This is a close reading of all about love: new visions written by bell hooks and published in 2001. Every week I will read a chapter and complete a short writing exercise designed to probe her thinking and push mine. My commentary is in the WildeNotes.
For week 2 I tackled chapter 1, pages 3-14.
Words that Open the Chapter
CLARITY: GIVE LOVE WORDS
As society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush… Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we’re reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly.
Diane Ackerman
Chapter 1 is all about defining the word love. Although it is felt as a universal presence, hooks’ postulates that we do not have an adequate definition outside of ‘deep affection’ or ‘romantic desire’. She spends this chapter trying to narrow down our understanding of love by expanding the definition to include “various ingredients–care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”
5 Dope Quotes
(Longer quotes this week but only because the chapter was SO, SO good. And so, so relevant.)
Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word “love” is the source of our difficulty in loving. If our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of loving would not be so mystifying. Dictionary definitions of love tend to emphasize romantic love, defining love first and foremost as “profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, especially when based on sexual attraction.” Of course, other definitions let the reader know one may have such feelings within a context that is not sexual. However, deep affection does not really adequately describe love’s meaning. (3)
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care… An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe we were loved… Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad… My family of origin provided, throughout my childhood, a dysfunctional setting and it remains one. That does not mean that it is not also a setting in which affection, delight, and care are present. (6-7)
Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse. Most psychologically and/or physically abused children have been taught by parenting adults that love can coexist with abuse. And in extreme cases that abuse is an expression of love. This faulty thinking often shapes our adult perceptions of love. This faulty thinking often shapes our adult perceptions of love. So that just as we would cling to the notion that those who hurt us as children loved us, we try to rationalize being hurt by other adults by insisting that they love us. (9)
I wanted to know love but I was afraid to surrender and trust another person. I was afraid to be intimate. By choosing men who were not interested in being loving, I was able to practice giving love, but always within an unfulfilling context. Naturally, my need to receive love was not met. I got what I was accustomed to getting — care and affection, usually mingled with a degree of unkindness, neglect, and on some occasions outright cruelty. At times I was unkind. It took me a long time to recognize that while I wanted to know love, I was afraid to be truly intimate. Many of us choose relationships of affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer. The demands are not as intense as loving requires. The risk is not as great. (10)
So many of us long for love but lack the courage to take risks. Even though we are obsessed with the idea of love, the truth is that most of us live relatively decent, somewhat satisfying lives even if we often feel that love is lacking. In these relationships we share genuine affection and/or care. For most of us, that feels like enough because it is usually a lot more than we received in our families of origin. (11)
Books and Authors Mentioned
hooks’ brings her references up very close to the beginning of the chapter. Towards the middle of attempting to define love, she starts to name popular media. She spends much of the chapter applying Peck’s definition of love while simultaneously explaining why it’s not the most sought after concept.
Books
- A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman, 4
- The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, 4
- The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, 4
WildeNotes
I learned a new term in this chapter:
Cathexis
ca·thex·is | \ kə-ˈthek-səs , ka- \plural cathexes\ kə-ˈthek-ˌsēz , ka- \
Definition of cathexis
: investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea.
Apparently, there is a lot of confusion between cathecting and loving. Which makes a lot of sense if we think of love as a verb and cathexis as a noun. The definition of Love that hooks settles on also makes a ton of sense to me:
The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
Peck via Fromm on the definition of love.
This chapter was really straightforward and simple but also mind blowing. She simplifies a concept that feels so complex and in doing so condemns a large part of what makes love complex. She provides clarity.
It’s as simple as saying, the love I have been exposed to is dysfunctional. Therefore, I must choose to love with intention. I may have to work a little harder at it, because my previous understanding was wrong. I feel like the best writing I can give this chapter is to quote her because that’s what touched me most deeply. Her words.
