In times of upheaval, we seek new codes of ethics by which to live. My project Work Ethics was written in response to the cataclysmic ramifications of the pandemic, in an attempt to imagine a paradigm shift ‘away from the work ethic towards an ethics of work’. More recently I’ve turned my attention to reading and thinking about the ethics of love–realising, in doing so, that love probably would’ve been a better place to start.
I’ve referenced bell hooks’ work on love many times. On this Valentine’s Day - an occasion that serves, primarily, as a celebration of the heteronormative romantic ideal of love that still dominates our culture - it bears revisiting. In All About Love: New Visions, hooks calls for the adoption of a ‘love ethic’ that reaches far beyond personal partnerships to extend to all areas of our everyday lives:
“Awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. Culturally, all spheres of American life–politics, religion, the workplace, domestic households, intimate relations–should and could have as their foundation a love ethic. The underlying values of a culture and its ethics shape and inform the way we speak and act. A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.”
Looking at the world through hooks’ lens, we understand in a real way (not just a cursive font, inspirational-IG-quote kind of way) that love truly is foundational. The widespread adoption of a love ethic is probably the most effective method we might use to tackle the endless issues in our society, but its implementation is far from straightforward. The truth is not only that we lack a commonly-shared, working definition of ‘love’ itself, but also that most of us do not know how to love–because we were never properly taught. As hooks writes:
“Schools for love do not exist. Everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us.”
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm reinforces the idea that if our culture is going to learn how to love well, then love must be studied, practiced, and above all – prioritised:
“The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice…
But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery 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 the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving."
More and more, we are coming to understand that our own visions of love are outdated - perhaps even unethical - even at their most well-meaning. If popular thinkers such as Esther Perel and Alain de Botton have been influential in helping us to reconsider some of the short-sighted and unrealistic ideals we’ve been sold about mainstream romantic love (see links below), then radical thinkers like hooks and Fromm truly help us to grasp love ‘at the root’. Through their writings, we can begin to reconfigure our vision of love into something more expansive; more truthful. We can reshape it into something infinitely more real. And who doesn’t want real love?
Further Reading
‘Love Is Not a Permanant State of Enthusiasm: An Interview With Esther Perel’ - The New Yorker
‘Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person’ - Alain de Botton for The New York Times
The Body Is Not an Apology - Sonya Renee Taylor
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