is neither more nor less important than the others, it just gets trounced on a little more as people put in on a pedestal.
So of course love exists in some form. The word has definition and rings clear in our head when we hear it uttered, but it is the dependence and reliance upon finding salvation in the romantic form that seems to shield people from the wider world. This is now the love of rom-coms and trashy chick-lit that people seem to find great pleasure in escaping to. These are teaching us how to feel the emotion in a false light. Whilst they may promote a world of happiness on the surface, it seems that in the long run people strive for a life that is unachievable and unrealistic. But there I go being all pessimistic again.
Lots of love
R/C, the cynic.
Basically I think R/C makes a lot of good points and there is no doubt that the word 'Love' is overused. It is also true that it is too often held up as an ideal to strive for and the only route to happiness, which is a terrible thing. However, I think our two posts talk past each other a bit: Yes, love can cause problems, is a difficult subject and is often used as an unjustified blanket term for so many things; but No, it does not follow that it does not exist or that darwinism has somehow overtaken it. My main point is really that a darwinian understanding of humanity does not get rid of love any more than it gets rid of all of our emotions. It is one valid explanation but it is not the only way of talking about ourselves and any attempt to do so misses a huge portion of what it is like to be a human.
ReplyDeleteIn the most pretentious phrasing I can think of: the post-modernist, anti-analytic philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries, culminating in existentialism, have shown us that scientific classification, whilst not incorrect, is not an adequate tool for understanding humanity.