The Art of Loving
Thesis: love is an art to be mastered
Just as you would any other art. It is not, as most believe, an easy sensation one "falls into" if one is lucky enough to find it.
Most people seek love in a materialistic way, when they should seek love in a craftsmanlike way.
Most people think there is nothing to be learned about the art of loving because they believe, incorrectly, that:
The problem of love is about being loved, not about loving. To solve it, all you have to do is make yourself more attractive and successful.
The problem of love is to find the right *object *of love, not of developing the faculty to love.
"Attractive" usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market... two persons thus "fall in love" when they feel they have found the best available object on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values.
- They confuse *falling *in love with *being *in love, and so think that there is nothing easier than love. Falling in love is exhilarating, but temporary.
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people wold be eager to know the reasons for failure, and to learn how one could do better — or they would give up the activity.
But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the master of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art.
And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of their deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power.
A theory of love
The fundamental problem of human existence is that we are separate and helpless before nature and society, which makes us anxious.
Union is the only solution to this problem.
There are several types of union: orgiastic union, union through conformity, union through artistic creation, and love.
People want to conform to a much higher degree than they are forced to conform, at least in Western democracies... they live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are indiviiduals, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking — and that it just so happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.
Union through conformity is not intense and violent; it is calm, dictated by routine, and for this very reason often is insufficient to pacify the anxiety of separateness.
Love can be further distinguishes as mature and immature love, the former is an activity characterized by giving.
Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality... in love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."
Love is an activity, not a passive affect... the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
Giving is empowering for the giver, not impoverishing.
Some make a virtue out of giving in the sense of a sacrifice.
In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy... Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.
In giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brough to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him.
But not only in love does giving mean receiving. The teacher is taught by his students, the actor is stimulated by his audience, the psychoanalyst is cured by his patient.
Mature love has several components:
- Care:
Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.
Responsibility: care for the physical and psychological needs of the other person.
Respect:
The ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality... Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
- Knowledge:
Only if I know a human being objectively, can I know him in his ultimate essence, in the act of love.
The capitalist/Western values system conveys messages that are incompatible with love
In a loving society, each person sees the other person for what he/she is at his/her core instead of what the person can do for him.
In a successful capitalistic society, the individual must become a cog in the wheel and not look at his fellow human beings (and other members of society) as equal to him, except as it applies to the exchange of goods. Only the non conformist can be truly happy in a capitalistic society.
This gives rise to a variety of pseudo-loves.
The practice of love
One cannot explain how to practice, but one can explain the attitudes that are prerequisites to loving.
Some attitudes are common to mastering any art.
Discipline.
Concentration.
A conversation can deal with matters of politics or religion and yet still be trivial; this happens when the two people talk in cliches, when their hearts are not in what they are saying.
If one does not react in the expected way — that is, in cliches and trivialities — but directly and humanly, one will often find that such people change their behavior.
It is important to avoid bad company... the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive; of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliche opinions instead of thinking.
...the talk makes them tired. They are under the illusion that they would be even more tired if they listened with concentration. But the opposite is true. Any activity, if done in a concentrated fashion, makes one more awake (although afterward natural and beneficial tiredness sets in), while every unconcentrated activity makes one sleepy— while at the same time it makes it difficult to fall asleep at the end of the day.
Patience.
Supreme concern.
And some attitudes are specifically helpful for love.
Overcoming narcissism.
The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity.
Objectivity.
Reason.
Humility.
Rational faith, which requires courage.
An active concern for your love interest.
Fairness.
Other interesting points
The history of narratives around love is one of rebounding between extremes.
The Victorian age, in which people repressed their sexual urges.
The Freudian response, in which sex was held up as the fundamental motivator of love (and all other human behavior), which was popular in its strong contrast. "The full and uninhibited satisfcation of all instinctual desires would create mental health and happiness."
Romantic love.
Great conflicts lead to better understanding, which is cathartic.
Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, arer not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsiss from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength.
Who society admires:
In previous epochs of our own culture, or in China and India, the man most highly valued was the person with outstanding spiritual qualities... In contemporary capitalistic society, the men suggested for admiration and emulation are everything but bearers of significant spiritual qualities... Movie stars, radio entertainers, columnsists, important business or government figures... their main qualification for this function is often that they have succeeded in making the news.