The Art of Love in Culture
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This article is inspired by Stephen West’s podcast, “Philosophize This,” episode 150, about Erich Fromm and the art of love. I address American culture’s depiction of humanity’s relation to love, and different human motivations for action relating to emotion. The discussion is general and includes platonic affections, not exclusively romance. Enjoy!
Cultural values are a complex, interwoven web of ideas ingrained within people living in and adhering to that culture. The guiding ideas of culture are heavily influenced by multigenerational manifestations of ideas and events beyond an individual’s conscious capacity to fully understand. Individuals, because of the complex nature of customs and society, can only operate within the culture and rarely transcend its system of living.
Fromm aspires to transcend cultural values and acknowledges its difficulties, and hence claims love is rare. What happens with many people, according to Fromm, is the blind following of traditions whose contemporary grounding is in historical precedent rather than functionality or critical thought. Think of cultures banning the consumption of certain foods like pork because of its uncleanliness, and then consider if this type of meat is any “dirtier” than beef or chicken today. But this is not to say tradition always needs reform.
But sometimes, historical precedents are deemed truly irrelevant and change. Consider the acceptability of a past norm like an arranged marriage, and how contemporary culture considers the practice today egregious, restrictive, and invasive--totally the opposite of a norm.
Adherence to and the evolution of culture and tradition is a direct reflection of how people conduct themselves in relation to life and love, and overall how individuals conduct the many aspects of their lives. Most, if not all individuals need a basis to understand how to navigate life’s ambiguous questions like what to eat, and how or whom to love. Culture provides a base to build from and prevents being totally lost in a relative infinity of methods to conduct ourselves.
Culture makes life easier insofar as choices and lifestyles are outsourced, and less thinking about mundane activities is necessary. Fromm might look at cultural dictates as negative and reactionary to a freedom-induced paralysis, and hence a hindrance to living fully, but culture’s functionality deserves recognition. Culture has been an essential cultivator of human development, perhaps most notably in the west via a Greek emphasis on reason.
“Use reason to establish moral values rather than adherence to authoritarian moral values.” Erich Fromm
Fromm is imploring people to think rather than operate on autopilot because culture today can emphasize many different, sometimes destructive value systems. A couple of examples are Fromm’s “nonproductive orientation of hoarding,” like the Wall Street-style unquenchable thirst to accumulate ever greater means of wealth, & Fromm’s “nonproductive orientation of marketer,” like a person who recreates their image via exercise to look good and attract others, instead of to be healthy.
But this kind of thinking misses admirable examples in our culture, specifically from the realm of arts and storytelling. Narrations are the most accurate reflection of abstract values representing a culture’s spirit and identity, just look at how popular movies and Netflix are. A good soul can absorb the insights built into the culture, even if unconsciously, and emulate that wisdom throughout their everyday lives, disposition, and values.
“Love is a passionate affirmation of an object, it is not an affect but a striving interconnectedness the aim of which is the happiness, growth, and freedom of its object which in principle can be directed at any person or object” –Erich Fromm
Modern culture gives great examples of authentic love. Think of a modern epic like Harry Potter, where love is a central theme; a mother’s sacrifice to protect her child and the kind-hearted Harry remaining untainted by his adoptive family’s animosity. In Harry Potter, the bonds of love and friendship produce a growth in the main characters which allows them to overcome Lord Voldemort, who “loves” wizard purity so much he indiscriminately kills any wizard who doesn’t share his sentiment.
Consider too, the Avenger’s battle against Thanos; the Avengers operate on love for one another and love for protecting innocent beings and their home, whereas Thanos operates on love for preserving life by killing half of all life.
Another example is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo and company, united by love for freedom, set out to combat Sauron who loves the idea of a united middle earth. For a united Middle Earth Sauron is ready to destroy the environment and slaughter entire cities of opposition, whereas Frodo and his companions are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for each other, and for freedom.
Each epic also contains internal battles between virtuous love and sinful love within individual characters themselves. Harry Potter literally has a piece of Voldemort within him, and Frodo is constantly fighting the temptations of the ring. Thor fights his love for sluggishness and beer, Ironman fights love for selfishness, and Captain America fights a love for inflated proprietary- aka pompousness.
