Is the word “love” so overused as to be meaningless?
stonespring
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I am old enough to remember a time when telling someone you have a merely cordial relationship at work, school, or in your community that you love them would be weird, but now it is quite normal, at least in my corner of upper middle class America.
Bosses say they love their employees between announcements of layoffs. Customers tell baristas and their dogwalkers that they love them and think that as long as they are kind to them and tip them the this is true. Gyms and airlines tell their clients and passengers that they love them in their announcements. Every human that pets an animal once thinks that they love that animal and that that animal loves them. And so on.
In US pop culture, pop psychology, pop religion, and in quite a bit of actual religion, the word love is used so often to express any mildly positive feeling or phenomenon, absent any need for a deep relationship, abundant hospitality, or making meaningful sacrifices for another, that it also doesn’t seem to mean very much.
We’re always told to feel and be grateful for love in the world, even absent any explicitly religious or spiritual context, and to spread love everywhere by doing things as simple as smiling, making positive affirmations to ourselves, and sending positive thoughts to others. The language around this doesn’t need to be about “manifesting” or about things like the prosperity gospel. Rather, this language (ie, that saying the word love a lot is somehow supposed to make our lives and the world better) is used frequently by people who say they find both religion and “power of positive thinking” pseudoscience ridiculous.
I know that love is a pretty important word in Christianity, so it’s understandable why Christians use that word a lot.
I know that English uses one word “love” to translate multiple words in Greek or Hebrew (not sure how many words are in the love vocabulary of other languages, including in non-Christian and non-religious contexts).
But even if we were specific about what kind of love we meant, from humans or God or whomever: agape as hospitable or sacrificial love, eros as sensual, perhaps even sexual, but non-lustful longing and desire, philia as disinterested friendship, chesed as loving-kindness, rachamim as compassion or mercy, etc., I feel that “love inflation”, just like grade inflation at school, would lead people in modern society to use those terms when they are maybe hoped for but not really warranted, and what is really meant is lukewarm positivity.
What does everyone else think? Is this a problem at all?
Bosses say they love their employees between announcements of layoffs. Customers tell baristas and their dogwalkers that they love them and think that as long as they are kind to them and tip them the this is true. Gyms and airlines tell their clients and passengers that they love them in their announcements. Every human that pets an animal once thinks that they love that animal and that that animal loves them. And so on.
In US pop culture, pop psychology, pop religion, and in quite a bit of actual religion, the word love is used so often to express any mildly positive feeling or phenomenon, absent any need for a deep relationship, abundant hospitality, or making meaningful sacrifices for another, that it also doesn’t seem to mean very much.
We’re always told to feel and be grateful for love in the world, even absent any explicitly religious or spiritual context, and to spread love everywhere by doing things as simple as smiling, making positive affirmations to ourselves, and sending positive thoughts to others. The language around this doesn’t need to be about “manifesting” or about things like the prosperity gospel. Rather, this language (ie, that saying the word love a lot is somehow supposed to make our lives and the world better) is used frequently by people who say they find both religion and “power of positive thinking” pseudoscience ridiculous.
I know that love is a pretty important word in Christianity, so it’s understandable why Christians use that word a lot.
I know that English uses one word “love” to translate multiple words in Greek or Hebrew (not sure how many words are in the love vocabulary of other languages, including in non-Christian and non-religious contexts).
But even if we were specific about what kind of love we meant, from humans or God or whomever: agape as hospitable or sacrificial love, eros as sensual, perhaps even sexual, but non-lustful longing and desire, philia as disinterested friendship, chesed as loving-kindness, rachamim as compassion or mercy, etc., I feel that “love inflation”, just like grade inflation at school, would lead people in modern society to use those terms when they are maybe hoped for but not really warranted, and what is really meant is lukewarm positivity.
What does everyone else think? Is this a problem at all?
Comments
It's also a bit anxiety-inducing that people in certain relationships (at least in my culture) such as children and parents, grandchildren and grandparents, and partners/spouses are expected to end every phone conversation with "I love you" or at least "Love you" along with most, if not all, in person goodbyes. You're also expected to say "I love you" at other times, but aside from birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions, it's not exactly clear when.
Since I only have half-siblings much older than me who tend to not say "I love you" to me, I've never been sure when you are supposed to say those words to siblings. I have aunts who routinely say or said (when they were alive) it to me, but I don't know if it is all my aunts who do, and if I should say it before one of them says it. It's much less clear still when or if to say it to cousins, especially taking into account our relative ages (which in my family vary widely).
