All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks

Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.

young listeners remain reluctant to embrace the idea of love as a transformative force.

In popular culture love is always the stuff of fantasy. Maybe this is why men have done most of the theorizing about love. Fantasy has primarily been their domain, both in the sphere of cultural production and in everyday life. Male fantasy is seen as something that can create reality, whereas female fantasy is regarded as pure escape. Hence, the romance novel remains the only domain in which women speak of love with any degree of authority.

Men writing about love always testify that they have received love. They speak from this position; it gives what they say authority. Women, more often than not, speak from a position of lack, of not having received the love we long for. A woman who talks of love is still suspect. Perhaps this is because all that enlightened woman may have to say about love will stand as a direct threat and challenge to the visions men have offered us.

Our silence shields us from uncertainty. We want to know love. We are simply afraid the desire to know too much about love will lead us closer and closer to the abyss of lovelessness.

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.

The word “love” is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.

Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

Lies are told about the most insignificant aspects of daily life. When many of us are asked basic questions, like How are you today? a lie is substituted for the truth.

Carl Jung insightfully emphasized the truism that “where the will to power is paramount love will be lacking.”

Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgment on your manhood.”

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection.

Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.

Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism.

Self-love cannot flourish in isolation. It is no easy task to be self-loving.

The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives.

This division between a false self invented to please others and a more authentic self need not exist when we cultivate positive self-esteem.

Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love.

To some folks, daily service to others is affirmative spiritual practice, one that expresses their love for others. When we make a commitment to staying in touch with divine forces that inform our inner and outer world, we are choosing to lead a life in the spirit.

All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.

Fear of radical changes leads many citizens of our nation to betray their minds and hearts.

Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known.

When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.

Left alone in the “me” culture, we consume and consume with no thought of others.

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment.

Greed violates the spirit of connectedness and community that is natural to human survival.

Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin. Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible. It gave absolute rule to the father, and secondary rule over children to the mother.

By encouraging the segregation of nuclear families from the extended family, women were forced to become more dependent on an individual man, and children more dependent on an individual woman. It is this dependency that became, and is, the breeding ground for abuses of power.

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.

Keeping family secrets often makes it impossible for extended groups to build community.

The more genuine our romantic loves the more we do not feel called upon to weaken or sever ties with friends in order to strengthen ties with romantic partners. Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us—we are not diminished. What we learn through experience is that our capacity to establish deep and profound connections in friendship strengthens all our intimate bonds.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

To practice the art of loving we have first to choose love—admit to ourselves that we want to know love and be loving even if we do not know what that means.

Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.

Listening does not simply mean we hear other voices when they speak but that we also learn to listen to the voice of our own hearts as well as inner voices.

When we are committed to doing the work of love we listen even when it hurts.

Approaching romantic love from a foundation of care, knowledge, and respect actually intensifies romance. By taking the time to communicate with a potential mate we are no longer trapped by the fear and anxiety underlying romantic interactions that take place without discussion or the sharing of intent and desire.

The essence of true love is mutual recognition—two individuals seeing each other as they really are.

Death is among us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment.

To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals.

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth.