Love is a chimera, a chaos (Pascal)
Love is sublime and save us: Bible, Corinthians

Blaise Pascal - in the seventeenth century - has said of men and the opposite facets that dwell in us:

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle?

And, as Blaise Pascal, we can say something alike about love.

Love is sublime. Parental love cannot be measured, mystical love is great, and we all know how outstanding and needed love of humanity is. Love saves us. Without love, life is nothing, as the Bible says:

 
Even if I speak all the languages of men and of angels, if I don't have love, life became sounding brass, and a clanging cymbal.
Bible, Corinthians

But we can’t forget that love also feeds hatred. It’s in the shadow of men’s love of ideas and gods that some people perform terrorist acts and prepare themselves for war. There are wrong ways of loving, such as the love of money, or the love of cruelty:

The happiness is to defeat the enemies, is to see them kneeled before us, is to take their properties, is to taste their despair, and to abuse their wife and daughters:
Gengis Khan, Mongol chief, in Witold Rodzinski  The Walled Kingdom

Yes. We can’t forget that there are many perversions in love. Love isn’t absent in the dark streets of prostitution and pornography. Love isn’t absent in the hareems which powerful man constituted so often in the past. More commonly, love can be jealous, possessive, violent, and at the root of many hates and nightmares of our present times and life.

That’s why we can ask as Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher: who will unravel this tangle?
 

Books, Films, Cultural Stuff on these and other related issues? See Love Essays Store (in association with Amazon)


What's Love? See also:
  What's Love
  Love of People
  Love is Nothing
  Mockeries on Love
   Love cycles: time to war, time to love
  Love, time, habit
  Love and art


 

 
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