Lilies and roses, the death of love hard-garnered from the wasteful earth that fulfills summer's glory with autumn's kiss to blacken buds once white with hope
The ideal of perfect Love, even if never actually or fully manifested remains a part of the human potential. Ever since the notion was first formulated near the end of the Middle Ages, drawing together so many threads of he human fabric--instinct, desire, altruism, reproduction, spiritual aspirations--Love has become one of the permanent recurring goals of the human condition. It is different from socialism's ideal of the Perfect Man in this: it does not require that perfect Love ever actually exist here on Earth. It is enough that it remain an ideal or goal to have its shaping effect on current events. This is not the case with socialism's Perfect Man ideal; with the Perfect Man, it is the end that justifies the means; its ethical content is empty. Love, even when "achieved" remains a goal, an object to strive toward, since no one can ever love another perfectly. And love itself retains the character of a motivator, an internalized ideal driving action as well as an outward goal or destination. In terms of social concepts, Islam's "jihad" also apparently shares these same characteristics. But only when Jihad is understood with its mystical connotations intact can it remain full of ethical import, for it is an expression of what we might call "love of God." The difficulty comes because this love has a communal social aspect where "perfect justice" is to eventually be made manifest in the community, or "Umma." But Jihad also has the connotation of an inner "struggle for truth." And such an inner struggle can have no obvious end; at best, a series of plateaus described by previous explorers of the inner landscape. Romantic Love gains its practical value as a shared ideal that helps to shape and strengthen individual bonds; by achieving this modest goal on a regular basis, Love helps to provide, or sketch out, meaning in the lives dedicated to its ideal. Each participant is part of that larger world. It has no final, static destination, such as "Justice for all," but simply maintains itself as a goal, like Plato's "The Good." One can never love too much, or have too much love. In a very different way, one can never have too much Justice; for once "justice" has been achieved, no more justice can be applied. Its character as a goal or an ideal disappears, and it simply becomes reality. And Reality, as we all are too sharply aware, is not the destination of romantic Love.
Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]