love as destructive force

It’s takes no strength to be a cynic, and I don’t harbor illusions that it’s courageous or noble. But right now this is how I feel, and these are my thoughts and I promised myself I would write these down once a week. Indeed this week I seek to record these thoughts because I fear they might change, and I need to record how I’m feeling now so I can mark my progress in the future, when I might finally grow out of my adolescent views on love.

Love is one of the most destructive and dangerous forces we know. Yet people celebrate it rather than fear it. I’m not talking about what happens after love, heartbreak, divorce and death being its common aftermath. And this isn’t a bros before hos rant about the friends left behind when you pursue your own happiness and spend all your time with a significant other. I’m talking about how love itself is force, producing just as much evil as good.

As a teenager I was discouraged from using the word hate, they said it was too strong, and added unnecessary negativity to the world; but I observed that people are encouraged to use the word love, even overusing it. Most people agree that love and hate are two sides of the same coin, but when we chose to focus only on the one side we forget the other (I feel it is just as important to know how it feels to be hated for no reason as it does to be loved, unconditionally*). I believe that all love can be re-read as hate, its equal and opposite reaction. It seems that much as your are attracted to the things that you love, as much as you want to protect them, this is how much you are disgusted by things you don’t love, and want them to disappear. Every attraction has a reaction.

For many, the ultimate culmination of love is sex, whose ultimate end is a child. People say they love children because they are full of potential, but it’s this potential that scares me. As much potential as a child has to do good, so have they to do evil. Children are the ultimate agents of chaos. Bringing extreme joy and extreme sadness with them, and leaving love and frustration in their wake.

When a person loves another person, this is celebrated, but many will agree that a love of objects can be destructive. People say this love is ‘unhealthy’ and ‘unnatural’. But there’s a reason why we use the same word, love; the feeling is the same. I posit that it’s not the object of love that’s the problem, its’ the act of loving which corrupts relationships. I don’t believe that love is a universal salve, bringing Goodness to everything is is applied to. I’m not arguing that love is not transformative, love changes things, it changes the subject and the object. But change isn’t always good. I think my point here is just that love is dangerous and that people should use discretion around it, not blindly follow it wherever it takes them.

*When I was younger I felt it was my responsibility to hate those I who I thought had never been hated. It’s embarassingly presumptuous to pretend to know what someone else has, or has not felt before. But when you’re a teenager, you think you know what’s best for everyone.

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