Is it overly-dramatic to suggest love in America is now DOA--Dead on Arrival? Of course not. In various ways we may measure the death of love in society, from the state of dating, marriage and families; the vitality and content of the education system; the typical interaction between strangers; or the state of orthodoxy preached from American pulpits. While there may be a spirited debate over the exact definition of love--there can be no doubt that the traditional notion is now defunct. Seminal French intellectual Jacques Ellul wrote:
I might adopt once again a formula I have used many times without ever being refuted: "In a society which talks excessively about a human factor, the point is that this factor does not exist. People talk excessively about freedom when it is suppressed." This formula has always proved to be true. I would thus apply it here as well. So many novels and essays and studies and experiments and propositions are made precisely in order to hide the basic absence of love. Love does not exist in our society. It is no more than a word.