There are plenty of cultures where even parents and children seldom say the exact words "I love you" to each other and where saying so seems awkward and insincere, whereas behavior that demonstrates love is what matters. But in my culture, the question of whether you "love" someone is directly tied to whether you and the other person verbally express it with that specific four-letter word (and when and how and how often you say it).
Does defining the presence of love by its verbal expression lead itself to the "love inflation" that I spoke about in my earlier post, as well as the "love anxiety" that arises when you aren't quite sure whether, when, or how frequently you should say "I love you" to someone based on your relationship, familial, romantic, platonic, friendly, professional, institutional, or other?
So sometimes there is no better word.
And some weeks ago I suggested that substituting Love for God would enable us to eliminate much evil from Christianity.
So sometimes it's a very useful word.
We have two children, a son (older) and a daughter (younger). Daughter never leaves the house or ends a phone call without saying “I love you” or “love you.” She told us once that it goes back to when a few contemporaries of hers (not close friends in any way) died in car wrecks. She said it made her realize you never know when the last time you might see someone is, and she decided to make it a habit so that there would never be regret for not saying it.
My son, on the other hand, rarely says it. (Whether or how often he says it to his girlfriend I can’t say; he tells us that he loves her.) We say it to him, but rarely get a “love you” back in response. It’s just not his way. But we have no doubt he loves us, and when he does say it, it feels like a really big deal.
I don’t think either of my kids is right or wrong in how they approach telling they love us. I think they’re being authentic, each expressing themselves in the way that’s consistent with her they are. That’s how I want them to be; I don’t want them saying something like “I love you” unless it’s what they actually want to say.
It took me days to work up the courage, and then my mother gave me a weird look and I sort of shriveled up and died inside.
(I was not the sort of kid who would have thought of lying to get out of it; just didn't occur to me as a way out, I was doomed.)
I do realise that some people need to hear the words
As an undergrad, I read CS Lewis (the medievalist rather than the theologian) on the emergence of the courtly love tradition in 11th-century Europe and was startled to realise romantic love had not always existed as a given. The courtly love tradition was a highly specific trope and expressed as an idealised platonic worship of a Lady by her knight, a kind of sublimated erotic servitude. In time this ideal would come to be seen in sentimental or cynical perspectives as Romantic Love, a key subject of literature, sonnets and paintings for almost a thousand years.
It is now a very old, tired and over-used term in the hypersexualised and commodified West (everyone loves chocolate because it is decadent, abusive men love-bomb women as a grooming technique, somebody loves the idea of falling in love). Cliches and stereotypes that leave English-speakers without a vocabulary that reflects how we really feel.
When George Orwell described the debasement of language, he talked about “ready-made phrases,” that “construct your sentences for you – even think your thoughts for you.”
I don't think you can generalize from your personal experience. In one of the Anne of Green Gables books a character has a similar criticism about people saying they love something in the same terms once reserved for saying they loved their mother of their savior. Earlier today going through old photos I found my mother's collection of graduation photos from her friends - more than one signed theirs "Love, [Name]." Mom graduated high school in 1954. I'm inclined to think the notion that people now overuse the word "love" is like the notion that no one wants to work these days - renewed in every generation in a nostalgic view of the past not borne out by facts.
I think the situation is worse than you describe, in that it's "how we really feel" that has been, and is being commodified. It is our feelings that drive social media, that generates the profits. And the harm.
We can now only look to the things we consume - films, music, literature and everything else (let alone advertising!) appearing in front of our eyes and ears - to tell us how we feel in any given situation. "How we really feel" doesn't stand a chance.
The amount of space and quiet required to find out how we really feel is diminishing. Our feelings are just another casualty of this world.
This invariably irritates me. As his sister I think I merit more than "Regards."
At the same time, it can be enough to show one another small gestures or acts of care that can be understood as 'love'. No need to say anything and in different cultures, restraint can mean that when someone does say 'I love you' it means much more than if it is an everyday verbal tic. In the same way that some communities or families are physically expressive and 'touchy-feely,' and others are not, feel acutely uncomfortable with hugs or kisses. After attending a Portuguese convent school in Mozambique for some months I came back to my old school, flung my arms around the Scottish headmistress and planted noisy wet kisses all over her face. She could only hiss under her breath, 'Stop it at once,' and avoid me for the next year or two. Love is a complicated emotion to express no matter what words or gestures we use!
If called for when signing off in writing, I generally go with "take care" and, in person, with "good to see you" or "take care".
