Love-- Are there practical considerations?
This is a response to Mary's lovely post "Love-- inspirational and true". Since
it has been a while I decided to make this a root post so more people will see
it and hopefully share their ideas.
Of course, I am, as probably all humans are, "pro-love". But how is it that love so fails to save the world, as it should? Why do we in the US spend so much on war fighting and defense and so little on helping to feed and clothe poor people around the world? Why is religion, which should be about sharing love with all of humanity the almost sole basis for armed conflict in the world today?
I think that there is a practical aspect of this thing called love that we can't
get past until we realize how love works and why it fails. Love is the highest
emotion and highest action of humanity - whether it is sexual love - which sustains the human race, or brotherly love for all of our fellow humans. But it is
also, in fact, a luxury that can only come forth when we have an excess of resources over what we need to survive. To start with the most horrific example, there are innumerable stories throughout human history of parents cannibalizing their own children when starvation is raging through the land. Animals almost always will sacrifice their young when survival is at stake, and at such times, humans are little different than animals. When our our own stomachs cry out for food, we are not very likely to look for ways to aid the poor or sick amoung us. In fact, normal behaviour for humans is to steal using violence or threats to secure resources necessary for survival. We see all around the world that wars are
the result deprivation and threats to survival.
As a practical matter, we humans have to take care of basic human needs through
economic development if we are ever able to hope to enhance love in the world.
At it's core, that is why I am so interested in China and its incredible record
of development, taking it as a nation from abject poverty to super-power status
in thirty years. If this phenomenon can be transplanted to the poverty-stricken
nations of the world, then increased love around the world will be possible.
So what I would like to suggest is that we should take care not to fall in love
with love and spend all of our time writing lovely poetry, when a reasonable analysis of human history suggests that we must simply get down to work developing
economic systems that work to feed and clothe all of our brothers and sisters first. That is certainly not a romantic notion, I suppose, but to me it all about
"true love". I think that the Chinese people are no doubt more loving and lovable now that they are richer. I can't imagine how I might have been treated had
I made my first trip to China forty years ago rather than last year. It is so
easy to feel love for folks who feed you so well!
I have to wonder if the highest form of love right now might not be to share the
secrets of China's success in pulling itself out of poverty with the rest of the world. Then we will all be able to share our love an our wealth with each other. That is why I often write "Work for peace." It is a real job.
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