In part one of this post I talked about my experience growing up with the patriarchal western conceptions of Love and Masculinity.
I also mentioned bell hooks who, for me, was the catalyst for me to reexamine and redefine the concept of Love. In particular, I spoke about some of the limitations of the patriarchal conception Love, and the harm those limitations can bring.
There are a few other important issues I discussed, including how narcissism and codependency are born from the patriarchal conception of Love. I encourage to go back and read part one if you haven’t already.
In this post, I want to do two more things: First I would like to provide my working definition and understanding of the concept of Love, according to what I learned from bell hooks.
Second, I want to delve a little deeper into the patriarchal conception of masculinity as bell hooks describes it. In particular, why men will always struggle to feel and understand Love as long as we allow patriarchy to dictate the meaning of Love and Masculinity for us.
I will finish up by briefly discussing why the notion of Masculinity, and men in particular, can benefit from a new conception of Love based in nurturance rather than self sacrifice.
LOVE AGAINST ALL CONTENTIONS
I want to quickly give a little background on how I used ideas from my Master’s Thesis to develop my conception of Love, which has its roots in what I learned from bell hooks.
One of the books I had read and referenced for my Philosophy Master’s Thesis was John McMurtry’s Unequal Freedom: The Global Market as an Ethical System. In the section of the book called “The question of Need” McMurtry proposes that we differentiate between Human Wants and Human Needs.
Without getting into too much detail about McMurtry’s work, I just want to focus on his criterion to determine what is a true human need. McMurtry says
“N is a need, if and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of n always results in a reduction of organic capability.” (Unequal Freedom, p. 164)
Furthermore, think of “organic capability” as an organism’s physical, cognitive, emotional and even social well-being to a certain extent.
For example, someone who is deprive of clean drinking water, or nutritious food, will not last very long.
Likewise, someone who is deprived of resources for proper cognitive and emotional development will undoubtedly suffer a reduction to their quality of life. Things like a safe and nurturing environment, free from physical/emotional abuse, rich in education, a supportive community etc. are important to develop and maintain a good quality of life.
It’s important to note that McMurtry’s criterion intersects with every person’s shared humanity. We all need clean drinking water, nutritious food, education, and a positive and nurturing social community.
And it is exactly that criterion that I use to develop my conception of Love. Love is the conscious will to develop one’s own and others’ physical, emotional, and cognitive/mental well-being.
Or, in McMurtry terms: Love as a willingness and act to nurture and develop our own and other’s organic capabilities.
The Next Step, But First!
The next relevant thing for me to do was to imagine and explain what it means to nurture and develop our own and others’ organic capabilities.
To do so means that I had to try and ground our thoughts and feelings in “loving” actions. Loving actions are those whose absence would degrade a person’s organic capabilities.
But before I go on I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to spell out or get into how each of us INTERPRETS Love, or loving actions. That is a rabbit hole I’m not interested to go into any time soon.
It’s enough for me to say that some of us may interpret certain loving acts different that others, and some may carry more meaning to some people than others.
Nor do I want to get into how different cultures ethnicities and races express, value, and interpret loving acts. I don’t have the right, interest or desire, to pass any sort of moral or ethical judgment on other people’s histories, practices, values etc.
I will reiterate once again that my focus is on developing an understanding and conception of love that is grounded with our shared desire and abilities to nurture ours and each others’ physical, emotional, and cognitive growth.
Love: The Will and the Act
In her book, The Will to Change: men, masculinity, and love, bell hooks defines love “in a way
that blends M.Scott Peck’s notion of love as the will to nurture one’s own and another’s
spiritual and emotional growth, with Eric Fromm’s insight that love is action and not solely
feeling.” (bell hooks, The Will to Change, p.65).
That sentence is full of so much insight and relevance to me. If McMurtry’s criterion for true human needs is the foundation for me, bell hooks’ definition is all the material I would use to begin construction.
That one sentence allowed me to see how Love is a necessary condition for the healthy growth of the individual, the family, the community, and virtually any kind of relationship between consenting peoples.
The Will To Love
First of all, our Will to nurture means that we desire and are determined to contribute to the healthy development of life, ours and others.
But where does this will come from? For me, it is a combination of the physical drive of human beings to care for each other, and socio-cultural values and norms instilled in us.