Finally, if you’re not convinced, think of two modern romcoms and how the plots pin lovers against a problem that requires teamwork, understanding or forgiveness, and patience to overcome. These are both strong examples of perseverance over internal conflict. In “50 First Dates” a dedicated protagonist finds the internal strength to patiently reintroduce himself to a lover who always forgets him. In “Anchorman,” the protagonists engage in passionate, ego-fueled feuds, only to then set aside ego, forgive one another, and move forward together.
Human’s danger to “transactionally love,” or love based only on what is to be gained, lies in an overemphasis on rationality or ego. With the wrong motivation guiding our actions, we strive to obtain solely for the sake of superficial self-advancement. Rationally, bettering our standings in life or society, or compensating for something we lack should make us feel better. But does it really? How does the prospect of using others to accomplish these goals make you feel? Personally, it makes me feel terrible.
Ethical motivations and virtuous love do not consider cold, rational, means-to-an-end modes of action as viable. A truly moral affection does not approach love as an object which must be formulaically acted upon to achieve something in the future. Virtuous love acts only for the sake of love itself and lets go of extraneous, pleasure-seeking, or “solution-to-what-I-lack” oriented action.
Our culture, for all its follies and false idols actively seducing the misled amongst us, also produces shining opportunities for study. Characters who foster bonds with others and care for others almost always triumph over characters focused on transactional and exclusively rational pursuits, usually because they have risen above their own demons. In other words, our culture’s epics depict human affections & perseverance over internal struggles defeating overemphasis on logic and transactional mindsets.
Both a physical and mental aspect of bad love is available to study in our storytelling, cinematic culture. The internal and external aspects of love are closely connected because of how our thoughts, attitudes, and intentions manifest our reality; only with a well-intentioned, steady inner world will virtuous love come to be.
“The capacity to love demands a state of intensity, awareness, and enhanced vitality which can only be the result of an active, productive orientation in many other spheres of life.” Erich Fromm
Intensity, awareness, and vitality are all cultivatable traits so long as good role models surround us. Art, as an implicit articulation of a culture’s values and normative actions, provides individual minds with a subject to study, learn from, imitate, and grow from. Art, especially the aforementioned movies, portrays both virtuous and sinful love and provides a comprehensive, easy-to-digest framework for both internal and external virtuousness.
For a perceptive person, culture is not a hindrance to free-thinking but a narrative containing both a thesis and antithesis of how people can healthily express themselves. Culture exists for interpretation and emulation by all observers and participants and if a person is to transcend the societal system of values, first learning the cultural differences between good and bad is essential.
Love, as an art, might be a practice and verb, but the action of love is still directed at something—an object/noun. Think of how watering, tending to, and pruning a plant are actions directed at a plant you love.
Love is action, but, to borrow a grammatical term, love is also the direct object of love the verb. In disallowing rationale to name the direct object of love something other than love, and in disallowing the ego to influence you to quit just because suffering arises, you direct a good love at a proper object—at good love itself.
Confronting rationality and the ego in love always presents a choice: do I act for love incentivized by an ulterior motive, or for love itself? Addressing this question leads the mind to examine its own motives, and an examination of motives is a real step towards acting with higher ideals of authentic love in mind.
Love is an art because of a human tendency to value shallow qualities like physical appearance, special skills/talents, or social standing instead of introspection, self-development, and learning to let go. Love is invaluable to our health and wellness, but the value is in and of love itself—not as an object of desire but as a method to cultivate an object.
Love is not a lump-sum that you earn or complete once and live off of, love is an ongoing process of development and opening of the emotional self with an understanding of its risks. Commoditizing love is to view love as a material resource and object of attainment or pleasure instead of a process of self-growth, emotional opening, and maturing. The art of love never produces a finished product, only a mindset of selflessness and caring for another—whether or not romance is involved.
Love as art takes many years of practice and awareness to master but studying cultural examples of good love can guide any student towards worthy ideals. Seeing love as the object of itself also trains us to disregard ulterior motives and methods to enacting other deeds in the name of love.
Next time you experience love, ask yourself: do I love a good love, or do I simply act for a reason specific to my situation?
Thanks for tuning into this Mental Sweat production. I hope you enjoyed it, and please remember to drop your suggestions or requests to me as a DM or in the comments section!
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And a shout out to Ryan for giving me this prompt.
Until next time, Mental Sweat by Justin Markowitz, signing off.
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