The Absence of Love
from Dreams, Bones, & the Future: Queries & Speculations by Russell Lockhart and Paco Mitchell

PM: Earlier you referred to the “pathology of orthodoxy,” which sounds like one of those statements that could have gotten you burned at the stake as a heretic alongside Jung, or at least put under house arrest with Galileo. The forces of orthodoxy do not take criticism kindly, having for centuries presumed to define what is good and acceptable for all. But now you are saying that the spread of orthodoxy into every corner of our lives and every form of society, amounts to an epidemic disease, and that narcissism is one of its primary qualities. Can you elaborate on that viewpoint?

RL: At bottom, narcissism rejects love and if love is rejected, it’s always power and “power over” that fills the void. Orthodoxy is afraid of love. So, in demanding conformity, whether bluntly or subtly, the principle of exclusion becomes dominant. One of the chief mechanisms of conformity is fear, and orthodoxy is always operating both out of fear and using fear. Love cannot thrive in an atmosphere of fear, but power relishes it. Eros always goes deepest on the personal level and goes to precincts power cannot know, because power always adheres Velcro-like to “principles” over people. So, I see narcissism’s rejection of love and Eros as the fundamental psychology of orthodoxy. And this is where the tipping point from orthodoxy to tyranny, from fundamentalism to fascism, becomes inevitable. It is the absence and rejection of love that lies at the root of so much of our modern character as a culture.