2024-11-14 - All About Love by bell hooks
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A friend recommended this book to me. My friend liked the story
about bell hooks having a dream that she would meet the love of her
life. Then at a conference, she met a man who eerily resembled the
love of her dream. They really hit it off. Later she discovered
that he was married, and she felt confused and disappointed. How
could he be such an identical match to her dream, but unavailable?
It wasn't until later that she realized that it was a missed
opportunity. She had been attached to the idea that it would be a
romantic type of love, when it could have been a different and
equally important love.
I personally did not enjoy this book as much as The Will To Change.
I had trouble identifying with many of the author's perspectives and
points. But as they say in yoga philosophy, keep what helps and
discard the rest.
The Will To Change by bell hooks
I liked the idea of having a "love ethic" where a person is
determined to choose life instead of death and committed to nurturing
the conditions so that love can exist. I like the idea that this
love ethic is not compatible with a culture of domination.
I disagree with the idea that love is the will to extend oneself for
the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.
For example, i loved my grandmother dearly. This love uplifted me.
Because i cared about my grandmother, i was willing to do dirty jobs
that would normally be unpleasant. I was focused on her well-being
rather than my own pleasure. This doesn't mean that i was committed
to her spiritual growth or even to my own. I just cared.
I disagree with the idea that love cannot coexist with abuse. As
finite human beings we cannot be purely one thing or another. Love
will always have a degree of abuse in it, and abuse will always have
a degree of love. This means that we are always redeemable. I admit
that the abuse is not love, and it diminishes love. In order to be
more loving, one would need to be less abusive.
What follows are excerpts from the book.
Introduction
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There are not many public discussions of love in our culture right
now. At best, popular culture is the one domain in which our longing
for love is talked about.
As spokesperson for a disillusioned generation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
asserts in Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women: "None of us are
getting better at loving: we are getting more scared of it. We were
not given good skills to begin with, and the choices we make have
tended only to reinforce our sense that it is hopeless and useless."
It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It
is easier to articulate the pain of love's absence than to describe
its presence and meaning in our lives.
Chapter 1
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I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word
"love," and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist
M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first
published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love
as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's
own or another's spiritual growth." Explaining further, he continues:
"Love is as love does. Love is an act of will--namely, both an
intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to
love. We choose to love." Since the choice must be made to nurture
growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption
that we love instinctually.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's
spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we
are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and
neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.
Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says
we are never loved in a context where there is abuse. Most
psychologically and/or physically abused children have been taught by
parenting adults that love can coexist with abuse.
In order to change the lovelessness in my primary relationships, I
had to first learn anew the meaning of love and from there learn how
to be loving. Embracing a definition of love that was clear was the
first step in the process.
To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a
feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner
automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. ... We are
often taught we have no control over our "feelings." Yet most of us
accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform
what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To
think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of
conventionally accepted assumptions...
Chapter 2
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One of the most important social myths we must debunk if we are to
become a more loving culture is the one that teaches parents that
abuse and neglect can coexist with love. Abuse and neglect negate
love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation,
are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving
when behaving abusively. Yet parents do this all the time in our
culture.
Chapter 3
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It is no accident that when we first learn about justice and fair
play as children it is usually in a context where the issue is one of
telling the truth. The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing
ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it
to be.
Estrangement from feelings makes it easier for men to lie because
they are often in a trance state, utilizing survival strategies of
asserting manhood that they learned as boys. This inability to
connect with others carries with it an inability to assume
responsibility for causing pain.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages
connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the
emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed.
Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for
potential betrayal and violation of trust.
[The reason for secrecy is often because it is not safe to disclose
the secret. To do so would result in futher harm and injury.]
Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of
us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one's own or
another's spiritual growth when the core of one's being and identity
is shrouded in secrecy and lies. Trusting that another person always
intends your good, having a core foundation of loving practice,
cannot exist within a context of deception.
When we hear another person's thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is
more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are.
It is harder to be manipulative.
To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most
important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people
feel better, but they do not help them to know love.
Chapter 4
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Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and
honesty that is the heartbeat of love. When we can see ourselves as
we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation
for self-love.
Using a working definition of love that tells us it is the action we
take on behalf of our own or another's spiritual growth provides us
with a beginning blueprint for working on the issue of self-love.
When we see love as a combination of trust, commitment, care,
respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on developing
these qualities or, if they are already a part of who we are, we can
learn to extend them to ourselves.
The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low
self-esteem. Nathaniel Branden's lengthy work Six Pillars of
Self-Esteem highlights important dimensions of self-esteem, "the
practice of living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility,
self-assertiveness, living purposefully and the practice of personal
integrity." Living consciously means we think critically about
ourselves and the world we live in. We dare to ask ourselves the
basic questions who, what, when, where, and why. Answering these
questions usually provides us with a level of awareness that
enlightens.
