Why Unconditional Love Will Destroy You (Usually)
People idolize puppies and children when it comes to their endless supplies of unconditional love. Kids love you no matter what they do, goes the saying, and that’s why children are love.
Said people have never dealt with a screaming baby at three in the morning who wants to be fed now. Or a cat, curling up on your keyboard because he wants petting when you’ve got a project due in an hour.
The truth is that children and dogs generally have the same unconditional love that all sane people have: If you don’t give me what I need, I will resist as much as I possibly can. They just don’t have the power to leave, or even necessarily to understand how they’re being hurt. Most abused dogs, it should be noted, are tied in a back yard somewhere so they can’t run away, and if a three-year-old is getting whomped by some abusive jerk, that jerk can sadly convince them this whomping is normal.
What you see in pets and kids is not unconditional love. It’s a love thoroughly dependent on their last meal, their comparative powerlessness, and a warped understanding of what’s normal.
Because unconditional love expressed through action is crazy.
Now, a friend of mine – and I wish I could remember who – wisely said there’s two types of love: love through action, and love through emotion. And if you’re wise enough to divorce the two, you can let the emotions burble and splutter within you all you like, and not have that emotion-love affect the action-love.
As a real-life example, I still love my ex-girlfriend. Deeply. I think about her probably two or three times a week, and wish she was still in my life. Some part of me will always be a little in love with her. Based on some friendly interactions, I think she’d probably be willing to get back together, at least as friends.
But realistically, I look at how we interacted, and how much damage that did to me. In some ways she actually hated the things about me that I valued the most, and made me feel bad about having reactions to some spectacularly shitty things she did… and I don’t see that as having changed. And so, regrettably, I think Well, I will always love her, but that doesn’t mean I have to let her hurt me again.
And I look at this beautifully written cartoon for the seventieth time, and don’t talk to her.
So if you’re describing unconditional love as “internally unconditional, externally bound,” then I’m cool with that. I love people I haven’t let myself talk to in years, because the internal-love I feel for them is not an excuse to endure their shitty behavior.
Yet I don’t think most people make that comparison. For me, I have to overthink relationships – because as a depressive, for at least six weeks out of the year, my emotions are telling me everyone would be better off if I was dead. So I’ve learned that raw feelings are a pretty spectacularly bad way of making decisions.
As such, I’m finely tuned into the damage of unconditional love.
Unconditional love, in my experience, is what abusive parents try to tell their kids in order to justify the damage they feel like dealing out. We love each other no matter what, they say as they’re insulting and undermining and destroying you,And that’s why we don’t leave one another.
In other words, “Love” becomes twisted into this sense of “You enable my behavior no matter how bad it gets.” (Usually with a healthy dollop of “If you don’t stay with me, then you don’t know how to love and are hence a bad person.”)
And so what you wind up with are people endlessly swallowing huge gouts of abuse they should never put up with, because they’ve tied the concept of “love” directly into “enduring.” For them, unconditional love means that no matter what happens, I’ll be there for you. Just like Christ, right?
Except that Christ flipped a few moneylenders’ tables in His lifetime. He snap-corrected His followers when they were wrong.
Christ loved you, but even the Son of God wasn’t willing to take your shit.
The sad lesson of the world is this: Act like a rug and people will walk on you.Which is to say that most people don’t consider your needs when interacting with you: they consider theirs. And most people won’t stop taking from you, figuring quite rightfully that you’re a human being in charge of patrolling your own borders, and you’ll tell them when it’s time to stop.
If you have internalized the idea that “unconditional love” means “unconditional support,” then you become a resource and not a human being. And while there are wonderful people who won’t abuse you, they aren’t the ones who’ll seek you out. An abuser doesn’t care about you, he cares about what you can give him… and so, to an abuser, what you perceive as “love” he perceives as “an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
And is that really love? Giving people everything they want usually turns them into monsters. And you’ll find in a tragic amount of instances that the “love” these people feel for you dries up pretty toot suite when you stop doling out things upon command.
No. The weird thing is, standing up for yourself makes you a better person. There’s a lot of talk of “privilege” in liberal circles, but the truth is that so much of what’s considered “privilege” stems from the idea that certain people are trained to expect better things, and usually won’t shut up until they get them. You can see that from watching my impoverished relatives dealing with doctors; they get life-threateningly bad medical service because they’ve been trained that whatever the doctor says, goes.
Strangely, they get better when someone who’s willing to contradict their physicians stays with them. They get a better class of medical care not because they’ve got different doctors, but because someone hauls in a different set of expectations.*
Unconditional love trains too many people that it’s somehow wrong to tell our loved ones no. Me? I tell my loved ones “no” all the time. I won’t lend them $500 when they gambled their last paycheck away, won’t lend ’em a couch to sleep on if I think they’ll steal from me, won’t lend them a car if I think they’ll drive drunk. And yet I’ve seen all of those actions justified under the umbrella of “unconditional love.”
