Love doesn’t depend on our will. We don’t love on command.
That’s what we often say, and it is true at first sight. But
there is another viewpoint: a view where our love is
commanded, where love depends on our reason, for our own
good and for the sake of itself.
Think, for instance, in the hate present in so many street
manifestations and in the stones and threats escaping from
infuriated mouths – legitimately or no, it doesn’t matter,
in this case. The fact is that there exists hate, and hate
moves hearts and crowds, all over the world.
And yet, at the same time, in those same crowds, and in each
individual, there is love. Love to the partner in
protestation, love to the God, to the motherland, to the
cause and to the ideas that are being defended.
Love and hate are linked realities. The intense love of
particular causes feeds the hate of the opposing ideas and
people, and that turns these loves into particularly
aggressive and dangerous realities.
The love accompanied by conceptions in which adversaries are
considered demoniac beings, is dangerous. The love that
gives voice to our genetic instincts, that is spontaneous,
animal, independent of our will, based on passion, is not a
good thing. The love that is not informed, where there is no
meditation, humbleness or tolerance, is dangerous.
In fact, concerning love, we shouldn’t consider spontaneity
as a well – either at political and ideological levels, or
at a more personal echelon. The male chauvinism, the
passionate crime, the human tendency to infidelity are
natural and spontaneous and they often escape our
consciences. They have a genetic bottom. And yet they are
not good.
And they can and must be opposed – by way of values, by our
conscience, by our intelligence. In other words, by way of
our reason. After all, love isn’t necessarily independent of
our reason.
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