The State has confused love with lust
by Daniel Frampton, The Conservative Woman:
In 1941, the writer J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, penned a touching letter to his son Michael on the subject of love and matrimony. In that letter, he disparaged the conception of ‘true love’ as ‘innocent’, of course, ‘yet irresponsible’.
What Tolkien chose to emphasise, instead, was the ‘social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity’. This, he believed, was the fundamental foundation of a happy marriage. What really mattered, he told his son, was ‘will and purpose’, not ‘exaggerated notions of “true love”’. This is perhaps an alien concept for many living in today’s society.
Tolkien anticipated a very modern malady, which is the pursuit of love ‘without any effort’, even into ‘the squalor of the divorce courts’. In other words, the pursuit of that ‘real soulmate’. Unfortunately, as Tolkien noted, a soulmate ‘too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along’. And ‘when the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake’.
It is worth considering, I think, whether the ideal of romantic love has doomed a significant number of marriages to dissatisfaction. And what role has the State played in facilitating this dissatisfaction? For the high divorce rates in Western countries is a matter that extends beyond the realm of the courts. Indeed, it may be that the welfare state, in particular, has radically redefined what we mean by ‘love’ in a modern society.
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