The Confusion of Love
Reading time: 8 minutes
In his book The Art of Loving, psychologist Erich Fromm argues that love is the only answer to the problem of human existence, but that we are prone to erroneously identify many of our behaviours as love. It is for instance considered common sense to equate unselfishness with love. Yet complete unselfishness, where people even pride themselves for ‘wanting nothing for themselves’ and are ‘only living for others’, often results in tiredness, depression, troubled relationships, or possible life threatening diseases.[1] That is because they are not acting out of love, but out of anxiety that something indescribably bad will happen to them if they were to behave differently, and, God forbid, were to actually do something for themselves. Therefore in this blogpost we’re going to use Fromm’s book as a guide to determine what love is, and, perhaps even more important, what love is not. Simultaneously, we will find out why self-knowledge is indispensable if we wish to know what it means to love, and how the ability to genuinely love changes our state of being from anxious and closed to open and joyful.
With the title ‘The Art of Loving’, Fromm immediately reveals a confusion regarding the concept of love which brings so much calamity to our lives, namely the belief that love is something which is given to some but not to others, like the grace of God. By deliberately choosing the word loving, which is a verb, over the noun love, he indicates that like any other skill, loving can be learned, taught, and cultivated. In other words, if no time and attention is spend on it, it will never grow, develop, and mature.[2]
Yet what is love? Also here Fromm provides not only thought provocing ideas, but hands us material to learn from, practice, cultivate, and master. For instance, he describes five types, or objects, of love: brotherly love, motherly love, erotic love, love for self, and love of God. Let’s elaborate on these, because in their descriptions are many clues with which we can work.
Brotherly love means love for our fellow human beings, and by extension for anything there is, the universe at large. This type of love characterizes itself by a genuine wish for health, meaning and belonging for everyone and everything, from the amoeba and mosquito to tigers, mountains, planets, and people. That is, ALL people; this type of love is inclusive in the sense that we can sincerely wish health, prosperity and meaning/belonging for every living soul, not just the ones we happen to know and like. People who live out this type of love act like heaven, earth and the sun; for heaven embraces all beings, earth supports all beings, and the sun doesn’t discriminate on whom it shines. However, the cultivation of this type of love proves difficult when we have little or no self-knowledge. Because without self-knowledge, we tend to ignore our own, personal dark side, and the result thereof is usually that we condemn evil deeds from others rather harshly, just like we condemn those same evil deeds harshly in ourselves (when we see them). Therefore, recognition, acknowledgement, and acceptance of our own personal dark side is required in order to cultivate genuine brotherly love.
Brotherly love implies universal love for every human being and all of existence. Illustration: Kzenbzh
Motherly love means love for the helpless, and is by its nature also inclusive in that we can feel love for any being in need. A new born baby is completely helpless without the mother (or another caregiver). Left to its own devices, a human baby has neither the skills, nor the knowledge or physique to survive and thrive on its own. Therefore, for the first part of its life, it needs the help of anOTHER to develop and grow. Just like babies there are many adults in helpless situations, for example those being displaced by wars or natural disasters, and it’s fairly easy for most of us to offer help in these kinds of circumstances. Yet cultivation of motherly love also proves difficult without adequate self-knowledge. Because then we are liable to ‘blame’ certain misfortunes on people’s ‘own fault’, and then they don’t deserve any kind of sympathy. A big population with little or no sympathy consists of the homeless for instance. We don’t know why they turned to the streets, but their appearance generally evokes feelings of disgust and anxiety. The same goes for alcohol or drug addicts and mental patients. Especially in highly developed, technological, and individualized societies, there is a big awareness (albeit mostly unconscious) that these misfortunes can happen to each and every one of us, and that has a tendency to give us the heebie jeebies. As long as we have not reconciled with our own dark side, those heebie jeebies will keep us from cultivating an all-inclusive love for whom ever is in need of help.
Homeless people and addicts often evoke fear and disgust, and mostly receive little love and compassion. Image: JohnOndreasz
Contrary to the above types of love, erotic love is by its very nature exclusive because it is the craving for complete fusion, for union with one other person. However, according to Fromm, it might also be the most deceptive type of love, because without brotherly love already being manifest in both individuals, what they call ‘love’ is either based on greed, possessiveness, or anxiety for loneliness. Therefore, if ‘I love you’ doesn’t simultaneously mean: ‘I love in you all of humanity, all that is alive. I love in you also myself,’ then whatever it is that we call ‘love’ is not actually love, but something else that we confuse for love.
First there is the confusion of love with the explosive experience of falling in love: the sudden collapse of the barriers that existed until then between two strangers. After a while, however, the intimate person becomes as known as (or, which is usually the case: as little known as) ourselves, so that there are no barriers anymore to overcome. Intimacy is then primarily established through sexual contact, because they experience separateness from the other person primarily as physical separateness. Therefore, physical union means overcoming (the idea of) separateness. Anxiety for (the idea of) separateness is then the basis for staying in a relationship, which is never a solid foundation. If we, on the other hand, could experience the infiniteness of our own personality, the other person would never become so familiar – because the miracle of overcoming the barriers might occur every day anew. In other words: if we know and understand that every moment we are born again,[3] we never cease to surprise ourselves, and hence another will never cease to surprise us either.[4]
A second, and interesting way where love is confused for something else, can be found in couples who pretend to have love only for each other. In such cases they are finding mutual grounds, topics of interest (or hate), or anything else which creates the idea of fusion with another, under the assumption of ‘us against the world’. Here, again, the anxiety for separateness is usually the basis for our conduct, for many of us would rather be in an unsatisfying or harmful relationship than no relationship at all. In most cases, such relationships are not sustainable, or at least will not contribute much to create a tolerant and caring environment – either for themselves, or for others.
