Love Vs. Control

July 25th, 2008

Today’s ~~rant~~ topic has been on my “list of things to write about” for a while, but I recently came across something that pissed me off enough to bump it to the front of the line. I stumbled upon an article written from an evangelical Christian viewpoint — and call it masochism (and you’d probably be right) but I couldn’t stop reading. An excerpt:

A selfish person will desire control over others to use them for personal benefit; an altruistic person will desire such to improve them out of love.

The really ironic thing is that the article is subtitled “The Dark Side of the Soul,” since this false dichotomy illustrates two beliefs that are equally based in the dark side of the ego and its need for control.

The idea of equating love with control is as prevalent as it is toxic. The concept is ultimately rooted in a coercive view of divine power (a fallacy I also addressed here). In philosophical circles this is known as the “Divine Command Theory” of ethics — you do what God says, not because what God says has merit in itself, but because he is bigger than you and may light you on fire if you don’t (rough paraphrase there :P). Since we typically become like the Gods in which we put our faith, this leads to a glorification of coercive control in the way we relate to other people.

Even people who don’t hold this (or any) particular view of God can nonetheless fall into the trap of seeking to control and manipulate others “for their own good,” and equating this with love. In reality this approach is rooted solely in fear. Fear of loss; fear of change; insecurity in one’s beliefs about how the world is or should be. On the other side of the equation are those who enter a relationship with the attitude that love is based on how much of themselves they give up for the other person’s benefit. Both are equally misguided and soul-destroying.

When you plant a seed, do you tell it how to grow? Micromanage its growth? Force it to grow how you want? No; that approach would probably kill it. Rather, you give it what it needs to flourish, and it does the rest. The truth as I have come to see it is that each soul is in this life for its own reasons. I may be able to help you remember what your reasons are, but if I try and force you to accept some version of what I think they should be, then I am nothing more than an obstacle on your path. Upon encountering situations like this, my advice would be to run. Quickly.

Love, and any attempt to control another person against their will for any reason, are mutually exclusive. In reality control is a subtle form of theft. Your free will is in a sense your own posession — the free will of others is not. If any one of your relationships is based on anything real and genuine, then exerting control over it is both unnecessary and detrimental. Conversely, if you have to control or manipulate someone into aligning with your will, you’re actually stealing something that isn’t yours to begin with from that person as well as the universe. You’re conning them out of their time, energy, resources, whatever, and also depriving someone who could accept those resources in an honest, voluntary and mutually beneficial way.

For those who habitually engage in control and manipulation of the people in their lives, the price is often quite high. They depend on the ignorance and relinquishing of personal power of their subjects in order to perpetuate these relationships. The need for control is never secure or satisfied however, and the inevitable result is that they push a little too far, inadvertently awaken their hostage’s need for spiritual and emotional independence, and thus the house of cards they have built up around themselves falls apart very quickly, leaving them with nothing.

The exceptions to this are situations where one voluntarily consents to give up control to another person on a temporary basis with the goal of regaining one’s own foundation. I would place kids in this category as I believe in pre-incarnative agreements, but in any case obviously young children need someone to establish healthy boundaries, ideally as a way of teaching them how to establish their own. Another example that comes to mind is a friend of mine whose life at one point years ago, was on a downward spiral of addiction, lying and stealing. His parents and older sister agreed to have him move in with her, on the condition that his choice was to have her run his life like a military dictatorship while he was there, or he would be turned out on the street. Today his take on all this is “y’know, I’m still not sure I like [my sister] very much, but what can I say, she did get me turned around.” In cases like this, the individual has already relinquished control over their free will, so there are times when “tough love” from someone willing to hang onto it for them until (and only until) they are capable of reclaiming it for themselves, is appropriate. The challenge there for both parties though, is to not enter into a cycle of dependency where the enforced control lasts longer than it needs to. Fortunately today my friend is living on his own and doing very well for himself. All of this serves to illustrate that for those who are in a position of authority over others, ideally the goal should always be for the subjects of control to to find their own sense of personal power and authority.

The distinctions I’ve laid out here can be applied to one’s spiritual evolution, and all the way up to the divine level. As we evolve spiritually, the need for control, whether over other people or circumstances, decreases, in favor of control over the self. Control of the self, our thoughts, words and actions, is the one form of control that is possible and well worth cultivating. It is here that the only real forms of security and personal freedom are found, as is the desire to help others find their own truth and freedom.

The highest form of love seeks to encourage, preserve and protect free will, not to subvert or destroy it.

–Palehorse

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