Love and mercy in the 21st century
Perhaps, of all human feelings, love is the most mysterious. Perhaps that is why in ancient times man decided that the most suitable symbol of this feeling should be the moon with its changeability – decrease and increase, and also an invisible reverse side.
However, at all times love was also the most tragic feeling. To see this, it is enough to recall the best and most beautiful pages of love lyrics of the past and present. Of course, this does not mean that there has not been, there is, and can not be, a happy love. Such examples are also enough. But if we talk about love in the new century, it still seems more tragic than happy.
Love is sung by many and many generations of poets, artists, musicians. But so far there has never been a society based on the cult of human love. And what just did not worship a person throughout his long history, what kind of cults there was! But the cult of love and mercy is not. Following the Russian classic A. Kuprin, we can only
In the meantime, we see something completely different. In our nihilistic and even cynical age on the podium erected His Majesty Sex. And this is the most eloquent indicator of the results to which modern scientific and technological progress has led. Modern people try to keep up with the times, create comfortable conditions for their personal lives. Their souls are possessed by a real “monster of consumerism”. So a person ceases to seek true love, but without any tired looking for amenities, comfort, benefits and enjoyment. Human relationships become pragmatic, and love becomes a marriage of convenience. People get married or marry in an apartment, cottage, car, money, posts, but not for love.
I do not think that in the past centuries people did not think about the comforts of life. But then this question was not raised so sharply, and therefore it was not conspicuous.
But now, when the living conditions of life have reached perfection, it would seem that a person should breathe a sigh of relief.
In the whole history of mankind there was no time more bloody, cruel and cynical than the 20th century. World wars, dictatorial regimes, grand catastrophes… Nowhere and in nothing remains a mystery, a delicate expectation of the miracle of the great discovery. And all this could not but affect the love and mercy. Thanks to Freud and his followers, with the most beautiful human feeling, all the covers are thrown off.
Thousands of times the French thinker Laroshfuko was right: “There is only one love, but there are thousands of fakes.” The present time is the best illustration of these words.
Modern people have lost true love. They do not even try to find it, because because of the constant lack of time, they replaced it with various surrogates. Raskovannost, immediately turning into promiscuity, the demonstration of intimate scenes in movies, the cult of sophisticated eroticism forced modern man to believe that love is sexual intercourse. And true love is a spiritual union. She – in spiritual harmony, cordial intimacy and absolute indispensability of a loved one.
Such a view of the future of the most beautiful of human feelings may seem pessimistic. But the events of the 20th century do not give rise to other reflections. The vulgarly interpreted teaching of Freud and his followers led to a struggle for emancipation and the “sexual revolution”. There was a substitution of love with sex, inner harmony – external communication between people, “the temple of love” – ”the market of love.”
In his reasoning on this subject as far back as the 1960s, Fromm spoke of “destroying love” in the West. The reason for such a phenomenon known psychologist associated with the alienation of modern man from himself, other people and nature. He pointed out that the market relations are the model of any relations in the West. And love was no exception. As in the market, the buyer pays attention to the bright external packaging of the goods, their conformity to fashion and other consumer characteristics, in the same way, and in the relationship between a man and a woman, external attributes, social position, etc., are in the first place. In women, the ability to “submit yourself,” the ability to manage a household, etc., and in men – a position, power, money.
In the proof of the superficial and light-hearted attitude towards love, Fromm cites a huge number of “consumer films” about happy and unhappy love, “base songs” designed for the mass consumer. He wrote: “Now in the West is considered” fashionable “love, in the source of which – a sudden feeling of emotion, emotional spontaneity, unbridled passion, excluding responsibility, human seriousness, spiritual and moral kinship and mutual understanding between partners.” In such a society, people only talk about love, but much more important are career success, prestige, money, power, etc.
So it was in the West almost half a century ago. The same thing is happening today before our eyes in Russia. Is it good or bad? The answer, in my opinion, is obvious. But for all its obviousness, the choice remains for each of us.
At present, love is in a hostile environment. When this state ends, nobody knows. But what is well known is that without love in society there will be no mutual respect, no mutual understanding, no mercy. And without them, man is no longer a man, but his pathetic likeness.
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