The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take
responsibility in all areas of our lives. Commenting on this third
pillar of self-esteem, Branden defines self-responsibility as the
willingness "to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment
of my goals--for my life and well-being." ... Taking responsibility
means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity to
invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that maximize our
well-being.
Doing a job well, even if we do not enjoy what we are doing, means
that we leave it with a feeling of well-being, our self-esteem
intact. That self-esteem aids us when we go in search of a job that
can be more fulfilling.
Folks who are out of the paid workforce, women and men who do unpaid
work in the home, as well as all other happily unemployed people, are
often doing what they want to do. While they are not rewarded by an
income, their day-to-day life often provides more satisfaction than
it would if they worked at a high-paying job in a stressful and
dehumanizing environment. ... They are their own bosses, setting the
terms of their labor and the measure of their reward. More than any
of us, they have the freedom to develop right livelihood.
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves
the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.
Chapter 5
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Living life in touch with divine spirit lets us see the light of love
in all living beings. ... A culture that is dead to love can only be
resurrected by spiritual awakening.
Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith,
shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and
legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use
religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism,
racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at
the heart of every major religious tradition.
No wonder then that so many people who claim to believe in religious
teachings do not allow their habits of being to reflect these
beliefs. For example, the Christian church remains one of the most
racially segregated institutions in our society.
Spiritual life is first and foremost about commitment to a way of
thinking and behaving that honors principles of inter-being and
interconnectedness. When I speak of the spiritual, I refer to the
recognition within everyone that there is a place of mystery in our
lives where forces that are beyond human desire or will alter
circumstances and/or guide and direct us.
When we begin to experience the sacred in our everyday lives we bring
to mundane tasks a quality of concentration and engagement that lifts
the spirit. We recognize divine spirit everywhere. This is especially
true when we face difficulties. So many people turn to spiritual
thinking only when they experience difficulties, hoping that the
sorrow or pain will just miraculously disappear. Usually, they find
that the place of suffering--the place where we are broken in spirit,
when accepted and embraced, is also a place of peace and possibility.
Our sufferings do not magically end; instead we are able to wisely
alchemically recycle them. They become the abundant waste that we use
to make new growth possible.
Chapter 6
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Awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with
power and domination. ... 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. To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, our
society would need to embrace change.
Commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by offering us a
different set of values to live by. In large and small ways, we make
choices based on a belief that honesty, openness, and personal
integrity need to be expressed in public and private decisions.
Embracing a love ethic means that we utilize all the dimensions of
love--care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and
knowledge--in our everyday lives. We can successfully do this only by
cultivating awareness. Being aware enables us to critically examine
our actions to see what is needed so that we can give care, be
responsible, show respect, and indicate a willingness to learn.
Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love is vital
because we are daily bombarded with messages that tell us love is
about mystery, about that which cannot be known. We see movies in
which people are represented as being in love who never talk with one
another, who fall into bed without ever discussing their bodies,
their sexual needs, their likes and dislikes. Indeed, the message
received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less
compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and
transgressive edge. These messages are often brought to us by
profiteering producers who have no clue about the art of loving, who
substitute their mystified visions because they do not really know
how to genuinely portray loving interaction.
To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing
care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will to cooperate), we
have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we
embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the
way.
Chapter 7
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While emotional needs are difficult, and often are impossible to
satisfy, material desires are easier to fulfill. Our nation fell into
the trap of pathological narcissim in the wake of wars that brought
economic bounty while undermining the vision of freedom and justice
essential to sustaining democracy.
Relationships of intimacy and closeness are destroyed as the addicted
individual participates in a greedy search for satisfaction. Greed
characterizes the nature of this pursuit because it is unending; the
desire is ongoing and can never be fully satisfied.
The need for instant gratification is a component of greed.
Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the heart we are encouraged
to treat partners as though they were objects we can pick up, use,
and then discard and dispose of at will, with the one criteria being
whether or not individualistic desires are satisfied.
When greedy consumption is the order of the day, dehumanization
becomes acceptable. Then, treating people like objects is not only
acceptable but is required behavior.
I once asked a rich man, who had only recently attained his status,
what he liked most about his new wealth. He said that he liked seeing
what money could make people do, how it could make them shift and
violate their values. He personified the culture of greed. His
pleasure in being wealthy was grounded in the desire to not only have
more than others but to use that power to degrade and humiliate them.
To maintain and satisfy greed, one must support domination. And the
world of domination is always a world without love.
Greed subsumes love and compassion; living simply makes room for
them. Living simply is the primary way everyone can resist greed
every day.
