Do We Really Believe Love is the Antithesis of Duty?

In watching the first season of Legend of the Seeker, I began to get a familiar feeling. I’d felt this way watching Attack of the Clones. There was one episode in particular (Revenant) in which the story was told of a former incarnation of the Seeker and “his Confessor.”

Now this was your basic “another consciousness takes over my body, making me do things I would never do myself but really wish I could” episode which finds its way into most SF tv series. As my sister aptly put it, it gives the producers a chance to get the protagonists to take off their clothes without permanent repercussions. Us viewers all indulge in a little vicarious wish fulfillment…and everyone goes home happy.

But what stuck in my craw about that episode—besides its cheapening of the protagonists’ plight by the law of diminishing returns (ie: when you tell the same joke twice, it’s not funny anymore)—what really bothered me was the obvious assumption that acting upon romantic love is a betrayal of duty.

Okay, okay, this is SF. “Duty” sounds out of place. Does “destiny” or “quest” fit better? Richard’s “destiny” is to kill Darken Rahl. He cannot fulfill that “quest” if he consummates his love with Kahlan.

(Now, theirs is a special case—if they consummate their love, Kahlan will involuntarily touch him with her power, subsuming his will forever in a “love” for her that goes beyond obsession. He would kill himself if that’s what he thought she wanted.

Now, I’m not about to argue that the obliteration of one’s free will is a thing to take lightly. It’s pretty much the last thing you’d want to do to someone you loved. But how would it prevent Richard from killing Darken Rahl and fulfilling his all-important destiny? Kahlan wants Rahl dead too. She could command Richard to kill Rahl and he would, just as surely as if they hadn’t consummated their love. Right?)

But the dilemma, to which the show (and also the book it’s based on) repeatedly calls our attention, is the choice between protecting the ones you love and destroying a threat to the greater good. The assumption is made that if Richard loves Kahlan, he will save her life, even if it means death for the world. (There’s a logical problem here: Kahlan is part of the world, therefore if the world is destroyed, so is she. But I grant that in the heat of the moment, none of us can be counted on to be logical. (Okay, maybe Data would be…))

In Revenant, we meet Richard and Kahlan’s pre-incarnations: Kieran and Viviane. (Apparently seekers fall in love with their confessors all the time.) We’re told, “One thousand years ago Kieran and Viviane did the worst thing a Seeker and Confessor can do…they consummated their love.”

We’re told, “it ruined Kieran…he thought only of protecting Viviane.”

So Kieran’s love for Viviane, and the loss of his will, prevented Kieran from fulfilling his quest.

But in the episode Bloodline, we learn that Zedd is Richard’s grandfather, a fact he had kept secret, he claims, because he never wanted Richard to have to choose between killing his grandfather and fulfilling his quest. Again, love versus duty. And this time there’s no coercion or will-breaking involved.

In Revenant, Kieran’s wizard admits, “I loved him…so I hesitated. Because I loved him, that hesitation led not only to the loss of many innocent lives, it led also to the loss of Kieran’s soul too.”

So what are we, the viewers, to conclude? That love disables goodness? That loving anyone deeply—be they lover or family—brings about the downfall of the world? (Or is that only for special people who have a “destiny?”)

Remember Attack of the Clones? Particularly the “Dominatrix by Firelight” scene? Padmé tells Anakin, in essence, “I’m a senator. You’re a Jedi. It could never work.” The storyteller implies that their union would be somehow immoral. We’re never told why. In another scene she asks him, “Are you allowed to love? I thought that was forbidden for a Jedi.” One of the trailers showed them holding each other with a voice-over pronouncing, “A Jedi must not love.”

Here’s my question: why the heck not?? What is it about our society that makes us believe that love keeps us from doing what’s right? We’re fed this message repeatedly and we just swallow it. Is it hard to think of other examples?

On the flip side, our storytellers present doing what’s right as inimical to love, to happiness. Kieran says of Richard and Kahlan, “they have a destiny that is destroying them, just as it did us. They love each other…”

As he and Viviane touch again after a thousand years, Kieran says, “This is all that matters. We’re all that matters.”

I suspect this is the key. We equate giving in to love with forsaking duty because we believe that virtue must be dour. The do-gooders out there want us to be miserable. Therefore, happiness can only be had if we say, “Screw the world; I’m doing what I want!”

Could this belief be related to the prevalence of broken relationships in our society? So many people in our lives get hurt when we “follow our hearts.” I feel that I’ve fallen “out of love” with my spouse, and I feel attracted to another person…now my only option for happiness (the only way to be “true to myself”) is to give in to those feelings, no matter that it destroys the lives of my spouse and children.

In a culture where the needs of children are routinely overruled in favor of adult lust, have we permanently linked the consummation of love with guilt?

But might I suggest (and I’m by no means claiming to be original here), that rather than being the enemy of duty, true love is the foundation for doing what’s right? Love which seeks the good of the other, even at personal cost to myself? (I could elaborate here, but I think I’ll save it for another post.)

How do we determine, in any given situation, what is the right course of action and what is the wrong? On what do we base our decisions? Our feelings? Popular opinion? Utility? These are age-old questions. But we still need to answer them.

If saving the world is in our hands, then maybe personal attachments are a danger. If the fate of the world rests with me, then my loving my son is a fatal weakness—with global consequences. My enemy simply has to threaten my son and I’ll abandon the world to oblivion in order to save him.

But if I rid myself of all personal attachments (isn’t that what the Buddhists suggest?)—if I value nothing and no one corporeal—what kind of savior could I be? What would I be fighting to save? A disembodied principle? Why fight at all?

Love must have a place in doing good. (Again, see my later post on Dante’s Conception of Love.)

What do you think?