Download The Fall of Eros: Is Love Still Possible After Facebook And Miley

Is There Love
After Facebook and Miley Cyrus?
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1. What Is Romantic Love?
2. Romantic Love Is In Danger!
3. Who cares? Good Riddance!
4. Conclusion: A Challenge
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Not love as in like (“I like chocolate ice cream”)
Not friendship
Not filial or love of family
Not Agape-Divine Love
Not sex…
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But the fully realized, autonomous, erotically
driven transformative experience…
...associated with the strong desire to become
close to another person…to, in some sense,
share your life with that person.
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Eros/Sexual desire
Equitability
Spontaneity--a voluntary choice
(Solomon, About Love, 45-49)
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A unique kind of personal identity
A transformation of identity in light of another
(pp 40-50)
An “I” becomes a “we”
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Claim 1: Romantic love (and our ability to
experience it) is eroding
Claim 2: This is a bad thing, so we should be
worried.
Claim 3: We should reinvest in love, encourage
our young people to (a) read literature that
supports development of eros and romantic
imagination, and (b) nourish a taste for it.
At least three, key phenomena contributed to its
erosion:
(in addition to the general , disenchantment with the
world post scientific revolution and fall of
Christendom)
 Kinsey Reports, 1948 and 1953
 Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939
 Feminist movement, sexual liberation
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These allegations aren’t true! The historical
developments of Kinsey, Freud and sexual
liberation did not harm love! Romantic love is
quite alive (See artifacts a,b,c…)!
Sexually explicit literature, pornography, is not
only compatible with, but enhances the
imagination, and so…love!
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Transparency about sex, freedom from
rigid norms of courtship…
…power distributed equally among
partners and a clear-sighted look at
reality is a worthy trade-off!
Death of love is not a bad thing!
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Claim 1: Newer generations of young people
are not finding a desperate need to escape
isolation by turning to romantic love.
Claim 2: This is a good thing, since love is a
false alternative to isolation, anyway.
Claim 3: We should see more authentic human
relationships than romantic love!
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Newer generations do not construct identity
purely autonomously, in a vacuum.
Now we have a much deeper sense of
belonging to others, to groups outside of
ourselves
Transparency (NOT privacy) is the norm!
Social media, Facebook, Twitter or even just
email supports transparency, group identity
We already have a “we” in place
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1. Young people today DO NOT feel isolated
2. Therefore, they do NOT feel the need to
escape any such isolations and…
3. …as a result do NOT turn to romantic love to
save them from this sad, awful isolation.
4. We will see, therefore, an erosion of romantic
love and….
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…Good riddance!
Let us be done with the silly, naïve, antiquated
and false sense of security in being known by
another…since this is a ruse.
6. Let us, instead, look forward to more
authentic forms of human relationships!
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Love is one value among many
Love can enhance a meaningful life by sharing
one’s whole self with another
The tradeoff: transformation in the authentic
‘you’, involves, in some sense, limiting who you
are by another, but in other sense, importantly
expanding, learning about whom you could be!
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Warning: Romantic love is not a given, but a
phenomenon that requires attending to and
developing a sensitivity for, in order for it to
flourish.
Challenge: Can we support eros in ourselves
authentically (a) with attention to key virtues
that require vigilance in order to maintain, but
(b) without propelling rigid, curdling gender
roles and false pretenses?
This is up to YOU and your generation to get
right!