Love

I attended a great assembly at ConVal yesterday.  Ed Gerety addressed the students and staff about kindness and respect.  He was a dynamic speaker; students were engaged, he made us laugh, and his message was strong.  While their are important differences in content, message and method, some of what he said dovetails with the Revolution Ethics Project.  He spoke of the importance of telling those we care about how much they mean to us.  He encouraged us to tell those we love how much we love them.

I would go a step further.  I believe that we need to be more willing to use the word "love." It is a heavy word, one that has a certain meaning in our society.  There are several ways we might use the word.  We love our parents.  We love our spouse or significant other.  We love our friends.  I love ice cream.  In each case, we are using the same word.  However, we intend a slightly different meaning in each use.  With a spouse, there is an element of desirous love.  In loving a parent, there is none of that.  In loving ice cream, I am speaking of a purely sensory (and not interpersonal) relationship.

In the Revolution Ethics Project, we often read William Sloane Coffin who claims that we need to show more love for the people of the world.  (He obviously means Christian love.)  Last year, several participants concluded that they were not going to love a perfect stranger.  "Some people aren't deserving of my love" claimed others.  I can see where they are coming from, but respectfully disagree.  Everyone is deserving of our love.  By this, I mean a certain kind of love--I guess it's Christian love. But in order for us to love every person, we need keep a few things in mind.

We need to recognize the many meanings of the word.  Of course we don't mean the same love that we show for a best friend or a parent.  Instead, we mean what the Greeks (and Jesus) called agape love.  Unconditional positive regard for each human, simply because they are.  We don't mean a creepy erotic love for strangers.


We also need to be willing to discuss what this kind of love looks like.  As a culture, we need to decide on the implications of agape love.  As Gene Outka famously wrote in his book Agape: An Ethical Analysis, agape love doesn't mean equal treatment to all.  Agape love doesn't mean a horrible person doesn't suffer consequences of his or her actions.  Agape love doesn't mean we love our spouse as much as we do the homeless woman on the street.  But it does mean a baseline regard that all humans (and, to some extent, non humans) deserve.  Instead of advocating that we develop a brand new word, we need to understand the word 'love' and its complexities (and, frankly, it's simplicity too).

Finally, we need to have the courage to use the word 'love.'  When talking about how we ought to treat our neighbor, we tend to use sanitized versions of the word--like 'respect' or 'tolerance.'  Some of this comes from the fact that, in English, we only have one word for love--and we would use the same word to describe our feelings for our mom.  Perhaps the biggest reason we don't have the courage to love is because it is very difficult to love others.   If we must love others, then we must also love seemingly evil people.  Saddam Hussein?  Charles Manson?  Hitler?  Can we do this?  Is this what the command to love is really calling for?  I think it is. This is why the commandment to love is so revolutionary, and so difficult to adhere to.

Those are extreme examples--examples that are helpful in the conversation, though they will not directly impact our lives.  We must be most concerned with our everyday behavior, and the people we interact with.  If one shrinks from using the word 'love' because they feel it is creepy to say one loves a stranger or because it is so difficult to love that nasty guy you know, we need to address this.  I'm one to talk.  There are a lot of people I know who are very difficult to love.  I must change my outlook and get over this.  And I would not want to say that I love one of my students--I would feel very uncomfortable and might scare the heck out of that student.  But when we consider the word and it's many meanings there are of course ways that we love our colleagues, our friends, our neighbors and our students.  We need to have the courage to use the word, knowing that we mean a different kind of love.  When push comes to shove and we are really being serious I should tell the student or the colleague that I love them--if I mean the appropriate kind of love. Because I have a lot of love for my students and my colleagues.

Why Teach Ethics?

In some ways, ethics is a democratic field.  Many people have experience with ethical quandaries.  Most people believe they have their own moral code that they can use to make decisions, and critique others' choices.  Anyone is entitled to an opinion and can be a part of an ethics discussion.  Thus, some mistakenly believe that an ethics class should simply be looking at quandaries and hearing different opinions about the best way to act.

One of the worst ways to teach ethics is to present an ethical quandary and ask "what would you do?"  This makes ethics into personal preference or opinion.  Ethics is not just one's opinion.  There are standards to our ethical reasoning.  There are good arguments and bad; there are well-reasoned moral stances and there are poorly-reasoned ones.  A more effective way of teaching ethical reasoning might be to present an ethical quandary and to ask "what is the right thing to do, and why?"  We must hold people to these standards in our ethics conversations.  We must push people to draw strong, well-supported conclusions.  We must demand that people look at the consequences of their theories, and push for consistency and fairness.  I would want for someone to do this to me.  Ethics is not law, but in an ideal world, our laws and customs should reflect strong moral thinking.  This is why the study of ethics is so important.  By reading, discussing, and thinking real hard about tough issues, we can influence our culture to assure that laws and customs are ethical.  By doing this, we can make ethics more than just "one's opinion;" perhaps we can change one's opinion into a conviction.

Effective discussion about ethics doesn't just happen by accident.  People don't learn ethical thinking just by living.  It must be taught with intention and fostered with good thinking.  We must study people who have good ideas or express things in meaningful ways.  We must push each other to think hard and hold each other to high standards in our ethical reasoning.  That's what we hope to do in the Revolution.