All About Love by Bell Hooks (1999)
This book came to my attention recently when hearing, of all people, Joe Talbot (lead singer of vicious post-modern punk band IDLES) saying how much of an influence it had been on their work. Considering their music, this was an intriguing concept. Based on the title and packaging, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this book is a new-age journey through shakras and crystal moons. Indeed you will likely find this book in the self-help section of your local Waterstones, which is greatly misleading. This is an incredibly wise, brave and profound treatise about love not just in the terms that we might know it, as something that just happens to us, but as a concept that can drive the very essence of what it means to be alive.
Bell Hooks herself was a world-renowned theorist and distinguished professor, so I shouldn't have expected anything less but what transpires in the journey of this work took me very much by surprise. Explored here are themes as deep and far-reaching as greed, divinity, universal cause and effect, and plain old romance. Each chapter delves deeper and deeper into what we become as a society when love is not at the forefront of our thoughts and actions. Spoiler alert, it's not good.
There are many scathing assertions made against living in a society driven by narcissism, to the point where I had to check the publishing date. Remarkably this was written years before where we are now, post-social media, but feels like it was written yesterday such is its relevance to life in the civilized world in 2024. Hooks argues that a society dominated by the concept of 'self' is the inevitable outcome when fear is emphasized over love, and if you turn on the news for more than 14 seconds it's probably safe to say that this rationale isn't particularly far-fetched. There are many more eerily profound insights, to the point you begin to wonder if she'd actually been sent back from the future to warn us all of what's coming.
“In our culture privacy is often confused with secrecy. Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings - where we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and can choose to share when we want to. Keeping secrets is usually about power, about hiding and concealing information.”
What's interesting in attempting to review such a work is how to match its sheer earnestness on these matters. It's incredibly brave to stand up and talk about these things unashamedly. Especially in these times, where cynicism and material gain are much more the order of the day. I'm quite a sarcastic little sod myself most of the time, but you have to admire something so sincere. Since this book there has been many movements devoted to social equality and the like, but quite often they get hijacked and filtered through the prism of self. We are fighting against a relentless tide of 'how can I make myself look good to as many people as possible' and that's where apathy is given room to flourish. It's hard for most rational people to get behind a movement that appears self-aggrandizing. This book gives none of that vibe. Yes, she will use examples from her life but only, it seems, ever to illustrate a point. The tone instead keeps to one of an assured expert offering a razor-sharp, albeit loving, dissection of us as a species.
Reading 'All About Love' is like being given a front row seat to a lecture that you probably wouldn't usually attend. It is an intellectual pursuit, certainly, but more often than not it comes from a place of immense calm, which is a pleasure to read. There are no sweeping rationalisations, or generalisations made. Every point is elegant and poised, hitting you more like a dart in the neck than a wallop to the jaw. The air of quiet authority in place makes you pine for someone like this to be in charge of things. Indeed the book asks some hard questions about where we are as a capitalistic society and in the age we live in now, it is so easy to write off matters of the heart as wishy-washy nonsense. We've reached a point where even considering your fellow citizens is thought as 'weak'. You must consume and defend. When in fact, Hooks very convincingly argues, love care and respect for others is probably the very thing that makes us human in the first place. It is certainly the only thing that can transcend death and the fact that fewer and fewer voices out there take such a bold viewpoint is a terrible shame.
It shouldn't be considered a bold viewpoint - to treat others with respect and kindness, to not let past traumas define who you are by confronting them head on, to value family and community over self - but at this point it feels almost revolutionary. It is never suggested that careers, or motivations for financial gain, are inherently bad things. But there is an argument to be had as to where these things should lie in the hierarchy of importance for us weird bipedes, floating on a globe in the middle of an infinite, ever-expanding, nothingness.
"Love empowers us to surrender. We do not need to have endless anxiety and worry about whether we will fulfill our goals or plans. Death is always there to remind us that our plans are transitory. By learning to love, we learn to accept change. Without change, we cannot grow. Our will to grow in spirit and truth is how we stand before life and death, ready to choose life."
We all know The Beatles' classic, 'All You Need Is Love'. We often write this statement off as a twee, sort of sentimental, naive concept: a pleasant thought, but doesn't really cut the mustard in real life. However, if you read this elegantly written, well-researched and highly insightful discourse, you might find yourself stripping away all of the trappings that we somehow trick our tiny minds into thinking are important and realise...they might have been right all along.
JB
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