It is very easy to love ideas. Daydreams about democracy. Fantasies of charity. Imaginations drifting over a world at peace.
Talk is Cheap
The Peanuts comics made famous the line from Linus when he declares, “I love mankind… It’s people I can’t stand!” How well this captures the lack of substance behind many of our convictions.
Talk is cheap. We all know this, but how often we forget it when we speak, or worse, when we act. Do our actions match our words? Do our morals pair with our ideals? Is the work of our hands in sync with what we declare with our mouths? Does our heart only have a vivid imagination? Or, does it actually produce action?
James wrote about such shallow speech when he stated, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15–16). Mere speech is meaningless if not accompanied by actions that back it up.
The Problem of Particular People
Although Peanuts might have made popular the line about mankind vs. people, the tradition of that particular sentiment goes back to Dostoevsky. Early in the novel, the character Father Zosima recalls the words of a doctor he knew who was well aware of the hypocrisy of his view of humanity in the abstract when met with each raw, real, and particular person.
Through Dostoevsky, Zosima states:
He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. “I love mankind,” he said, “but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,” he said, “I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose.”1
The doctor is wise to recognize this hypocrisy. How simple it is to say we love in general, but fail to be able to apply this love in the particular situations of our lives. No matter how lofty our ideals, they are only tested when set against the real.
Even the littlest annoyances can break our stride. Anything that disrupts our comfort can show how our mighty castle wall is merely hollow with a fancy veneer.
Active Love
But why? Why is this idea so easy to resonate with? How can we fall into this trap so easily?
There are many answers, of course, but as Father Zosima continues, he makes a critical distinction between active love and the love in dreams.
He says:
For active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as giving even one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.2
Quite frankly, loving people is hard. It is messy. It is complex. And, often it does not go the way we want it to. We have little control and must expend much effort.
How much easier it is to just keep humanity in the abstract. How much simpler to let it all be words and thoughts and, at most, a charade of virtue with mighty applause.
But, getting our hands dirty? Persevering through difficulty? Doing the hard work even when we know there will be no recognition? That is a much different thing.
Real Love
Of course, all of this raises the question: If we only love mankind, and fail to love the particular people around us, are we perhaps not that big a fan of mankind after all? Make no mistake, a general love of humanity is a wonderful thing. But, for it to be genuine, it cannot fail to understand what man is.
Mankind is never only an ideal. Humanity is never just a concept, a dream, or a thought. No. Humanity is always bound to individuals.
If we cannot love a man, then certainly, we are no lover of mankind. The idea is not enough. The principle requires participation. And real love is always active love.
Notes
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Picador, 2021), 60
- Ibid. 61
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