To Be Loved For Money Again

A slightly edited version from the Pub:

Traditionally, people might embark on a relationship not for one's sophistication or one's ability to share the private spheres of our hearts, but simply for one's financial and social status in order to promote the family's status in the social hierarchy or mitigate the competitive nature between aristocratic families. Not until the eighteenth century, the romantic conception of love has emerged where one wishes to harbour romantic sentiment by means of poetry or a piece of exquisite music. It was not long before the pecuniary attachment to love was denied the opportunity of expression. We are living in the era where one easily arrives the conclusion that money will necessarily nurture shallow relationships.

However, owing to the similarly constructed notions of romantic love and marriage, we are often in muddle of what distinctions between them ought to be made. Our failure to distinguish romantic love as archaic impulse and marriage as social institution easily leads us to forge an inevitably connection between them, that marriage is an extended contract of the vows we have once made in a romantic relationship. If these two sentiments are inherently contradictory, it is because marriage is founded on our financial struggle to keep the family in condition, the essential element which our romantic sentiment is deeply opposed to.

Consequently, emerging there are two schools of thought in love. One school proposes that one should find in her partner logically reducible elements: money, fame, social status etc. Where traditional conception of love may require us to sacrifice for our partners, self-love, as opposed to selfless love, ought to be raised to a status of superiority. The other school, as obvious as it seems, condemns this pecuniary culture. It insists that money will ultimately nurture shallow relationships. A similar trajectory can hence easily be drawn for one's obsession for one's body, outlook, or even sexual candour. One should find in her partner some sort of inner beauty, elements that are critically independent of change and decay, things that might not be easily washed away by misfortunes such as intelligence, compassion, and sophistication.

In the midst of choosing sides, for the fear of being shallowly condemned, a great deal of social critics and groups of people whose thinking is submitted to the predictable brand of the mature middle class nonsense wish to draw their moral landscape from the latter school as the sole criterion for true love. Is our quest to find true love must necessarily be based on one's quality rather than one's material possession?

Perhaps it is shallow psychology to think that it is impossible for genuine affection to grow out of the love of one's money. Though the instinctive root may be self-interest, through the assistance of money, one may have felt for the help, namely, an expensive cosmetic set or a McQueen's dress, which she owes to his male counterpart that easily develops into sincere love. In the cynical world of ours, most of us severely condemn those who decide matters measured in money. However, the fact always runs counter to what is considered noble. It is precisely money or other superficial elements which one's attractiveness is based on. The fact that people are rich or look beautiful easily fools us into thinking that some sort of mysterious schemas are deeply attached to them. It is ignorance that muddies our objective judgement on them. It leaves room for a reflective delight which our imaginative vision flowers.

We are often told that we should not fall at first glance or for qualities that are unable to bear the verdict of time, that we should give a clear-eyed investigation into the depth of waters before we can testify for our romantic destiny. If we are prone to falling in love with people whom we know nothing, it is because they defy our ease of understanding. We are creatures of habit and therefore liable to grow contemptuous of what is familiar. If knowing each other means deviating away from the romantic conception of love, then perhaps we should cut away our effort for psychoanalysis and fall for merely superficial elements like money or physical beauty. The quest to find a true love is hence critically dependent on understanding absenteeism, that a great deal of affection is based on the paradoxical fact of less understanding.

Social conventions have prevented us from anchoring our criterion of love to money. But we should not be condemned merely on the ground of self-interest. Because things that invoke our promotion of self-interests are the ones that generate our desire of love. Therefore, love can be seen as a direction, not a place, and burns itself out with the attainment of its goal.

While the romantic sentiment has been at play, it seems unjust to rule out the possibility to summon genuine love out of superficial elements such as money. Nevertheless, wealth can purchase the reality of love. It may be undesirable and less noble. Unfortunately, it is a fact.

W