On Medium: Does the Existence of Love Refute Cynicism?
This article is about some surprising social implications of intimacy, such as that we treasure love because we have contempt for the dishonesty that's rife in public life, and we keep our love a secret because our true self is despicable, so we assume that we don't deserve love or that love must be a miracle.
Refreshing article. I think this is the first time you ever wrote about love. But I have to say I disagree with this evaluation. As you said, the more we learn about what people are really like, the less we love them. That's why true love can't be based on intimacy. The better we know someone, the less we love them. True love is kindled only when we can look past what someone is & see what they should be. We ignore the the hylic appearance & rest our gaze upon the platonic form or archetype that this person so imperfectly embodies. When two people can do this together, it morally elevates both since each wants to live up to the vision their beloved has of them. Socrates really explains it much better than I could in the Phaedrus. It is only when lovers 'come down to earth' & loose that vision that the romance fades & they start to despise one another. "Familiarity breeds contempt" is, I think, the best argument for chastity; the only one that has any merit.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned agape, which is so different from eros & yet, I think Jesus may have had something similar in mind. The basis of Jesus' agape was our identity as children of God, not our egos. It would be perverse to love a serial killer & Jesus knew that. We rightly hate & condemn the fallen aspect of human nature. Jesus wanted us to recognize the hidden, spiritual identity that lies behind the egoic mask, no matter how monstrous that mask may be. Ted Bundy, to take an example, wasn't born a killer; he became that way through the vagaries of fate. Of course, there have always been women who loved monsters like Bundy because they are monsters, but those women are simply turned on by rape & violence, not inspired by universal love.
It occurs to me that I may have misjudged your criticism of romantic love here. If you were just criticizing the treacly, euphemistic sense of the word that is really just a fig leaf for lust, then I see your point. That kind of love is a fraud perpetrated by Hollywood & the music industry to exploit the vanity of sluts & playboys who would rather see themselves as 'lovers'. The modern equivocation of sex with love has ruined both experiences. Love is about moral & spiritual exaltation, much like fasting, meditation & prayer; there's no place for sex in it. The attempt to sanctify (or is it justify?) the sex act with love only degrades love while robbing sex of its ecstasy. Sex, as the Marquis de Sade labored to illustrate, is intrinsically violent; cruelty is a much better complement to the sex act than love &, in fact, sexual passion never reaches its acme without it. But since 'romantic love' still bears, for many people, its older & spiritual meaning, I thought I'd share my thoughts on it.
There does seem a tension between the idealism in love, or the focus on our potential, and intimacy as the sharing of our secret self and the validation of our imperfections. But there are different kinds of love. The former is closer to agape, to Christian, egalitarian, brotherly love, while the latter is the more exclusive, selfish love of romantic eros. My point was that, as a matter of fact, romantic love is sought after because intimacy is treasured in the way I explain.
DeleteThe article isn't really a criticism of love, though. I'm criticizing the claim that love is inconsistent with cynicism, that love defeats or refutes cynicism, as in the Hallmark cliches. If love is idealistic, as you say, in placing value on our potential, then love implies contempt for every failure to live up to that potential. The more idealistic love is, the worse reality seems, assuming the ideal is never or rarely reached.
This is why the most uncompromising idealists such as Socrates, Jesus, or the Buddha were the most radical, subversive critics of social normality. Civility isn't an attempt to reach an ideal; instead, it's an excuse to stop trying to improve. This is when social conventions become idols standing in the way of progress.
So no, my point here isn't that love is bad. I'm saying the idealism in love has this surprising implication that lovers are on the same side as cynics or as radical critics of average human behaviour, given that we typically aren't even trying to improve.
By the way, I have written a few other things on love specifically, not just on sex, although not so much recently. Here are some links:
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-love-meaning-of-life.html
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2013/12/love-or-disgust-christian-debates.html
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2015/04/clash-of-worldviews-sex-and-love-edition.html
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/08/dictionary-of-micro-rants-love_13.html
There's also this old article on the violence of sex:
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2012/02/sex-is-violent-why-f-word-is-taboo.html
So the split between our public persona & our private self implies a criticism of society. I have to agree that pretending to be someone you're not is pretty cynical.
ReplyDeleteBut the need for intimacy in the above case - to be loved for who we are instead of who we pretend to be to get along in a decadent society - makes sense only on the assumption we believe we are lovable. Yet the very fact that we pretend to be someone we aren't could also imply that we aren't so lovable after all. In that case the need for intimacy would be something akin to the desire to confess one's sins & be absolved.
Well, I suggest in the article that our true selves aren't lovable. No one deserves to be loved, because we're flawed creatures. This is why love is celebrated as a miracle or a wonder, because someone comes along and loves us anyway. What's wanted most, I suspect, is for someone to forgive, ignore, or admire our flaws, to love our true, flawed self. There is indeed a Christian parallel here, with the forgiveness of sins and so on.
DeleteBy covering up our true self and playing out our public roles, we may think we're improving on the situation, but the roles are fraught with inauthenticity. So we're going out of the frying pan and into the fire. With intimacy, we have a co-conspirator to wage secret war against the public frauds. That's intimacy's saving grace in existential terms, I think.
As I say towards the end of "Sex and the Authentic Self," "sexual intimacy could contribute to the existential mission by enhancing morale by way of camaraderie: the introverts could bounce their ideas and their bodies off each other, stepping out of seclusion to maintain their sanity as social creatures, welcoming the bond between compatriots in the ultimate war between all living things and their undying maker."
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2016/05/sex-and-authenticity.html