Editor’s Letter: Living by a Love Ethic
In times of polarization, division and disorientation: What would a world look like in which an ethic of love is lived? In her editor’s letter, Dörte de Jesus sets the scene for the theme of our latest print edition, Love Ethic, a timely exploration of and homage to bell hooks’ iconic work All About Love.
Words by Dörte de Jesus & photography by Jack Johnstone
Love Ethic: I’ve been carrying these two words with me since I read All About Love: New Visions soon after bell hooks’ death in December 2021. It is a book that feels like a homecoming, opening the doors for perceiving the potential of love in a myriad of facets. Going far beyond romantic love, bell hooks explores love as the foundation of life that touches on everything – love of self and others, community and social structures, patriarchy and intersectional justice, values, spirituality, commitment, loss and healing.
In Chapter One: “Clarity: Give Love Words”, she presents a beautiful description of the term love that provides us with a shared understanding – and therefore accountability. She writes: “Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. [...] I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word ‘love,’ and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth’.”
Having a shared definition transforms love from something nebulous into a daily practice of personal development in which we have agency. In the words of bell hooks: “Embracing a love ethic means that we utilize all the dimensions of love – ‘care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge’ – in our everyday lives. We can successfully do this only by cultivating awareness. Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions to see what is needed so that we can give care, be responsible, show respect, and indicate a willingness to learn.”
Love is therefore a choice and an act of intention, a “tender labour” of engaging with all dimensions of life. Far from being an individualistic pursuit, it is this multidimensionality that turns love into a radical tool for transformation. In Chapter Six: “Values: Living by a Love Ethic”, bell hooks writes: “Awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination. Culturally, all spheres of life – politics, religion, the workplace, domestic households, intimate relations – should and could have as their foundation a love ethic. [...] A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.”
Reading her words, I pondered how our world would look and feel if we brought a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, if we lived love as an act of collective care. How would our relationship with ourselves and all living beings change? Our awareness of conditioning and trauma? Our ways of communication, media representation and forms of creative expression? Our social systems, power structures and institutions? What would it mean for clothing, fashion and the material world? What kind of resistance would we encounter, internally and externally? And who is or has been walking the path – who could we learn from to strengthen our practice and make it resilient, adaptable and truly transformative?
In reverence to bell hooks’s heartfelt wisdom, these (and beyond) are the questions that I’d love to invite you to contemplate with us in the pages of our latest print edition, The Lissome Nº4: Love Ethic – we may find love to be a powerful antidote for times as challenging and divisive as ours, softening our hearts and relaxing our minds, opening up new ways for us to thrive.
This article is part of Edition Nº4: Love Ethic – you can order it here.
Words by Dörte de Jesus & photography by Jack Johnstone.