On the physical side, think mirror neurons, chemicals and hormones like oxytocin, endorphins, serotonin etc. that are all secreted by our brains when we positively interact and socialize with each other.
On the socio-cultural side, think social and communal habits and practices that we learn from watching our family, friends, neighbours etc.
for example, it is customary in Arab culture to be very hospitable to guests, neighbours, even complete strangers. I have many memories of my family members helping our random strangers without a second thought.
I remember the adults sitting outside in the shade on hot summer days, and inviting people passing by to sit for tea and fruit.
In the early 2000’s I read a bunch of research in developmental psychology and sociology of human relationships, Love and community. The research looked at the neurobiological mechanisms involved in building positive and nurturing relationships, as well as social and political factors that pose challenges and risks.
More recently, in 2022, this meta-analysis of studies looking at the neurobiological basis of love, using fMRI technology to examine areas and processes in both human and animal brains and their role in developing and maintaining maternal and passionate relationships.
These socio-cultural norms, combined with the positive reinforcements we get from all sorts of feel-good brain chemicals help to solidify bonds, build trust, and develop the basis for loving relationships.
However, they certainly aren’t the only things involved in fostering and nurturing Love.
The Acts of Love
Along with our will, the human desire and determination to nurture the organic capabilities of living beings (including our own), we must also consider human action.
This is why I’m partial to the idea of “Love is a doing word”. It can be difficult to assess or guess a person’s intent, the mental and cognitive process, thoughts, ideas and values about Love, because we cannot see those things directly.
However, people’s attitudes and values quickly become apparent through their actions. As such, when we see patterns of actions, from people, that positively contribute to nurturing the organic capabilities of a living being, we can safely assume there is good will behind those acts.
Cognitive:
And there are many different examples of the acts of love. For example, working with a professional therapist to look after our mental health, mental illness, and learning better strategies to communicated with others.
Aside from the fact that we all have our own mental and cognitive struggles, due to trauma, stress, disabilities etc. We have the challenge of communicating with people from different backgrounds, and there is sure to be some misunderstandings and miscommunication.
As such, to make sure we don’t slip into a vacuum and a pattern of self-doubt, blame shifting, defensiveness, frustration and anger, we owe it to ourselves and others to seek professional help to develop our communication skills and make sense of our thoughts and feelings.
Physical:
Another example is looking after our own and other’s physical wellbeing. Something as little as hugs, making an effort to spend time together and plan social time. Or helping family and friends with health appointments.
I know for myself and many Arabs, we show love and appreciation through delicious and nutritious food. We want to absolutely make sure that our family, friends, and guests are well fed.
The discomfort and pain of hunger holds very high priority in Islam, and Arab culture as a whole. And it is also a sacred way for us to build connection and show appreciation for our community. So this is one of the most loving acts we engage in.
This is another reason why any measures to starve people, cut off supplies and resources, is so incredibly vile, in my opinion. As, for example, the U.S. and Israel are currently doing to the Palestinian people.
Not only are they cut off from looking after their own basic needs for sustenance, but also deprived from being able to engage in these acts of Love.
Emotional
Finally, another example is learning how to understand and validate our own and others feelings and emotions.
This one is particularly important for anyone who identifies as a man, because patriarchy has instilled within us specific ways to understand, manage, and express emotions.
In short, men are taught to ignore and suppress our emotions. bell hooks tells that the only emotions that are usually acceptable from men are: Anger and Fear.
This doesn’t just mean that we outwardly express these two emotions, but we also act on them. One of the reasons men get angry, aside from it being socially acceptable and permissible, is precisely because we are not taught how to effectively communicate our needs and frustrations in a healthy way.
Expressing our needs and frustrations in a healthy way means to do so without harming ourselves and others. Yet when we look at domestic crimes and atrocities we see that men are at the main perpetrators.
And more often than not, instead of looking introspectively, and critically examining the system of patriarchy and how it harms us, men immediately shift the blame onto women.
So, learning how to nurture our own and others emotional wellbeing is an immense act of love, because it is another factor in help us develop greater unities of Life.
Men, Masculinity, Patriarchy
Much of the content that bell hooks deals with in her book is about how Patriarchy distorts and warps the concept of Masculinity. In turn, that distorted concept is injected, like a software virus, into the brain hardware of everyone, and develops incredibly toxic roots in men.
