Love is the problem. More precisly, egocentric and ethnocentric love.
Love gets a very good press and while I’m certainly not anti-love I would like to clarify the type of love that may be useful in the world today. I would argue that loving ourselves egocentrically and narcissistically at the expense of others wont create the kind of world I would like to live in. I am not referring here to positive self-esteem but rather the self-centred “I’m the boss of me, and I’m great I am” muppetry that is supported by both consumerism and liberal education. Research shows that telling children how wonderful they are all the time without feedback based on their actual behaviour is bad for both their learning and happiness for example (see the book 59 Seconds for more on this). Thankfully egocentric love is relatively rare in it’s extreme form despite being encouraged by society and largely found in such populations as murders, rapists and door-to-door salesmen…joke…not all murders are bad people 🙂
The next type of love that I see as deeply problematic in the world today is ethnocentricism – love restricted to a particular group such as Christians, black people, hippies, heterosexuals, Man United supporters and most commonly “my friends and family”. Examples of this type of love I’ve seen recently are my neighbours who are totally interested in even saying hello to me as they are too wrapped up in their kids, the entire British political debate, a company I work with where one department just looks after itself and has no concern for the wider organizational needs, hippy friends who hate business, business friends who mock hippies, etc. Limiting ones love to one group may seem like a good thing (and it can be beautiful in its own way) but always creates an out-group that are devalued and in many cases dehumanized and persecuted.
The love that I see as being deeply needed in the world today is wordcentric and cosmocentric love – caring for all people and even animals and the planet itself. Until some people in the world started loving on this level things like slavery, ethnic-cleansing and pollution were simply not regarded as problems. Achieved by a few spiritual teachers since antiquity and politically from the French and US revolutions and British anti-slavery movements, this wave has still not come to fruition in the general population. Most people in the UK care about Africa a bit on a good day, but 10,000 deaths in Sudan still get less news coverage then England beating Germany 1-0 in football. This is a problem.
This progression from egocentric (me), to ethnocentric (mine) to worldcentric (all of us) is basic developmental hierarchy – yes I said hierarchy, each is more inclusive and therefore “better” than the last, if you disagree have tea with a rapist and a fundamentalist Christian, then get back to me. The “lower levels” of love are still love, though not perhaps in the purest mystical sense, and still have value. For me the important thing is including and transcending them rather than getting stuck there. There’s nothing wrong with loving yourself or your family, just don’t ONLY love them…at least if you’d like to see an end to some of the major problems faced by the world today. Climate change, terrorism and social injustice for example are all caused by love at the lower levels and can only be solved by more inclusive worldcentric love. This can be developed internally by meditative practices and supported externally but the structures we choose to build. How does your workplace support love for example? Or highly relevant to those reading this in the UK, which political leader embodies even a smidgen of worldcentricism?
NB: This article draws heavily on the work of Kohelberg, Gilligan and integral theorist Ken Wilber. Big love and respect.
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