Let’s finalize our investigation on erotic love by looking at sexual desire for a moment. It is true that sexual desire aims at fusion, but it can be stimulated by the anxiety for aloneness, vanity, the desire to conquer or be conquered, or the wish to hurt or even destroy, as much as it can be stimulated by love. However, when it is stimulated by love, it is blended with a feeling of deep tenderness; while greediness, or the need for conquering, are completely lacking.
Erotic love may be exclusive in a practical sense, but according to Fromm, a love that is felt exclusively for one other is not love, but something else. Image: toryyu86
The love for self is often confused with selfishness, but in the West these terms are interchangeably used. Calvin calls self-love ‘a pest’, and Freud saw narcissism in it. From that perspective, love and self-love are mutually exclusive, and the more we have of one, the less we have of the other. Moreover, if love for another is virtuous, then self-love automatically becomes a vice.
Yet if we follow that line of thought through, it won’t take long before we hit a major contradiction. For while it is deemed almost the highest virtue to have love for others – by which we mean other human beings – if we are to love all human beings, then I can’t escape having to love myself too, for what else am I but a human being! Therefore, love of myself is inseparably connected with love for every being. In fact, it’s the same thing.
Selfishness, by contrast consists of exclusively being interested in oneself. A selfish person wants everything for himself, finds no joy in giving, and judges everyone and everything merely from its usefulness to him. Selfishness makes a person unable to love, either others or himself. Actually, the inability to love his real self makes the selfish person hate himself, and his selfishness is merely an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate his inability to love. Naturally, such a person will in time begin to resent life itself, and when more and more people get into such a state of being, it’s only a matter of time before a threshold is reached where the masses gladly go to war.
So if you ever meet selfish people, be kind to them, for they are in enough trouble as it is. Buy them a coffee, sit down and have a talk. Ask, without judgment, how he or she is doing. Find out about their definition of the good life, and ask about their life energy and bucket list for instance. For it is well known that anger and anxiety can only be cured by love.
Truly loving others is only possible when we truly love ourselves. Image: geralt
Before moving onto the love of God, I wish to emphasize that Fromm inquires and analyses much deeper in his book than is to be read in the above paragraphs, which are primarily aimed at evoking thought and understanding about the concept of love, and how that can enrich our lives. If, however, you find your curiosity ignited about the psychology of love, all it’s pseudo-forms, and much more, I strongly recommend reading Fromm’s The Art of Loving.
In briefly discussing the love of God, I’m now deviating a little from Fromm’s writings. For love of God might be easier cultivated if we turn to a concept of the divine which is to be found in the Bhadārayaka Upanishad,[5] and gives an apt description of my personal metaphysics – which consists of the religious belief that there is something which rests in all beings, which all beings cannot (intellectually) know, which is other than all beings, of which all beings are the body, and which controls all beings from within.[6] From this perspective, namely of a force other than me that controls me from within yet doesn’t interfere with my free will, there arises a deep faith in something other than me providing the signs, situations and chances for me to be able to learn what my particular organism needs (kind of like the Delphi oracle). That means that I am allowed to find out for myself what health means for me; how joy feels for my particular body and mind, and how to stimulate others to find that out for themselves. For there is, after all, only one person in the whole world who can figure out what you are all about, and what you need: YOU.
In that sense, studying and learning about love is essentially the same as studying and learning about ourselves. And since studying and learning about ourselves usually provides deep insights into our own dark side, automatically our sense for, and feeling of, love increases - as paradoxical as that might sound. Yet with increasing self knowledge, a deep sense of belonging, meaning, compassion, peace, and definitely jolliness, will most definitely arise.
Love for God means that everyone may find and cultivate their own talents and abilities. Image: minhthai0105
To sum up, if you wish to love and be loved, you can study love, learn about love, and find out about what it means for you. How do you imagine love? How does it look, sound, taste, smell, and feel, for you? Investigate, and enjoy your investigations. As with any skill, the more time and attention is put into it, the more it develops and flourishes, and the bigger your capacity for loving becomes.
With love and jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
[1] ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) was named after Lou Gehrig (Lou Gehrig’s disease) because he was the first known case which established that chronic stress emerging from extreme unselfishness set up the conditions for ALS to develop and thrive. For Lou’s story and how daily stress can lead up to ALS, click here.
[2] To be sure, some people have more talent for loving than others, just like some have more talent for playing guitar than others. However, if by Love is meant a state of being where we are tolerant, respectful, generous, and curious, and where we actually enjoy seeing ourselves and others develop, grow, and mature, then, if we wish for a peaceful society, we should encourage each and every one of us to get to know ourselves thoroughly. For that is the quickest path to Love, belonging, health, and leading a meaningful – and thereby joyful – life.
[3] Which is true in the most literal sense, because parts of our body die every day and are then renewed. The same can be said for our mind, which is remodelled and reshaped every day with the accumulation of new information from inside and outside of our body.
[4] This paragraph is paraphrased from Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving, chapter III – Erotic Love.
[5] Valerie Roebuck, The Upanishads (Chapter 7).
[6] The divine that is described in this view is called Tao in China, Brahman or Atman (Self) in India, God in Christianity, Allah in Islam, Yahweh in Judaism, The Void in Buddhism. It points to the One that can’t be named, the life energy out of which all material and spiritual phenomena arise, and into which they again dissolve.
Featured multi-hands thumbnail: Leejoann
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