Love Is Dead
In contemplation of Sartre's Patterns of Bad Faith in conjunction with the horrific nature of my past relationships, I began to consider the principles applied in Sartre's work in relation to my relations. One qualm that's been plaguing me in my pre-sleep state amidst a plethora of beta waves, when I should be thinking about unicorns, rainbows, and guppies like every other little girl, is the question of love. Love to me has become only a question, and in it, I cannot find any substance, transfer of certain chemicals, intransigence, or truth. I believe that there is a certain feeling that accompanies specific actions, but I can no longer allow myself to subscribe to the heavily processed system of 'love." I think that what people associate with the word love has never existed. The feeling is instead something much less powerful and miraculous. My drive to believe in love and seek it is sadly little more than an instinct to seed a harvest of young baby monster Sams. I believe a lot about relationships and interactions and feeling, but having read Patterns of Bad Faith, I cannot accept 'love." I for those looking for comment boosts...I am not at all saying there are no meaningful relationships....blah blah blah....nor am I saying that drugs are good, and religion is bad.
The love I am referring to in this post is the relationship brand of love, as opposed to the love in which I can really love America, or the Jonas Brothers, or circular silver refrigerator magnets. Just as no one can ever truly achieve good faith, it is just as impossible to achieve love. Personal love (I don't have the time or desire to discuss love in terms of agape, so I'm omitting that until another time) is a strong attachment between two people in which each subject has a locked attachment to the other in a purely volitional sense, such that they are not driven to love as a means for certain wants. I believe that this love can never be achieved just as good faith because it would require intense work in order to achieve such a thing, and in the same vein, it would require an awareness in treating love like an object, attaching to it "a permanence like that of things," so that it may be maintained. Love is like an attempt to find some sort of suspension between choosing between the facticity and the transcendence found in humans, as if we are above making decisions when we are not. Belief in love allows for us to will strongly that the strong attachment felt at a moment, which is almost infinitely enjoyable, will never cease to be, and in doing so, we are in denial.
Are love and good faith comparable? I agree that, in terms of good faith, it cannot be achieved because it requires "intense work" and worry which violates the idea of good faith in general, but I would say that love, in the relationship sense, is one of the few things that occurs naturally and without effort or worry. In terms of a relationship, I would say love is a balance between facticity and transcendent possibilities; one finds oneself in a relationship and genuinely enjoys it, and as such embraces the possibilities of the development of that relationship with very little anguish. True, at time a loving relationship seems as if it would require some effort, but in general I think that true love is highlighted by a natural existence.
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