And if one’s goal is self-recovery, to be well in one’s soul, honestly and realistically confronting lovelessness is part of the healing process. A lack of sustained love does not mean the absence of care, affection, or pleasure.
bell hooks, all about love, 9
Confronting lovelessness in a material world driven by technology is difficult. That’s because consumerism stands in for love. Hell, on facebook and instagram, in text messages and emails, emojis, comments, and ‘likes’ all stand in for love. How is the platformed society that José van Djick writes about reconstructing our understandings of love and each other? (That is one helluva writing prompt that I will revisit one day soon.)
This study of love and lovelessness is so important to me because I am raising a child. Selfishly, I want us to share love. But beyond that, parentally, I want them to know love, be able to sense it, and walk away when it isn’t being served. How can I expect that if I cannot figure out how to model it? Towards both my child but (mostly) towards myself? How do I stop engaging in lovelessness with me? How do I handle myself with real love? And not the manufactured kind, or the kind that seeks to spoil me, or the self-care bullshit that drives whole industries… I am talking about that bell hooks shit. I want to love myself like bell teaches love.
I think I am in the right position to learn. (Can’t lie, I couldn’t put this down, I read through chapter 2 too and it’s a doozy. This. Book. Is. Already. Changing. My. Life.)
So, to answer Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it? Everything. Love has everything to do with Tina.
Source Notes
As always, I try to comb through the book for any references I can learn more about. This chapter was heavy on hooks and low on reference material. Mostly she focused on Erich Fromm and M. Scott Peck, both of whom I looked into extensively.
Books
A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman is a science historian that wrote A Natural History of Love which explores the allure of adultery, the appeal of aphrodisiacs, and the cult of the kiss. Published in 1995, it appears to be highly acclaimed but hooks does not feel that it tackles defining love:
In the introduction to Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of Love, she declares ‘Love is the great intangible.’ A few sentences down from this she suggests: ‘Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is.’ Coyly she adds: ‘We use the word love in such a sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely everything.’ No definition ever appears in her book that would help anyone trying to learn the art of loving. Yet she is not alone in writing of love in ways that cloud our understanding…
bell hooks, all about love, 4
She uses Ackerman to launch into the necessity of a shared and tangible definition of the word/concept love. She eventually adapts a meaning presented by M. Scott Peck and Erich Fromm.
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
M. Scott Peck was an American psychiatrist and self-help author that has a great wiki page. In the second half of The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978, he tackles the nature of love which he considers is the driving force behind spiritual growth. hooks relies on him heavily in this chapter.
Like many who read The Road Less Traveled again and again, I am grateful to have been given a definition of love that helped me face the places in my life where love was lacking. I was in my mid-twenties when I first learned to understand love ‘as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’
bell hooks, all about love, 10
She says that people struggle with Peck’s definition because of his use of the word spiritual. But he is referring to the dimension of our core reality, where mind, body, and spirit are one (hooks 13). Peck is talking about an emotion that speaks to your soul.
bell also mentions that Peck’s work is an extension of Ehrich Fromm.
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
Fromm was a German Jew that escaped during the Nazi Regime. He was also a psychoanalyst, social psychologist, sociologist, and philosopher. Fromm’s wiki is okay. Not as good as Peck’s. The Encyclopedia Britannica has a much better write-up on him. His book, The Art of Loving, was published in 1956 and extends his thinking on human nature.
In it he argues that love is the only answer to our need to overcome separateness and, unlike his contemporaries, he postulates that love is an activity. Something that can be learned and taught. He separates love from the emotions that we call ‘falling for someone’ or ‘lusting after one another’. He calls on love as a rational means to become better humans.
#LetsGrow #LoveAlways #WhitneiWrites
Image Credits:
Bitmoji.
Read more about my journey to understanding all about love in the previous edition.
Note: There is never enough time to write and research. I cut this short because like every other human I know, I have to work and parent and be productive. bell hooks’ work is sticking to my ribs though. I may re-read this book annually, though I am sure I will do so faster than I am this first time. If you read this far, then I hope life finds you well and willing to learn more about love. And if you read it before I have the chance to come back through and edit more thoroughly, please forgive the typos and miswordings.
Whitnei the Writer 