How love helps us thrive

We all want to be loved. We only fully flourish when we are loved. Being loved affirms our goodness as people. Our search for love shapes many of our actions and endeavors. Some have even suggested that’s all we have Reasons for action They arise from love, and that all our different emotions and emotions Feelings Ultimately based on love.

Despite this universal desire for love, the topic is strangely absent from most academic works, and certainly largely absent from any discussions of social policy. There is a contradiction between the centrality of love in our personal lives and its relative absence in our public discourse. If we want to adequately advance human flourishing, we must seek to bridge this gap and promote better love.

Understanding love

in Human Flourishing Programme At Harvard, we recently published an article on Love and human flourishing Specifically trying to make this case. We discuss the idea of ​​love itself, the centrality of love in the world’s religious traditions, and the sweeping claims that are sometimes made about love in disciplines ranging from philosophy For sociology, psychology and even business administration.

We review different streams of empirical evidence that love plays a powerful role in promoting human flourishing, and put forward potentially radical proposals for how love can play a central role in social policy. We are ultimately saying that love has enormous untapped potential to enhance human flourishing.

As we noticed previouslyLove may be understood as containing both unified And a input component. The unitary component of love seeks union with the person or thing loved. The contributing component seeks the good of the beloved for its own sake.

When we use the word “love” in… Ordinary languagethere is one of these two unitary or contributory elements, or both. However, in human relationships, we always desire both.

The experience of being loved, and being loved, helps us feel our value as people. Having someone who wants to be with us, someone who has our best interests at heart, helps affirm our identity. Whether this love happened in Romantic relationshipsin Parent-Child Bonds, in FriendshipOr in our daily interactions, love fulfills a fundamental part of who we are as people.

Love and prosperity

Being loved and loved is truly desirable in itself. However, love contributes to our flourishing in many other ways as well.

While rigorous empirical studies of love are still relatively rare, much evidence, closely related to love, points to powerful effects of love on human flourishing. Longitudinal studies ParentingFor example, it suggests that parental warmth or parental love over time helps develop greater psycho-emotional and social health among children and reduces the likelihood of later problems. depression And drug abuse. studies marriage and relational quality within marriage It indicates strong, long-term and beneficial effects on the health and well-being of both spouses.

studies forgivenesswhich can be viewed as restoring love—replacing bad faith with good faith—after abuse, she points out Important implications To reduce depression and anxietyincreasing hope, improving prosperity. Randomized trials for sympathy Interventions also indicate strong effects on well-being.

Many longitudinal studies and even randomized trials Acts of kindness or Volunteeringwhich can show love, likewise indicates important influences on health and well-being. While we could argue that we need a more rigorous empirical study of love (“Epidemiology of love“), there is already much to suggest that love is crucial to human flourishing.

Love and social policy

Given the powerful effects that love has on human flourishing, love should be given a more prominent place in social policy as well. Given the number of areas of life in which love can potentially be demonstrated, the opportunities for enhancing it are essentially limitless, whether it be in the context of close relationships or even our daily interactions with others, through “love of one’s neighbor.”

Perhaps it is because there are so many opportunities to enhance love that we neglect to do so. But this neglect ultimately hinders our prosperity. There is more to be done.

We need to regularly reinforce the importance of love in parent-child relationships; In fact, it may be Most important Factor in success Parenting. We must foster love and acts of kindness within ourselves SchoolsAnd universal respect or love for one’s neighbor to facilitate learning, formation, and a life of love. We must promote love within the workplace, both between and among employees Business leadersand encourage them to genuinely care about those they manage and create Climate care.

We must promote love in medicine, which is not just about providing services, but also about providing love nursing. We must promote love within religious communities, where there is often a strong formation in love of one’s neighbor, which can then lead to important contributions to The common good For society as a whole. We must strengthen forgiveness Within society, which helps restore love and strengthens the individual and society Prosperous.

We need to foster love – love of neighbors and even love of the enemy – in our communities and our political lives if we are to avoid increasing polarization and discord. We should base our economic relationships on what allows for love and friendship The right time With each other for love.

We need more power Academic study Love to understand its distribution, determinants and reinforcement. And we need to have it News media and Social media Transactions governed by love, pointing to goodness, and not contributing to stirring up societal strife. All of this is necessary if we are to foster love and promote prosperity. The opportunities are almost endless, but are often neglected.

Neighbor Love Initiative

Given the importance of love in our lives, in our society, and in our prosperity, we at the Human Flourishing Program are launching a new Love Your Neighbor initiative aimed at promoting love throughout society. We hope to build on this initiative over the next year to:

1. Promoting love in all different types of relationships — from parenting to schools to friendship to faith communities and beyond
2. Begin a nationally representative tracking of love of neighbor and love of the enemy Ratings To see how they are distributed throughout society and how they might change over time
3. The promotion of love within public policy, and the recognition of love as a social determinant of health, has been encouraged by institutions ranging from the World Health Organization to the United States. Psychological Assembly and DSMAnd in other places
4. Support campaigns that promote universal love for neighbors

If you are interested in joining or supporting this work financially, we would love to hear from you. For fuller human flourishing, we need to strive toward love and toward what some have called a “civilization of love.” The research is compelling, and the policy and advocacy opportunities are numerous. Let us strive together to love one another better.