“Love Is Dead”?

Theme:

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

“Love is Dead” is the title of British singer-songwriter Brett Anderson’s first single released on 19 March 2007 with the following lyrics:

Nothing ever goes right

Nothing really flows in my life

No one really cares if no one ever shares my care

People push by with fear in their eyes in my life

Love is dead, love is dead

The telephone rings, but no one ever thinks to speak to me

The traffic speeds by, but no one’s ever stopped too late

Intelligent friends don’t care in the end, believe me

Love is dead, love is dead

And plastic people with imaginary smiles

Exchanging secrets at the back of their minds

Plastic people

Plastic people

Nothing ever goes right

Nothing really flows in my life

No one really cares if this horror’s inside my head

People push by with fear in their eyes in my life

Love is dead, love is dead

Love is dead, love is dead

Love is dead, love is dead

And all the lies that you’ve given us

And all the things that you said

And all the lies that you’ve given us…

Blow like wind in my head

“Love is dead” may only be taken meaningfully if viewed in a context. As a description of a particular event, we may utter it in reference to a specific relationship that has lost its original state of deep intimacy. The statement, therefore, refers and points to a concrete circumstance of actual human experience; something whose real occurrence is not special or unique but commonplace in a variety of conditions. It points to the fact that there is nothing persistently eternal in love. Love comes and goes; it appears and disappears. Its magic shines at one point and loses its brilliance at another. There is nothing permanent and immortal in love. But again, lest we lose track of our reference point, the context is particular–or more accurately, specific–experience and not general, much less universal.

The death of love in one particular experience does not accurately sustain the idea that love is dead as a matter of generalization for reality proves otherwise. Such is a clear case of hasty generalization that only feeds emotional exaggeration. There could be thousands of instances where we could consistently say that love has already died in the personal lives of diverse individual persons, but love remains alive and kicking in thousands of other people’s lives. As long as there are lovers, love cannot die in the experiences of these people. And in this connection, even if we stretch the scope of signification to the universal degree, love as such will never die.

In fact, even when a partner in a relationship bound by deep love as in the case of two lovers–they could be husband and wife–has already passed on (read: died), the love of the living partner for the former lingers and lives on within the lifetime of the latter. This is, therefore, an affirmation that in certain cases, love seems undying. And what could be the problem if we call this “true love”? Nothing at all, for true love is the love that never dies.

God may die as the German philologist Friedrich Nietzsche figuratively puts it in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra (in the original German: Also Sprach Zarathustra) while advancing the notion that in reality, there is no God at all since such is just a product of human conceptualization. But such formulation never applies to love since it is above and beyond a concept. In fact, the Austrian-Jewish Hasidic philosopher Martin Buber situates it in a more noteworthy location in his I-Thou (in the original German: Ich-Du) by describing love as “a relationship-between” and not “an experience-within”. Buber asserts:

“Love is the responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling – the equality of all lovers. . . .”

Perhaps, appropriating the Buberian contextual configuration would lead us to infer that, on the one hand, “experiential love” which generally depends on an emotional platform as a matter of subjective feeling is the kind of love that could possibly meet its death. On the other hand, “relational love” which draws its strength equally from the energies of individual persons in love with each other is the kind of love that never dies. This notion is likewise echoed in the Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s words “On Love” in his monumental opus, The Prophet:

Love gives naught [nothing] but itself

and takes naught[nothing] but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

In the final analysis, we could truly say that for some individuals, love is really dead, but lovers come and go every now and then without losing their sense of love and this assures us that by and large, love is always alive.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia Pacific Research.


Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page

Become a Member of Global Research


Articles by: Prof. Ruel F. Pepa

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.

For media inquiries: [email protected]