Home Pop Culture “Can’t buy love and other Myths that make your World go round.”

“Can’t buy love and other Myths that make your World go round.”

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“All you need is love.”The Beatles.

Throughout the course of your life, the pursuit of love has in one way or another described and defined your behavior ad infinitum. On the surface you know what it is and you crave it religiously and with the help of social monikers, celebrations and myths your sense of it is always quenched. Yet if its always quenched why are you always so miserable and like a restless drunk in search of more?

A valid observation and one that irks you more than you are ready to confide. That said if we are to appreciate our collective neuroses and what essentially informs our social dialogue and aspirations perhaps what we ought to do is get to the dirty business of trying to actually figuring out what love is and whether it actually exists…

Thus what is love? Or better still “have I loved?” Or, even more engaging, “Can I love?” Or if we really want to break your disillusioned heart- “Is there even love?”

Consider life.  In all of its seeming complexity and convolution and drawn out emotional extremes, one could reduce it rather easily.  One is left to their parent’s devices until they’re old enough to think on the level required to learn on a set curriculum.  From then on, society works with the parents to foster a child that’s fit to integrate his or herself into said society. How this person will be perceived and the role he or she will play is contingent on the person’s behavior, outward presentation, and expertise.  Observe the key word –‘perceived,’ but more on this a little later…

What drives us to fit this schematic?  As dysfunctional and absurd as this model has become, why do we relentlessly pursue it, consider it a given, and ultimately define ourselves behind it? Don’t get me wrong; theoretically, it is a functional model.  But the reality is a synthesis of our non-sequitur emotional pursuits which at best leave most of us disillusioned, seeking all sorts of wonderful and horrible distractions from attaining status, money, fame, celebrity and ultimately the ridiculous abuse of our sanity and the drugs and games we come to rely on to temper the slide into existential morass…

Out of the darkness comes the marketed ideal.  This ideal is, supposedly: 1.) To have a family 2.) that you are capable of supporting 3.) as well or better than those around you.  But let’s focus on one aspect.  In order to have a family, biologically speaking, one must find a mate.  In order to choose this mate, one must fall in love with this person, ultimately decide to remain by this person’s side for the rest of their lives, and eventually contribute more people to this society together.  But what is this “falling in love”?  Whatever it may be, it is the integral piece of the puzzle that is required for our society’s ideal.  And how is this beautiful ideal achieved? Of course, one must first ascertain what they are pursuing.

Despite what you may think or hear on the radio great thinkers, especially those who have made it their life’s central pursuit to share their thoughts, seem ambivalent about Love. Friedrich Nietzsche, as evidenced by his relentless declaratives (that strike me as a little pretentious), seems rather unsure as to how he really feels about Love. For example, Nietzsche once said: “A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love;” and also: “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent;” not to mention: “Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.” Now, Nietzsche was undoubtedly a smart man. Thus, under the assumption that he is an intelligent and rational individual, one could easily put these three statements together and, rather than find a cohesive argument against Love, instead find a subtly bitter argument promoting homosexuality( another kind of love).

Of course here in lies the dilemma – to dare assume love is a tangible fungible product ready made for rational understood digestion. Are you reaching for your Hallmark card and valium pills yet…?

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