The Euthanasia of Love in the Modern World -By Odogo David Adejo

Love is a common expression of the human person. The person is a being-in-love and a being-towards-love. The barest facts of human existence include love at the preliminaries; I say this because, every person born begins with an experience of love as the very first tangible and concrete experience and expression received and reciprocated. The very acts and processes of socialization are spurred from impulses of love: be they manifest, or tacit. The very act and expression of love is a universal phenomenon. The act of being of people is therefore, the expression of love.

However, specificity and particularity of reference have, in my opinion, belittled the magnitude of awe embedded in the simple word: love. We have broken down love to gestalts in order to “differentiate” what love means in contexts of socialization. I maintain that, this is where we went wrong. Love is ab ovo, not a classified hierarchy or, a specified ranking; love is a universal phenomenon. Our African local languages maintain this point when they refuse to admit distinctions among blood relations, or among friends and societies of close ties. This distinction is partly and significantly responsible for the death of the awe of love and the decline in the impact of its richly authentic import.

It is of no doubt that there is a decline in understanding the term ‘love’. It is a word that has experienced a strong attack in the contemporary world. Human beings who have been endowed with the capacity to love have been influenced greatly by the different terms used to express love and impressions and ideas associated with the term ‘love’. This has led to a gradual decadence in the usage of this term in its truest sense. The term “love” is gotten etymologically from the Latin word ‘amor’ which means affection, fondness, adoration; and as well, from the Greek word ‘agape’ which also means dearness, affection. Etymologically, the term ‘love’ means a universal feeling of affection which is geared towards humanity. Hence the division of love into various types such as erotic, philia, storge and agape is but a way of classification and division.

Love is the tenderness or affection shown to mankind irrespective of one’s status, position, tribe, race or orientation. This implies that the division fails to depict the real concept of love; each division is but a part divided from the whole in an attempt to mirror the whole. Love, is thus a universal feeling of affection that transcends the boundaries of these divisions aforementioned.

However, in the modern world, this term has been so much influenced that it becomes difficult to be applied in its entirety because of the trending notion of love which has been taken to mean several things. It is to this end that the term ‘love’ has experienced what I call euthanasia; that is, the gradual death of the true concept and meaning of love. I refer to this as euthanasia because etymologically, euthanasia is gotten from the Greek work ‘eu’ which means well and ‘thanatos’ which means death. Thus it is seen as a good death or easy death. This same term, I apply to the death of love which is seen as something connected to sexual expression and immoral acts which are now pronounced in the modern world.

Furthermore, as a result of the euthanasia of love, there arises a strong reservation to the usage of this same concept; this is because, with the current trending of various schools of thought on sexual orientation and the high consciousness of sexual revolution that is currently on, limits have been placed on the boldness and approach of people towards the word ‘love’. With the current sexual abnormalities and orientation, it becomes difficult for individuals to use the term ‘love’ in it true sense as various interpretations will be given. However, here I propose that the term, ‘love’, should be seen as something positive and should be used to refer to genuine love for humanity and not to be seen as a term which is not universal or, limited to certain feelings expressed in certain forms.