No. My love is thoroughly conditional in the sense that if you want to keep my love within an accessible distance, you’ll need to treat me with respect. I may still love you if you treat me badly – but I’ll love you from wayyyy over there, where you can’t get your toxic little mitts on me.
I think that’s sane. I think that’s healthy. And I think that’s the kind of love we should strive to teach as a community.
I think that is, in all ways, the best kind of love.
* – Which isn’t to say that privilege gets fixed if every poor person demands better. There’s often negative feedback built in where the unprivileged are actively punished for demanding better things… but that’s an essay for another time.
Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
This is the most fascinatingly lukewarm show I have ever seen.
A show based on super-heroes with this kind of mojo should, in theory, be super-exciting, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is just… not. The three plots thus far have been almost straight out of a superpowered cop show, and barring Agent Coulson, the characters are pretty by-the-numbers too. We have the conflicted hot hacker, the dedicated hot muscleman, the other dedicated hot muscleman (who is a woman), and the two “adorable” nerds. Last night’s episode was an exercise in predictability: will the lead character who is mentioned in the opening credits as an ongoing personality betray S.H.I.E.L.D? I’ll let you decide.
And yet Agents of SHIELD – I refuse to put in the dots any more – isn’t bad, either. It’s got some memorably Whedony lines. Agent Coulson is the kind of boss you’d love to have – clever, self-deprecating, possessed of a curious history, navigating thorny patches of bureaucracy and moral quandaries to achieve the best possible outcome.
It’s hovering perfectly in that “Not uninteresting enough to drop, not interesting enough for me to get excited about yet.” Honestly, I’m more thrilled when a new episode of Hotel Impossible pops up on my DVR. And yet I’m still there, because it’s so thoroughly and competently done that I’m not going to miss an episode.
Yet I wonder how much of that is conscious. Buffy had some great opening starts, and it wasn’t great in the ratings. I wonder if the network heads specifically said to Joss, “Hey. Make this more like a procedural to rope in some of the CBS/NCIS/Law and Order crowd, and tone down those crazy character antics that got you cancelled on the other station.” I’m wondering whether this sort of studied blandness is a feature instead of a bug.
At this point, Agents of SHIELD feels more like a promise than a show. I trust Joss that the overall plot is going to develop. I trust that I’ll come to love someone other than Agent Coulson. I trust by the end of this season, I’ll be watching in real time as opposed to picking it up whenever.
But right now, it is coasting fascinatingly in a way that I’ve never seen before: perfectly-engineered nerd mediocrity.
Why I Won't Be Seeing Ender's Game (A Recanting)
Yesterday, I outlined the reasons I’d be seeing Ender’s Game in the theaters – mainly, because Orson Scott Card gives money to anti-gay causes. A lot of people said, “Oh, that’ll just encourage Hollywood to pick up all of Orson Scott Card’s books!” I find that to be a poor argument, because a) OSC has been a nightmare in PR for the studios thus far, unable to keep his mouth shut, b) they’ve doubtlessly purchased the sequel rights just in case, and c) his other books aren’t Hollywood-friendly. All that assumes that Ender’s Game is a smash hit. As such, I’d put that in the “low risk of OSC profiting further than he already has” category.
However! The great Billy Martin has informed me that writers traditionally get points on the back end when they purchase your book rights – something I’d not heard before, but he’d know, considering his book Lost Souls was optioned at one point. According to him, that’s how they avoid paying you up-front.
(I should add that if you’re interested in getting some good book doctoring, Billy – formerly Poppy Z. Brite – knows his stuff and is reasonably priced, so check him out if you want your stories critiqued.)
Yet even if that was not the case, many others pointed out that I’d missed that Orson Scott Card has a producers’ credit on the film, and as such he will get paid if it does well. So I recant and will not see it in the theater, which will disappoint my wife. And me, since I really like seeing big explosions in the theater; it’s not the same at home, despite our home theater and surround-sound.
It’s been suggested that I pay for a ticket for some other movie I like, then sneak in to see Ender’s Game. That would be illegal. It would also ensure the theater gets paid, make sure the money goes towards causes I like, and still let me see the movie I’m curious about. But you know me, I’d never break the law.
Why I'll Be Seeing Ender's Game
(EDIT: Upon being presented with new facts, in fact, I shall not see it. Read here to see why.)
In case you’re not aware, Orson Scott Card is the kind of guy who’s happy to spend his paycheck on anti-gay causes. (He’s also a little crazy with his Obama-as-Hitler theories, which doesn’t help.) And now the big-screen version of his greatest book, Ender’s Game, is hitting the screen in November – and a lot of my friends are boycotting the film.