We are told that we have to follow, practice and express a specific form of rules, values, and social norms, in order to be considered men. Any “man” who doesn’t do this properly is insulted, ostracized, and criticized for not living up to that standard. bells hooks tells us
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.
Relationships, under the standards of patriarchal masculinity, are built and maintained through violence and domination. And the first act that males must do is to domination our emotions, violently.
For example, we deny ourselves the right to feel and express sadness. Think of the social attitudes towards men who cry, specially if it’s in public. We’re looked at as weak, because we have let our emotions take over.
bell hooks brings up the case that there are women, while asking men to be more in touch with our emotions, pull away from men who cry.
This is all part and parcel of the rituals of power that assault the self-esteem of males and those who identify as men. We all know what these sound like, “people will laugh at you”, “women don’t want weak men”, “crying is for babies”, “Don’t be a mama’s boy” etc.
And if the first act of violence is for males to violently stamp out our ability to feel and develop our emotional faculties, then how can we hold to build a concept of love that nurtures the development of the organic capabilities of others?
To put it another way, how can we be able to emotionally nurture and support family and friends, when the first thing we must do, as males, is to disable ourselves emotionally?
As a result, men end up emotionally and cognitively stunted, and our ability to positively nurture our own and others organic capabilities is greatly compromised.
What is Left for Men to Do?
So our ability to connect and relate emotionally and, by extension, cognitively, is stunted, and many men are left with the question “How am I relevant and valuable?”.
Interestingly enough, we are left with the physical ability to nurture, to a certain point. Insofar as our physical ability to nurture doesn’t involved too much cognitive and emotional labour, men are usually fine with playing the role of “the provider”.
Physical labour, as it turns out, is one way that men are able to provide and nurture ours and others organic capabilities. This has been historically true to a certain extent, and more recently seems to be fading away more and more.
Men’s physical work, and role as the “breadwinners” has allowed us to maintain systems of oppression and power over pretty much everyone. Women, children, Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, are at the mercy of those with money or the ability to bring in money.
And what’s further interesting about it is that this ability extract labour value from men’s bodies is so incredibly beneficial for the growth of the financial sector. Because, you know, Capitalism LOVES cheap and free labour.
In return, the men get money and power that they can wield, as a way to dominate others (and ourselves) and perpetuate the patriarchal standards of masculinity.
But the role of men as the providers has been eroded and is being rendered more and more irrelevant. We now have machines that can do physical labour better and faster than any man can do. All it takes is the knowledge of how to operate the machines, and that knowledge can be taught to anyone.
Women, especially in the West, while still struggling for equality, are also participating in the workforce more than ever before. Though they still don’t benefit nearly as much as men do.
But let’s also not forget the fact that good work is becoming harder and harder to come by because of corporate cuts, layoffs, governments defunding social programs etc.
So with the diminishing availability of work, and the fact that men aren’t the sole breadwinners anymore, we come back to the questions “How am I relevant and valuable”?
And again, rather than introspectively looking inward, and criticizing Capitalism outward, men shift the blame onto women, and other oppressed groups (immigrants, BIPOC etc.)
And why do we do this? One of the main reasons, I think, is because we haven’t developed the ability to think and feel outside of the patriarchal narrative of masculinity. And it becomes a classic case of blaming individuals for systemic problems.
Seen in this way, men are trapped in a narrative that forces us to repress both thought as well as feeling.
On the one hand we don’t develop the cognitive capacities to criticize the patriarchal narrative. And on the other hand we don’t develop the emotional capacities to build loving relationships, with ourselves as well as others.
So what is left for men to do?
PART 3???
I want to finish this post with this open ended question. Partly because I think it’s important for us to meditate and reflect on our own answers. And the other part is that my own personal answer definitely would need a part 3.
What I will say is that, as far as my own answer is concerned, it is important that people have access to decent social, political, and material resources to help us develop this notion of Love.
To “do” anything requires us to have certain abilities that are often hindered by a social/political order that is set to allow certain people to succeed, and many other people to fail.
And the main problem is that the success of the few comes at the expense of the oppression of people of the global majority.
And that being said, all of my speculation and theorizing about the concept of Love means nothing, if people are struggling to find the necessities of life, like meaningful work, shelter, food etc.
So yea, stay tuned for a part 3, at some point sometime.