Un-romanticising love.
I’m about to ruin love for you. Many know the cliché boy meets girl, falls in love and lives happily ever after is complete rubbish in the real world yet, I think people do not realise how rubbish romance actually is. Rationalisation takes the fun out of a lot of things, so in accordance with my sense of satirical comedy, this is what I am going to do.
What is love?
We all have our own subjective definitions of this ever-changing-feet-sweeping concept but is there not an empirical answer to what love truly is?
Here is my rational definition of love- love is the lust of property.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche introduces this in a relatively lengthy aphorism titled: What is called Love. The Lust of property is what he defines it as. He opens with the foundation that love is our desire to extend our will over others and is the term we use as a facade for “possession”. This extends not just romantically but even platonically; we feel protective of our friends and allies because they provide us with a sense of backing and comforting strength, ascertaining that our will and presence cannot be erased as easily as we think our “enemies” hope it would be.
For those we do not yet “possess”, we lust over them. Whilst lust may be a cardinal sin and evoke different ideas of love, do lust and love not derive from similar origins? When we are single we are always on the lookout, the strive for new “property” and novelties are everlasting. When we gradually become satiated with things, we then begin to look outwards.
Lust and Love are two fruits of the same branch. Take, for example, if one feels his “possession” (his lover) is threatened by another man, this threat can be perceived as lustful greed by his lover to him but if one is single and is looking for new pastures, he may label this intent as love instead when both are of the same nature.
This may also be a great rationale behind why people cheat. The site of a distant coast consistently excites our covetousness. It makes us wonder and lust over the possibilities that could be made into reality, indulging in our minds’ perverse fantasies. In the greater scheme of our minds, it is to assert our will over the more.
Unconsciously, we are all strategists. Maybe not of the same calibre as Ceasar but a strategist nonetheless. When we are satiated with our possessions and look outwards, we begin to look for weaknesses and opportunities to possess and satisfy our ever-growing lust. One begins this outreach by filling these gaps under the noble jargonistic phrasing of ‘love’. We look for sicknesses and weaknesses that others have and try to make ourselves make sense to them with the intent of how we can complete them under the subtle doctrine of possession.
Unrequited Romance
“The Love of the sexes, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed for by him; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over her body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired.”
This quote from The Gay Science describes that for the most desired, we want to be their zenith of all things. Do we not desire for our beloved to think of us always? Do we not desire them under our hegemony and their undying loyalty to us? We want to dwell in their minds and live in their actions consistently, casting our shadows behind their figures. We want all their time, attention and devotion.
While this indeed is toxic, this is ultimately what the mind craves in our utopias. In unrequited love, this ultimate lust for property illustrates itself in internal desire. Despite it being unreciprocated, the unrequited lives with his engine always running and undying subversive desires.
The most quintessence of what love is our desire to possess and then assimilate or mould it into what we want it to be. We all want power yet, our ideas of power differ from each other. If the dreams of the unrequited render them powerful then, if fulfilled, the unrequited will have evolved into their version of omnipotence.
What can we take away?
While we realise and accept that all human desires stem from lust/love and desire for power, we can accept that the lust for property is not just a negative connotation. The dichotomy of love and lust have been proven by Nietzsche to be false and, our love for the binary choices (love and lust) has indeed blindsided us. Its simplistic nature is much more than meets the eye and if one is to ‘fall in love’, he must do so with clear intent much beyond infatuation.
We must accept that love extends itself further `than our eyes can perceive and that our partners may feel the same. Despite rationalising love, I have realised that accepting love as the lust for property can instead be interpreted positively and be embraced. Constant evaluations and positively challenging your partner can intrigue the companionship to never reach full satiety and improve room for growth. Accepting that for both parties, natural instincts that are bound to occur can also help humanise the one you love.
While I may have ruined the definition of romantic love for myself, I find a larger, more enjoyable degree of romantic in the realisation that love isn’t simply just what it is but is in fact psychologically embedded in us whether philologically or through culture.
I would like to emphasise that my views do not represent any cooperation or entity. These are no means of an attack on anyone’s right of speech, views, or religion but rather to explore and share my train of thought. I ask not for everything to be taken in strict correctness but rather for you to read or look for other sources to formulate an individual opinion to appropriately discuss and learn.
Bradley Zander.