"Love" is not a word I can remember using to signal affection, or anything stronger, in relation to friends and family, regardless of the times or health crises. It seems an inappropriate word to use. Maybe it's that all the "normal" words seem inappropriate for "telling" someone how much they mean to me (and maybe this relates to what you previously wrote about clichés leaving us without a vocabulary). If a verbal expression of the significance someone has for me occurs to me, I use it. Sometimes I think long and hard about this, when I know of the significance it has for the other person.
In addition to the effects of gender, temperament and familial, communal and sociocultural norms, I would add autism and related ways of being. It's not that difficult to get used to the idea that when it comes to affection, our expectations of norms of behaviour don't always apply. And what that means in practice.
In relation to gestures and acts, I am able to make the cultural adjustment that your Scottish headmistress was not, and accept physical expressions of affection in the spirit in which they are given. I can take them at face value (and whatever other parts of the body are involved). They make me smile.
But I'm not sure I would even start with an emotional framing for the word "love". I think my starting point is that God so loved the world, shared by those who love Him, and the related love that parents (ideally) have for their children. These seem to be rather more than affection, if they include affection at all.
I like the sentence in “The Road less Travelled”. This is from memory, but it is to the effect that the journey from falling in love to loving is a difficult one. The context points out that falling in love may incorporate both selfishness and a kind of temporary insanity.
I always rejected Ali MacGraw’s statement in “Love Story” that love means never having to say you’re sorry. Which seems to exclude the truth that the journey from falling in love to loving is indeed a journey. Dealing with mistakes, misunderstandings, unreasonable expectations, acknowledgement of selfishness, is an essential part of the journey, and of course requires us to say honestly “I was wrong, I’m sorry”.
In our 55 year marriage we’ve both learned a lot about that. We’ve replaced our idealised view of one another by a much more realistic awareness of what we’re really like and what makes us tick. And our deep loving has grown deeper as a result of that shared journey.
I guess we’ve absorbed eros into agape. Minimising the importance of either is a mistake in close relationships.
You can apply similar arguments to friendship, where the journey is from phileo to agape. Friends tend to collude with one another but there are times when the requirement is not to collude but to confront. If the friendship survives that, then it has made a step towards agape.
@pease sorry I missed your post. A better shared understanding of how neurodiverse or autistic people communicate is one of the biggest issues for me in building online community (as well as equity in workplaces or churches). For myself, the immersion as a small girl (eight or so) in a Mozambican Portuguese convent school meant I was encouraged to hug back, kiss and talk more loudly, use my hands when speaking etc. The nuns were emotionally expressive, physically affectionate, playful and uninhibited, and I just did what everyone around me was doing. Back in a more uptight or restrained environment, I had to unlearn that exuberance which was seen as excitable, gushy, noisy, inappropriate, vulgar, childish or embarrassing. Much of what is called 'personality' or 'temperament' is learned by mimicry, we're taught how to respond or react, often having to repress our natural instincts or temperamental inclinations. What is framed as 'love' or ways of showing 'love' in different contexts can be little more than social conditioning.
In our long journey together, Mrs B and I agree that developing a better understanding of our personality differences was very important in our journey of loving. It helped us to understand and value our differences.
Jacob and Rachel as an implicit bronze age one? (Loads of caveats, including date of composition, and modern interpretation), but it definitely appears at first sight like looks are overweighting material interests. Enough for groom to make significant effort to be the groom of one over the other.
Which is probably similar to a precis of many love stories (not those that actually feature personality).
Older. Look at animal courtship. Monogamy.
(more controversial than it should be) David and Jonathan.
(That said, I don't think either is a love story, in that the relationship isn't the focus of the narrative.)
Boaz: a successful farmer, hands -on in his business, who obeys the law and goes beyond it ( leaving more grain on the ground for Ruth to glean; a discreet generosity without the creepy overt "I've been nice to you so you must be nice to me" quid pro quo that men with power over vulnerable women still can indulge in). In fact with an awareness that it was good that she was on his land as his men would not harass her. Nor was he complacent about that but reminded his men not to bother her. And then when he says to her:" everyone knows you are a capable woman". A man who has no problem acknowledging a woman's abilities ( a low bar I know, but that's misogyny for you!)and he modestly wonders that she would be interested in an old man like him! So generous and modest but still decisive and prompt to finalise the engagement once he's made up his mind.
