How Can We Destroy Love?

By Robert J. Burrowes

07 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Love is a serious problem in our world. There is too much of it. So I want
to explain how we can destroy it systematically. If we can destroy love
completely, we can destroy life on Earth.

But first, what is love?

In essence, love is a feeling. It is not something you experience as a
thought, although a thought might arise from the feeling. Love
precipitates a certain type of behavior. This might include showing
someone that we care about them deeply. Often, it means taking action that
demonstrates our love. Perhaps even that we are willing to make
concessions or sacrifices for their benefit. Depending on the context,
love might be accompanied by some companion feelings such as compassion,
empathy and sympathy.

The problem with love is that it might incline us to act with genuine
concern for others. In fact, we might act as if someone else or others in
general are as important as are we. And if we did that, it would ruin our
chances of getting as much as we can for ourselves at the expense of those
around us.

So how can we destroy love?

The best way is to terrorize a child. How? The most effective way to
terrorize a child is to do what parents ordinarily do in the belief that
we need to 'socialize' children in the ways of their society. This
involves inflicting what I have called 'invisible' violence as well as
'utterly invisible' violence on children throughout their childhoods so
that they become obedient and easily controlled slaves. For a thorough
elaboration of this point, see 'Why Violence?'
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and 'Fearless Psychology and Fearful
Psychology: Principles and Practice'
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/

So what is 'invisible' violence? Here are a few examples from my list of
more than 200: blaming, condemning, insulting, mocking, embarrassing,
shaming, humiliating, taunting, goading, guilt-tripping, deceiving, lying
to, bribing, blackmailing, moralizing with and/or judging a child.

And what is 'utterly invisible' violence? It is deliberate interference in
the expression of the child's feelings and the behavioral responses
naturally generated by these feelings (including when these feelings and
behaviours arise in response to our visible or 'invisible' violence). This
'utterly invisible' violence occurs when we ignore, comfort, reassure,
distract, laugh at, ridicule, scream at, hit, restrain or punish a child
who is crying, scared, angry or otherwise expressing and/or acting on
their feelings. When we do this, our unconscious message to the child is
clear: 'Don't feel and act on your feelings, unless they are happy or
loving ones, or I will terrorize you until you stop!'

If you terrorize a child in this way they will become fearful of listening
to their feelings. Moreover, as they lose their courage to fight back
against your violence, they will accumulate feelings of self-hatred as
well. However, without a safe opportunity to feel this fear and
self-hatred in order to release them, the fear and self-hatred will be
suppressed below their conscious awareness. And given the extraordinarily
unpleasant nature of these feelings – who wants to feel like a coward and
to hate themselves? – the fear and self-hatred will be projected as fear
of and hatred for 'socially legitimized victim groups': depending on the
social context, this will usually be people of other racial or religious
groups.

This projected fear and self-hatred is most readily observed in the
behavior of political leaders such as US President Barack Obama, UK Prime
Minister David Cameron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who
are so obviously terrified and devoid of self-love and, hence, the
capacity to love others that killing people, including children, is the
intended and routine outcome of their military violence.

The projected fear and self-hatred of corporate figures like Bill Gates,
the Walton family (of Walmart) and their fellow billionaires and
millionaires is also readily observed. Again, devoid of love for
themselves, they cannot feel love, compassion, empathy or sympathy for
those 50,000 people in Africa, Asia and Central/South America who are
starved to death each day because of corporate capitalism's control of the
distribution of the world's resources to maximize their corporate profits
and personal wealth, often at the expense of their heavily exploited
employees as well.

In stark contrast to the individuals mentioned above, the self-love and,
therefore, love for others is obvious in the behavior of people like Noam
Chomsky, Mairead Maguire, Chandra Muzaffar and Kathy Kelly who devote
their lives to articulating and acting on the nonviolent truth.

If you want your child to love themselves and others, it is essential that
you do not terrorize them into doing what you want (or you must let them
have their feelings about your violence if, occasionally, you do terrorize
them). If you love your child, let them behave in accordance with their
own feelings, not yours. That is what evolution intended. It had a few
billion years to work it out.

If you like, you can listen to a song by Anita McKone that highlights the
importance of feelings:
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/songs-of-nonviolence/lets-sing-a-feelings-song-for-kids/
And here's another song that highlights the meaning of love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvvZ1TEQRB8&feature=kp

If you wish to join the worldwide movement to nurture love and end all
violence, you are welcome to sign online 'The People's Charter to Create a
Nonviolent World' http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Self-love is true love. The individual who does not truly love themselves
cannot love another.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and
ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an
effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?'
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected]
and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

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