3.19

When I first read George Orwell's 1984, I was surprised. Yes, of course, it had plenty of biting political commentary. Oppression was there in spades, language and thought manipulation pervaded, paranoia, fear, the works. All of that, to varying degrees, was expected though. I mean, it was 1984. It's practically synonymous with dystopia.

What surprised me, though, was not its commentary, but its plot. 1984 was not a gritty action thriller or a harrowing survival story. It was a romance. The politics were there, of course. But they were like supporting characters, subplots in a story about love. Love was the catalyst, love was the impetus, love was the basis of the novel’s tragedy. And yet, for all that I had heard before (and, honestly, since), “love” had not entered the discussion.

Truly, it's odd. Love is a prevailing, fundamental theme of a great deal of literature (and, indeed, many narrative texts), so perhaps it shouldn't be a shock that its prominence is taken for granted. Be that as it may, 1984 is not alone in its romantic dystopia. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and even Cormac McCarthy's The Road all feature love (and its notable absence). The nature of the love is as diverse as the settings. Sometimes it is unrequited and tortuous, a commentary on modern technology and values. Sometimes it is a thing of nostalgia, a memory of what used to be, a stark reminder of trauma and loss that the dystopia represents. Sometimes it is immediate, paternal, visceral, something to be clung to as one would cling to the purpose of life itself. All around these characters and their loves, the world is a monstrosity, in ruins not only physical, but philosophical.

It is not survival itself that makes the protagonists' lives worthwhile, but the people they are living for that do. The darkness of these dystopian worlds practically necessitates the search for such human affection, and, when it is so often taken away, the lessons and emotional impact of the works are elevated to a level of grief, despair, and regret that the loss of the character's self, alone, could never replicate.

That intensity, the importance of that profound, fundamental connection between two people is what love, for me, should be about. This is not to say that love is all there is to life. That's the stuff of Beatles songs and Hollywood. Nor would I say that love, to meet such criteria, has to be romantic or sexual. But I would say that love, whatever its form, gives life a purpose and a nobility above petty survivalism that makes what would be a grating, small existence fundamentally worthwhile.

To say such a thing could be represented, or even significantly reinforced, with a diamond or bouquet is, to me, evidence of the same mentality that has cast us into our current period of national darkness. It is that mentality that clouds us with distractions, with pretentious and trivial concerns, and masks our better selves with wasteful and selfish ways. Of course, I've made no secret for my disdain of buying and selling affection. As I have tried to emphasize time and again, whether it's love of a child, love of a partner, love of a parent, even love of a deity, the manifestation of such love has to be one of action and feeling, not merely an exchange of capital. For too long we've been worried about the mechanics of such trade, not what it is we're actually purchasing.

What I would like to posit, though, is that I think it is no coincidence that, in the literature of disaster and darkness, love serves as that which is true, pure, and inherently desirable. So often, of course, that love is tainted, manipulative, or the source of immense agony. But, when it seems all else is grief and gloom, the impact love has, the difference it makes, is astounding.

So it is that, now, we find ourselves in our own period of anxiety and decay. A far cry from dystopia, yes. But there seems an almost ubiquitous fear, a pervasive trepidation about what horrors may come as our prosperity and abundance is gradually taken from us before our disbelieving eyes. Yet even as our future is dark and uncertain, we have a chance to assert anew what truly matters to us. We have a chance to prove that, though we may have erred, we have something worth protecting, worth salvaging from the impending wreckage.

This is why desperation cannot win. This is why we must continue to persevere, to sacrifice the superficialities and immediate pleasures that led us here in the hope that we can find our way again. No, love will not save us. But, for me at least, it is a constant reminder of why we are worth saving.