As for David: 8wives that we know of but it's Michal I feel most sorry for. She supported him and protected him in his early career but he didn't show any signs of missing her, merely accruing more wives. Then, after she's had years of contentment with Palti, he demands her back. No sign of a rapprochement, just wanting "his property" back. And how much agency did Bathsheba have when he summoned her?
While Boaz was arguably a good man, was Ruth a good woman? Certainly she loved her mother-in-law, but she more or less raped Boaz.
We don't know how much agency Bathsheba had; she may have been trying hard to attract David's attention.
I suppose one can cite Cupid and Psyche as an example of actual love.
Bathsheba, too--the poor thing was probably about fifteen. How do I know? Because she's clearly fertile, and yet has no children yet, AND David thinks it's a sensible strategy to send his good friend and battle buddy Uriah home to sleep with his wife, expecting him to accept her pregnancy as his own doing. If they'd been married for years there'd be some questions asked. Plus, Bathsheba is Ahithophel's granddaughter, and he's still active as a government advisor.
What do you expect a teenager to do when the popular, all-powerful king makes a play for her--and her husband not even home?
@HarryCH let's not use rape as some kind of 'more or less' metaphor when you mean seduction? Which is a debatable issue in any case, as @LambChopped points out.
The Bathsheba who bathed under the moonlight on the roof in full view of David? And poor, barren, Michal, yes her treatment by Saul and David was typically patriarchally vile. No wonder she despised him.
Late afternoon
The art is for sure. Personally I don't find it attractive. Neither do I find the more complex, strained story that David was a peeping tom, spying on a virtuous woman and commanding her attendance by droit de le seigneur attractive. Despite the intrinsic abuse of privilege.
I find it one of the greatest love stories of all time. And Nathan the Prophet one of the most courageous characters.
She is named once again in relation to the birth of Solomon, but only really comes into her own at David’s approaching death in the process of ensuring that Solomon will be David’s successor.
There is at least an implication that the only reason David can see Bathsheba is because he is on the roof of his house. As nothing is said about her at this point the narrative invites us to understand that her bathing was as normally discreet as one would expect.
If we ask why Bathsheba is bathing, it is because she was performing a cleansing ritual required by the law. If we ask how the king came to see her it is because he was on his roof. If we want to know how she felt about her husband, we are told that she lamented/wept/wailed for him.
When the mourning is over, with the same instrumentality as his initial summons, David 'sends' for her to be his wife.
There is not one word or hint in the story which indicates love on his part, merely sexual desire, and fear for his reputation, nor any reciprocity of feeling on hers.
Our disposition, or lack of knowledge about how Biblical narrative functions may cause us not to notice or not to attend to the way the account is presented, but the shading of the narrative is clear.
The painting puts us in the position of David, gazing on a woman and seeing that she is beautiful. It attempts to exonerate us (and him) by portraying her as somehow flaunting herself (nowhere hinted at in the Biblical narrative) - compare the nakedness of the woman bathing with the way her servant is covered up. Subtly it tries to shift the blame onto Bathsheba. "How could David resist?" it asks, "Wasn't she just asking for it?"
I'm very glad you did, thank you. I relish being convinced against my will. At the bitter-sweet end. I will if I want. I will if I don't want, if I want.
Plenty of Christian preaching and messaging that I've been exposed to gets very specific about what kind of love they mean when they talk about the word love in the Bible or in broader Christian tradition and writings, but a lot of churches, both liberal and conservative, seem to use the word love in all their messaging in a very vague, "good vibes" kind of way that matches how it is used in (at least my) culture. Has anyone else noticed this? Even churches that make specific calls to "love in action" as other people have referenced in this thread seem to fall into rhetoric that vaguely talks about "feeling the love" in a room and "spreading love" in the world that, in its sound byte form, just seems to boil down to positivity, smiling, politeness, and cultivating a warm, fuzzy feeling in yourself that you project to others. This is the idea of love that makes me uncomfortable, because even when it's not directly tied to the prosperity gospel, The Power of Positive Thinking, ormanifesting, it seems to come from a general corporate-influenced shallowness that turns all human interaction into branding and PR.
On the other hand, I am well aware that marginalized communities often make a positive attitude central to an otherwise quite orthodox Christianity, because when society assumes that a certain group is no good, that group has to try so much harder to just come across to society as a person worthy of respect. And it is that much harder for members of that group to respect themselves. So a "love, love, love" positivity about oneself and others (even if it is in the context of orthodox teaching about sin and forgiveness) is perfectly understandable in churches that marginalized groups attend in large numbers. But it still makes me wary, which maybe says more about myself than it does about how the word love "should" be used in church.