We can all resist the temptation of greed. We can work to change
public policy, electing leaders who are honest and progressive. We
can turn off the television set. We can show respect for love. To
save our planet we can stop thoughtless waste. We can recycle and
support ecologically advanced survival strategies. We can celebrate
and honor communalism and interdependency by sharing resources. All
these gestures show a respect and a gratitude for life. When we value
the delaying of gratification and take responsibility for our
actions, we simplify our emotional universe. Living simply makes
loving simple.
Chapter 8
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To ensure human survival everywhere in the world, females and males
organize themselves into communities. Communities sustain life--not
nuclear families, or the "couple," and certainly not the rugged
individualist. There is no better place to learn the art of loving
than in community.
Replacing the family community with a more privatized small
autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power
more possible.
[Fewer people to hear you scream.]
The failure of the patriarchal nuclear family has been utterly
documented. Exposed as dysfunctional more often than not, as a place
of emotional chaos, neglect, and abuse, only those in denial continue
to insist that this is the best environment for raising children.
Research by anthropologists and sociologists indicates that small
privatized units, especially those organized around patriarchal
thinking, are unhealthy environments for everyone. Globally,
enlightened, healthy parenting is best realized within the context of
community and extended family networks.
When children are taught to enjoy quiet time, to be alone with their
thoughts and reveries, they carry this skill into adulthood.
Individuals young and old striving to overcome fears of being alone
often choose meditation practice as a way to embrace solitude.
The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of loving
practice and living in community. None of us can have things our way
all the time. Giving up something is one way we sustain a commitment
to the collective well-being.
Chapter 10
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Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall
into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas.
If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose
love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible
for your actions.
I learned that we may meet a true love and that our lives may be
transformed by such an encounter even when it does not lead to sexual
pleasure, committed bonding, or even sustained contact. The myth of
true love--that fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join, and
live happily thereafter--is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Yet many
of us, female and male, carry these fantasies into adulthood and are
unable to cope with the reality of what it means either to have an
intense life-altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing
relationship or to be in a relationship. True love does not always
lead to happily ever after, and even when it does, sustaining love
still takes work.
The heartbeat of true love is the willingness to reflect on one's
actions, and to process and communicate this reflection with the
loved one.
Chapter 11
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Love makes us feel more alive. Living in a state of lovelessness we
feel we might as well be dead; everything within us is silent and
still. We are unmoved. "Soul murder" is the term psychoanalysts use
to describe this state of living death. It echoes the biblical
declaration that "anyone who does not know love is still in death."
Cultures of domination court death. Hence the ongoing fascination
with violence, the false insistence that it is natural for the strong
to prey upon the weak, for the more powerful to prey upon the
powerless.
Much contemporary visionary work on death and dying has highlighted
learning how to love.
Just as the dying are often carted off so that the process of dying
will be witnessed by only a select few, grieving individuals are
encouraged to let themselves go only in private, in appropriate
settings away from the rest of us. Sustained grief is particularly
disturbing in a culture that offers a quick fix for any pain.
Love knows no shame. To be loving is to be open to grief, to be
touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending. The way we grieve is
informed by whether we know love. Since loving lets us let go of so
much fear, it also guides our grief. When we lose someone we love, we
can grieve without shame.
In its deepest sense, grief is a burning of the heart, an intense
heat that gives us solace and release. When we deny the full
expression of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing
emotional pain and physical ailments.
The only way to live that life where, as Edith Piaf sings, we
"regret nothing" is by awakening to an awareness of the value of
right livelihood and right action. Understanding that death is always
with us can serve as the faithful reminder that the time to do what
we feel called to do is always now and not in some distant and
unimagined future.
To be here now does not mean that we do not make plans but that we
learn to give the making of future plans only a small amount of
energy. And once future plans are made, we release our attachment to
them.
Chapter 12
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Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take
responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is
to embrace a love that heals.
Healthy families resolve conflict without coercion, shaming, or
violence. When we collectively move our culture in the direction of
love, we may see these loving families represented more in the mass
media. They will become more visible in all walks of daily life.
Hopefully, we will then listen to these stories with the same
intensity that we have when we listen to narratives of violent pain
and abuse. When this happens, the visible happiness of functional
families will become part of our collective consciousness.
Life without communion in love with others would be less fulfilling
no matter the extent of one's self-love.
The rugged individual who relies on no one else is a figure who can
only exist in a culture of domination where a privileged few use more
of the world's resources than the many who must daily do without.
Worship of individualism has in part led us to the unhealthy culture
of narcissism that is so all pervasive in our society.
We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment
to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts.
Chapter 13
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Our cultural passion for the angelic expresses our longing to be in
paradise, to return on earth to a time of connectedness and goodwill,
to a time when we were heart-whole.
Woundedness is not a cause for shame, it is necessary for spiritual
growth and awakening.
author: hooks, bell, 1952-2021
detail:
LOC: BF575.L8 H655
tags: book,love,non-fiction,philosophy
title: All About Love
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love
non-fiction
philosophy