TED Conversations

Feyisayo Anjorin

Freelance Director, Afro-Carribean Media Group

TEDCRED 50+

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

If one's reasoning is not based on love, one is more likely to make wrong choices than right ones.

We've got the best of us, we've got the worst of us; and we've got everything in-between.
I have not seen any human society that sees love as a vice. There have been debates about who should be the first object or subject of our love; and we argue about priorities and preferences about love; some hold on to ancient wisdom, some would think wisdom is as new as fancy gadgets.
Love is desirable; we seek it and give it, and we proclaim it without shame.
If no voice is strong enough to smother the glory of love, could we be right to say that love is the ultimate guide?

+6
Share:

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • thumb

    Allan Macdougall 30+

    • +2
    Nov 27 2012: Divine love has been replaced by human love over the centuries due in part to the absence of a divine God. The vacuum left behind means love has become a kind of objectivized, reductionist shadow of its former self - dwelling more on obsession, lust, sex and infatuation - mainly as a means to procreate our own species, rather than the unconditional love that is the mediator, and the one related to empathy.

    I think we make too many choices based on the infatuation and lust for someone or something. And furthermore if we can't get what we lust for, it easily turns to jealousy, envy and anger - which then proves that it probably was not love in the truest (divine) sense, in the first place.

    Divine love should be our ultimate guide, but the God from whence that kind of love came, has politicized and commercialized itself out of existence in the minds of many.
    • thumb

      Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

      • 0
      Nov 27 2012: Thanks for your response. But I dont think the God which you have called the source of 'divine love' could commercialize and politicize itself out of existence.
    • thumb

      Feyisayo Anjorin 50+

      • 0
      Nov 27 2012: Thanks for your response. But I dont think the God which you have called the source of 'divine love' could commercialize and politicize itself out of existence.
      • thumb

        Allan Macdougall 30+

        • +1
        Nov 27 2012: I think divine love, whether ascribed to a God or just to an overwhelming sense of awe and respect for the universe, is there in all of us - even in the most militant of atheists. It's just that it has become dormant during the protracted era of the Enlightenment and the related notion that science will give us the answers to everything there is to know. Science answers a lot of things, but as far as consciousness is concerned, gets nowhere near any understanding of it in the logical sense.

        It's because of this that I cannot substantiate what I'm about to say with evidence, but I'm convinced that our capacity for love (in the divine sense), has moved psychologically from the central right hemisphere over to the left. It has moved from the spiritual to the political - from the altrustic to the commercial. We've become 'unbalanced'.

        Many people see religion now as faux spiritualism, and God as a politician - a facilitator of war and hate (the exact opposite of what he should represent). We see this happening on a grand scale when Presidents and Prime Ministers using one hand to turn to 'religion' while the other hand commits horrendous atrocities at the same time - usually to consolidate commercial interests. This kind of reasoning has led to very wrong choices, and is clearly not based on anything even related to love.

        Love needs to return to its spiritual home. That home is still there. It's just waiting for the right stimulus.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.