Living By a Love Ethic

“Any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature” (Living by a Love Ethic pg. 92). One would think that with such a foreboding prediction people would be more willing to move toward this communal love ethic that the author says is necessary for human survival. However that is not the case. As you can see within our own society we are driven by our capitalist inspired individual needs and aren’t particularly concerned about others. Our society is full of nay sayers who claim that “sexism is here to stay and the rich will never share their resources” (Living by a Love Ethic pg. 89). And those who feel as the author does and wants to see change lack the courage to actually stand up for what they believe and do something about it.

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic but what the author implies of everyone simply embracing this love ethic, just for the purpose of feeling more “human”, simply won’t happen, at least not in the way that the author wants to. I draw this reasoning from the Divided Self reading. This author paints a very vivid picture of how the brain works and how we struggle with our desires and distractions. The author uses the symbol of the elephant and rider to describe the human brain. The elephant symbolizes our wants, desires, intuition, and all other types of automatic thinking that we can’t truly control. The rider symbolizes our conscience actions and thoughts. Their relationship was described as one where the elephant is powerful and self centered while the rider tries to coax it (not always successfully) to its will. using this symbol I am able to understand how people are unwilling to act on a communal level. If the problem isn't directly affecting the person, it is hard for the rider to coax the elephant to move since its comfortable where it is. What the author from Living by a Love Ethics implies is that people should be motivated to move toward the love ethic since their most human side desperately seeks after it. Again I point to the symbol of the elephant and rider. While the rider may see the need to act and fervently tries to move the elephant towards the goal, if the elephant doesn’t want to move, it won’t move.

Yet I still remain optimistic about a society that is driven by love. While this self initiative model won’t work for the entire society, since only a few would be inspired to move, I believe that there is a way to move the elephant within everyone. It’s somewhat simplistic; make the elephant uncomfortable on a national level. The only way to move an elephant is to make it so that what it wants is leading towards this love ideal. I don’t know what type of catalyst would be needed to move the nation’s elephant, but I'm sure that it would have to be enormous.