The Public Side of Private Love.

[Ed Hudgins]

[From our archives. I wrote this piece a few months after I starting going out with my Talia. Best move of my life! We're now happily
married with two beautiful two-year-old little girls. Happy Valentine's Day my Talia!]

“The Public Side of Private Love.”

By Edward Hudgins

February 14, 2003 -- Romantic love is the predominant theme in modern American culture. It's the number-one topic of popular music. Movies that aren’t love stories usually have an amorous subplot. Affairs saturate soap operas and Oprah-type TV focuses on relationships. Valentine's Day is devoted to love. And the activity that is most associated with and often mistaken for romantic love—sex—is an industry in itself, with magazines, videos, and websites devoted to every desire and proclivity.

One wonders why, with all this love in the air, we have crime, hate, and anger in our society? One also wonders why something as
profoundly personal and private as romantic love should be such a public matter?

Essential activities of human life do not require intimate involvement with others. While good parents are important, ultimately we each
create our own moral character. While good teachers are valuable, ultimately we each must acquire for ourselves the skills needed to make a living and do fulfilling work. Further, we can each pursue elevating or relaxing pastimes by ourselves: reading a book, watching a ballgame, etc.

But how much richer our lives are if we can see in the character and actions of another person those values and traits that we admire
most.And how much richer our lives are if another person appreciates us for our highest virtues and best qualities. And how wonderful it is if we can share mutual interests and activities with another: going to movies, plays, museums, sporting events, or restaurants; getting together with friends; and, yes, having sex, not as an ephemeral physical act but as a joyous celebration of our life with someone we love. And how happy we are if we can build a life, a marriage, a family together with another person. How blessed and joyous and full our lives will be if we love another and are loved in return!

"Love" is a verb and "making love" means creating a world and a life with our beloved that only two can share. It is a private world founded on shared experiences, values, and emotions, and on a subtle and intimate understanding of one another. Those who share such a love might want to share the fact of their happiness with friends and family. But ultimately they’ll devote their energy and efforts to enhancing their own world, their own sanctuary. They won’t worry about seeking the approval of others. They won’t want to open every aspect of that world to others because that world is too precious to be opened to random eyes.

So why should such a private matter as romantic love be a matter of public concern? Much pop culture expresses and reflects a superficial version of romance that one would expect to appeal to sixteen-year-olds. But hey, we were all sixteen once! To the extent that individuals can retain throughout their lives the thrill and excitement that accompanies a new romance, these aspects of our culture reflect a healthy appreciation that happiness should be our goal in life. Too often, though, popular culture delivers instant gratification at the expense of real romance, and too many adults, allowing vapid culture to lead them by the nose, stay at the adolescent level of superficial infatuation, thus forgoing the deep and rich satisfaction of a mature love. Such culture dulls the senses and the soul, making romance less likely and life more hopeless and empty.

Still, true romance in the private lives of individuals, which should be a private concern only, makes an important contribution to the
public good. As Ayn Rand explained, lovers must "stand naked in spirit, as well as body" before one another. In romantic love at its best, lovers are mirrors for each other’s souls. We want our beloved to see the best within us, and we want our best to be reflected in the affection and adoration shown to us by our beloved. Rand also likened love to a "command to rise," to strive to be our best. The moral character of individuals and thus moral foundations of a free society are strengthened by true love.

So those without a love on Valentine’s Day should at least be glad about what it stands for, and those with a love should count their
blessings, renew that love, and celebrate the happiness that they have earned!

[william.scherk]

"One wonders why, with all this love in the air, we have crime, hate, and anger in our society?"

It is the primate in us, I believe. You cannot expect a garden of bliss and harmony, even among reasonable people, not until we examine the womb's products and flush any product that might go ape in the future.

In my more hopeless and cynical modes, I think Darkness is not to be ever fully extirpated -- because the opportunities for anger dwell in our bones and flesh and necessary activities, hate awaits the flame set by danger and fear, and crime is but two or three paycheques away for the underclass and slightly above.

I am glad Ed found love and grandchildren to leaven his own hopelessness and cynicism, when the mode is on him. Romantic love is for me the wick that runs through human reproductive/partnership stories, the glue of propinquity and pleasure keeping the taper well in place.

We burn with love sometimes, and sometimes we don't. Romantic love can be as violently emotive as war, if not much much more so.

Enjoy your loves, Ed. They feed you things you need, I think, to lead a happy human life.

Edited February 15, 2013 by william.scherk

[Jonathan]

Much pop culture expresses and reflects a superficial version of romance that one would expect to appeal to sixteen-year-olds. But hey, we were all sixteen once! To the extent that individuals can retain throughout their lives the thrill and excitement that accompanies a new romance, these aspects of our culture reflect a healthy appreciation that happiness should be our goal in life. Too often, though, popular culture delivers instant gratification at the expense of real romance, and too many adults, allowing vapid culture to lead them by the nose, stay at the adolescent level of superficial infatuation, thus forgoing the deep and rich satisfaction of a mature love. Such culture dulls the senses and the soul, making romance less likely and life more hopeless and empty.

Ed,

Are you referring to your and others' enjoyment of superficial visions of romance like that in Turandot, with its shallow presentation of "love" as nothing more than hormonal urges? Are you confessing that your enjoyment of Turandot has dulled your senses and soul, and that it has made your life more hopeless and empty? If so, how sad, but you can always choose to experience better art which doesn't present adolescent infatuation as virtuous. You don't have to allow vapid culture to lead your around by the nose.

Courage! Choose art with a better message! You have volition!

J

[caroljane]

Human beings are strangely calibrated creatures, biologically we are all so identical yet the minute differences between us drive all our emotions. And vive those differences, and similarities.

The imperatives of sexual and romantic love can become less imperative, when the crucial reproductive years are over, yet those imperatives shape our lives and dominate our inner life stories. The loves of family and of friends stand out in more relief, like a winter landscape when the bloom time is over.

Love of ideals and of activities are essential food. But it is love of other people that is our oxygen, and we live dearly on it unto our last breath.

[Ed Hudgins]

Jonathan - Interesting question! I'd say that the plots of most operas are a bit if not a lot superficial. In part that's the nature of the media. The composer want to convey strong emotions rather than deep character development. (By the way, if I were Calaf I would not have been infatuated by the deadly ice queen!) But I do for the music rather than the story, though may of the stories can be interesting.

Cheers!