Uncovering Love and Tafsir

Maybe this is the first time I made a specific essay about "love". But that does not mean I have never reflected on love, because basically none of the people who ever tread the soles of their feet in the world, never made busy by "love". For me and perhaps for all people the "love" thing is a very important matter, even according to Erich Fromm "they are hungry for it (love), they watch countless movies about a happy ending love story and unhappy, they listen to hundreds of 'cheap' songs about love-but hardly anyone thinks there's anything to learn about love ".

To me, what's interesting about Erich Fromm's statement above is "there's something to learn about love". Then suddenly the question arises in my mind "what needs to be learned from love?", "Is love something more or less instinctive, so we basically do not need to learn or learn anything about love?", "Is not love a pre- -exposedly existential, so studying love is distances away from it, thus making the love we learn more and more inauthentic? ", and still asking questions about other love.

In The Art of Loving (1956), for Erich Fromm love is art. If love is art then love requires knowledge and effort. As wisdom, the most important of all is the selfless and endless pursuit of embracing, not the claim of whether we have become wise or not? And so it is with love, the most important of which is the effort (equipped with knowledge) in "embracing". Love as wisdom, not a finished product, is not a one-time product.

But our age, not looking at love as effort and knowledge. And Erich Fromm mentions there are some premises of contemporary culture that reinforce these allegations. First, most people, the first and the main questions of love, are about being "loved" rather than "loving". If we try to do a simple investigation of the people around us (maybe even against us), then to be "loved" there are several ways that are often taken. Some attempt to "scoop" all the predicates related to the term "success", trying to become rich and powerful in such a way. So that work is no longer a matter of "giving benefit" but merely about "devouring the benefits", work is no longer a matter of "realization of existence" as Marx says but work has become "exploitation of existence".

To be a "beloved", there are trying to make himself to have everything that can increase sexual appeal (sex appeal). As much as possible (albeit with a modest income) take care of the body, update the clothes and try to keep up with the latest fashion developments. There is also a trying to have a manners of speech, attitude and socializing a fun, polite, not disturbing and like doing charitative activities. In other words to be a "beloved" self, we often combine two things in our daily life, which are "becoming popular" and "having sexual attraction".

The second premise is that we often presuppose love as merely an object, Erich Fromm calls it the principle of "love is easy, but finding the right object to be loved is difficult". This is closely related to the "storefront culture" (both storefronts in the real world and cyberspace) that enter into all our lines of life. Our happiness is often acquired from the sensation of looking at the "storefront", and trying as much as possible to buy the items on display. Well, so do our current view of love, we often assume that loving is easy, as easy as we buy (installments or cash) things, and the difficulties that arise from love are more or less the same difficulties when we are trying to determine which items we will choose and buy from the many row of storefront. Perhaps for a man (or woman), an "attractive woman" (or "interesting man") is a gift or product they crave, amidst a cultural storefront displaying so many women (men) , whether the storefront is in the form of public spaces or on the verandas of social media. "... interesting is usually a fun package that contains popular traits in the marketplace of personality traits. What makes a person attractive depends primarily on current fashion, both physically and mentally, "said Erich Fromm.

"Love storefronts" basically not only commodify love, but also at the same time to accommodate the human itself. Love merely becomes a matter of mere transaction (as our current political process), love is reduced to a bargaining rite. I who want to be "loved" as much as possible "as interesting" as possible, in order to have bargaining power in the presence of self "pull" the other. Both those who want to be "loved" or objects that we hope to "love" us, become just a commodity. And here's what further becomes the foundation of the third premise that we often confuse and distinguish between falling in love and "in standing".

The experience of falling in love is amazing, when two people who initially strangers to each other, suddenly break down the wall between them, then feel close and one. The moment of unity of the stranger, is one of life's most exciting and exciting moments, especially if the moment is peppered with interest and sexual intercourse. A life-alive love only from the memory of this brief moment will quickly die, "their intimacy gradually loses its marvelous character, until the emergence of opposition, disappointment, and boredom ... that ends all that remains from the initial excitement."

This is in line with Stephen Palmquist's argument in the Philosophy Tree book, which in his Kantian tone says that love is not just a matter of unification (because it is only the beginning), but the most important is the mutual perfecting of two loving parties. In other words love as history is a dialectical subject, there will be moments of affirmation and negation wrestling, associating love as a mere romantic event is a misleading thing.

Then what next? for me, that love is not only a moment of rigidity, for love is not only a moment of "momentary orgasm" only, then we need to interpret it. Why do we need to interpret love? Because love is a dialectical event and process, and can only be meaningful to us, if we try to interpret it. "Meaning", maybe that's missing from the premises of our love, because we already assume that love is merely exchange of benefits. If for Heidegger, dasein (human) is a meaning pendamba, then I assume that "human being as the meaning of meaning" parallels the "man as the craving for love".

"Love" is not one part of our life, but life itself (then what about faith, hope and other moments of life? It is only a matter of looking at life mathematically). So interpreting love is essentially the interpretation of life itself. For Heidegger man is always immersed in the world of meaning, and being human and interpreting is the same. Then how to interpret love? Simply we are basically, it is necessary to "sit still" for a moment, "to distance" a moment from existential experiences such as "love", "death", "longing" and the like, then questioning, giving inner notes. Then the question of meaning, not about the outcome, but about the struggle and struggle with "self" and "world". Meaning and truth can only be invited to come to dinner with reflection and contemplation, and hopefully both are willing to fulfill the invitation.