An Uninformed Take on Love
Badiou stated there are generally four philosophical condition to be scrutinized: science, art, politics, and love. While most of them are in pursuit of truth and order, love –in my opinion, is different. Love really has power over the truth and order itself: people act vastly paradoxical, ironic, and different upon same ‘reason’. Love, then, in a way is a force of explanation, an ontological challenge towards being and becoming, scrutinized by whole ideological spectrum, utilized as a force of change or even preserving values. Ultimately absurd condition which makes philosophy either a cosmically solipsist ethereal thought or a dumb play on human reasoning.
To differ from sentiment, love actually put sentiment in motion: love is something more conceptual (like, in Socratean Forms) than sentiment, sentiment on the other hand is what makes love reasonable. Hence, since sentiment existed, attraction was made to bind love into it’s more substantial form. There are at least five different kind of attraction to begin with: sexual, sensual, aesthetic, romantic, and platonic. And how each kind of attractions foster sentiment and ultimately bind love into it’s conception, you may ask?
Each kind of attractions were made to match with our Id –our deepest, wildest, raw impulse and desire: to be delighted, to be touched, to experience beauty, to belong, to function. Our impulse, hence, require Other self to be controlled –ultimately to fulfill our Being: this is where the attraction came, and then we reason and justify our acts through sentiment, while love, without explaining itself, become inherent part of our justification. Let me present you an example: a romantic attraction, to put in a simple phrase, is desire to date someone (or something, I guess). It happened because we crave to belong; we evolved to the point when it’s physically damaging to be in constant solitary. But, our desire to date someone has to be based on something, then we searched for justification –which, even if it’s entirely personal, it won’t really detached from social vacuum (or construct, but we are not here to talk about dialectical/historical materialism, yet). Our justification become the basis of our sentiment, then we express our justification with language: we love because we can express our love.
At least, that’s what I thought. Simplified.
I think to point out the difference between sentiment, attraction, and love, is important: my take involves heavily personal experience which shapes my opinion towards love as a whole concept. I am not trying to theorize love into a valid thesis, hence the title ‘uninformed’ is being used. So, where to begin?
First of all, I hate dating games. Especially, here. Specifically, here. I got the gist of being subtle and yadayadayada, but apparently dating scene here is too subtle: even on sociological level, to bring their local wisdom into consideration, which makes them hide their intention. I really am complaining if the potential significant other were playing morse or invisible ink (to let it slow-burn to read the message), because guess what? I don’t have the time. But to put an intention early is considered as creepy, which don’t really makes sense linguistically –but yeah, world is scary place indeed. Look, I get why people hide their intention for the sake of excitement and all that jazz, but truly I am not looking for excitement if I don’t know where this is going: know the destination first, and then see if we get along well on the way. This is only surface stuff but I need to let this out because I’m sick and tired of playing games while the world is literally burning and I’ve been pretty much alienated by the force of late capitalism.
To dwell deeper into something more personal to discuss, “to love, to watch-think-seek the other in the other, to despecularize, to unhoard. Does this seem difficult? It’s not impossible, and this is what nourishes life –a love that has no commerce with the apprehensive desire that provides against the lack and stultifies the strange; a love that rejoices in the exchange that multiplies [sic].” Helene Cixous in The Laugh of the Medusa apparently had difficult time to conclude her own question, “does it seem difficult? It’s not impossible,” because every time someone bring the notion of altruism in love, they don’t always certain if altruism is really part of relationship conceptually, or love in general. Personally, I don’t believe in altruism: there is always quid pro quo, a ‘commerce’, either it’s fueled by merely sentiment or even involving actual accountant. As I said, even sentiment is not pure, it exists because our own desire needs to be regulated –if not repressed. Hence, we always expect something as feedback. We don’t ‘watch-think-seek the other in the other’ to put ourselves outwards –we are inherently narcissist, even with our empathy. We watch-think-seek the other because we (don’t) want to find something in ourselves. We duplicate, we face Other to find Ours.
Hence, even though I do call myself a hopeless romantic, paradoxically I despise sentiment –or more like, despise the notion of altruism while disguised as sentiment. It doesn’t feel authentic, it’s ‘unethical’ in a Kantian sense.
Leave the Form and enter the substance: in Gambino’s word, “what kind of love?” Culturally speaking, the manifestation (or…infestation?) of love defines our conception of relationship as whole e.g. marriage, dating, with benefits, et cetera. We involve ourselves with Other, perhaps not knowing how the dynamic came to be. For a cisgender heterosexual male –like myself, history aligned to our needs and our needs only, hence creating disparate power dynamic between gender relation. I think this is known, though. My take on relationship as an idea is to constantly reassess power structure; to learn feminism as an atonement for collective historical sins, to picking on patriarchy as a system to the ground, to reconsider if our needs is really necessary to be compensated systematically.
“Man’s happiness today consists in “having fun.” Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and “taking in” commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies — all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones — and the eternally disappointed ones,”
― Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving.
In the end, apparently, I tend to make a relationship into reassessment lab: to constantly challenge gender roles and issue, to put chivalry and masculinity into questions, and ultimately to be comfortably vulnerable around the Other. Though I suffered from anxiety from either restraining or releasing myself too much or too little, I don’t really care because I’m already so detached.
Lastly, I always thought partner should share their bitterness towards late capitalism and conformity, “Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking — and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority,” said Fromm in The Art of Loving. I know it sounds punk as fuck and I don’t even slightly look like one, but then again does punk performativity needs to conform to merely it’s affective material?
And that’s why I think relationship –as love, manifested, should grow beyond a person itself, to be Tyler Durden and Marla Singer in the end of Fight Club.
The problem with my take and it’s implementation is I became a selfish lover. I seek growth within myself through the Other, without putting the Other’s feeling (and growth) into account. I deliberately alienate myself and the Other: by constantly questioning stuff around. I don’t know if this is healthy, but sure does it makes me lonely. Incapable of loving organically. And distant. Though, I tried to understand Other’s sufferings and profound dissatisfaction as Nhat Hanh advised, it seems I failed because I am only looking out for myself. I always do.
“People do not see that the main question is not: “Am I loved?” which is to a large extent the question: “Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?” The main question is: “Can I love?”
― Erich Fromm in Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
