Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 14
On the Ability to Love
(page 2)

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Self-Love as a Requirement for Non-Possessive Love of Several People

Only a relative small number of people in our society really utilize our capacity to love. For love is our orientation toward life where we experience our capacity to love and grow not only with one or two persons, but everything that is alive — when we care most of all about the autonomous growth of ourselves and the people that we love. This can be done only in an active non-possessive way:

“To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing.”[2]

This kind of love can be realized only by a person that has transcended the egoistic possessive state of existence in our society. One can start overcoming the egoistic persona when one stop thinking in the back of the mind “how can I use this person; what can I get from the relationship”. It is critical to distinguish between a self-centered egoistic person and self-love. A person capable of self-love is a person that transcends all the unhealthy neediness and insecurities that make us focus on ourselves. For such egoistic person people and things are just subjects to satisfy unfulfilled desires and greed or to soothe insecurities. Underneath, in the semi-consciousness and unconsciousness, it is common that such a person hates him/herself.

***A person who is capable of self-love, on the other hand, is a person who is capable to relate to him/herself in a loving way from the visions of aliveness and growing. Such a person can experience him/herself and the rest of the world in the deep caring way that comes from a growing authenticity and deep grounding — done without the egoistic illusions of self importance, or the need for constant approval. A good way of observing a self loving person is when you see someone that can have non-malicious humor about oneself and others — a humor that comes from deep caring and loving.

A person who is capable of self-love is a person who no longer experiences his/her self with the constant negative feelings with which most people in this society experience themselves. When you can love yourself you can experience human feelings such as joy or sadness toward a subject (yourself, others, a flower, an animal, etc.) — not in the abstract, but with a connection to your emotional and physical body; such feelings are blended with the aliveness of deep love for the subject. Love, and in particular self-love does not involve intense feelings most of the time, it involves rather gentle feelings with the lightness of a person that resolved the fundamental conflicts between his/her alienated social components and the real “I”. Self-love is not possible without relating to the self in a non-alienating way on which I elaborate later. One needs to have the courage, concentration, self-discipline, and faith in developing self-love; it should be done with the same amount of efforts that one expands on loving the external world and other people. It is also the art of self giving, for which time and space to discover oneself and to be oneself is critical. With self-love one can stand on one’s own feet and love others from the center of the real self — without being bombarded and distracted by the typical fears and insecurities of the typical eclectic, nervous and bewildered psyche in western society; such typical ungrounded and de-focused emotional energy makes us weak without an authentic self and thus we become dependent on each other in a way that distorts our potential to discover our real authentic humanity. In the last analysis, self-love is the most essential experience. For without loving oneself, one cannot love others.

In the non-possessive love the ability to love is not confine to one or two persons, but a number of persons. It is the opposite of the illusory exclusive romantic love. In each person I can love and respect his/her autonomous unique personality and its growth. I can love every brother and sister that I engage on the street. In each one of them, I love the common solidarity and warmth of humanity; I can love their hopes, and I can become empathetic to their pains that I know exist in me as well. I love in them that which is alive and grows anywhere in the world.

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[2]Ibid., pages 32-33.