I don’t blame them. But I’ll be there.
Thing is, if I thought Orson was getting more money out of this, I’d stay at home in a New York minute. But Hollywood is famed for being the place where authors have zero power, and I will personally eat all of my hats if OSC is getting any money on the back end from the film’s success. He got paid when they optioned his novel, which means that basically, it’s too late to prevent OSC from profiting from the movie. The cash is in his bank. The movie’s been floating around in Hollywood for so long, one suspects he’s spent it already.
Orson Scott Card will profit handsomely from the movie tie-in books – I know from bookstore experience that getting your book shoved to the front table with a movie backing it means that your sales will go up considerably – but again, that’s not anything “boycotting the movie” will prevent. His sales will go up riotously even if Ender’s Game tanks, as he’s got a classic book that most people in sci-fi considered a “must-read” before he started spewing bile, so realistically, I’m not stopping him from earning cash off that.
And given that there’s nothing I can do to stop him from making money, I figure I might as well see the film. The trailers look good, if a bit misguided (what I find compelling about Ender’s Game is Ender’s isolation and intellect, his being forced to grow in effective ways that truncate his humanity, and the trailers make him sound like The Chosen One), and I loved the story even as I acknowledge that certain elements of it are problematic. So I’ll dump the eight bucks to go see it, and see whether it’s a good film (assuming the reviews aren’t “STAY AWAY!”), and turn my brain off for an hour or two.
Because I don’t think my attending or not-attending will send a significant message. Me boycotting the Chik Fil-A across the street is something I’ll do because I think it’s effective on some level; OSC’s already got his cash, and the money I shell out at the box office is going to people who are largely for gay rights.
I’ve registered my personal complaint against OSC by not having purchased any of his books since he began frothing in such a manner – haven’t picked up any sequels since Ender’s Shadow (which I loved), and when I re-read Ender’s Game, I went out of my way to borrow a copy from a friend. And that, I feel, hurts him more than the movie.
Now, this brings up the question of, “How dare you want to punish someone for their political views?” which always arises in here, and the summary argument is, I am not obligated to give my money to talented assholes. If I think OSC’s a jerk, “not rewarding his bad behavior with cash” is something that’s an option to me, because my money? Is mine. I don’t have to hand it over to people I find personally repugnant. That’s not a “boycott” so much as “I would feel bad knowing that I’m buying books from foaming idiots when there are books just as good available from nicer people.”
(Which is fair. Some people dislike me personally, and don’t read my stories because that would make them feel bad. I support their efforts to cleanse me from their lives.)
It’s like going to the Starbucks where the guy gives you a coffee, but whispers that he hates your wife under his breath as he serves the espresso. You can argue all you like that the focus should be on the coffee, but realistically you’re never buying just a coffee, you’re buying an experience. And if the experience surrounding that coffee is sufficiently unpleasant, there’s a pretty good indie coffee shop across the street.
But even more than that, OSC is a particular target because he’s spent his money campaigning to hurt and restrain people I love. This isn’t just “Orson Scott Card is an asshat”; it’s “Orson Scott Card is spending some percentage of his income on causes I find toxic.” If I found out that Stephen King was the head of the “Starve A Kitten” foundation, I’d have a similar reaction. For most authors, I’ll just say, “All right, she’s a jerk, I’ve got better books to buy,” but OSC escalated by funneling his profits towards thwarting gay marriage. I do not want to donate to anti-gay marriage, even in a roundabout way, nor do I want to see anti-gay marriage causes funded, so I want OSC not to prosper.
It’s a little mean. But he clearly believes in his cause, and as such I think he’s smart enough to see what it’ll cost him. Should he continue, he’s made his choice, and I’ve made mine. Trying to argue that his stance shouldn’t influence mine is basically saying that I shouldn’t have stances. I’ll debate that.
And my choice is that the movie isn’t going to really hurt OSC at this point. Worst-case scenario is that Ender’s Game is a huge success and they try to option Speaker for the Dead (if they haven’t already), in which case I think Hollywood will be Very Unhappy at trying to turn that dissatisfying sequel into a movie. But I doubt that’ll happen, because Asa Butterfield will be too old by then anyway.
So I’ll pay my cash to see what I anticipate will be a B- movie, with lots of loud explosions and none of the striking heart that made Ender’s Game such a moving experience. But that’s okay. I like explosions.
Ferrett's Stupid Nail Tricks: The Latest Nail-Related Weirdness
“Your salon really does love finding new and interesting polishes, doesn’t it?” asked Little_ribbit. To which my response was, “Replace ‘salon’ with ‘me.'”
Basically, if it’s new and crazy, I want it on my nails. (Next up: Nail wraps from Espionage Cosmetics. Nebula, Circuit Board, Steampunk, Time Lord, Zombie Killer.)