Gary

　　What is love?

　　It's a hard term to define

　　in so far as it has a very wide application.

　　I can love jogging.

　　I can love a book, a movie.

　　I can love escalopes.

　　I can love my wife.

　　But there's a great difference

　　between an escalope and my wife, for instance.

　　That is, if I value the escalope,

　　the escalope, on the other hand,it doesn't value me back.

　　Whereas my wife, she calls me

　　the star of her life.Therefore, only another desiring conscience

　　can conceive me as a desirable being.

　　I know this, that's why

　　love can be defined in a more accurate way

　　as the desire of being desired.

　　Hence the eternal problem of love:

　　how to become and remain desirable?

　　The individual used to find

　　an answer to this problem

　　by submitting his life to community rules.You had a specific part to play

　　according to your sex, your age,

　　your social status,

　　and you only had to play your part

　　to be valued and loved by the whole community.

　　Think about the young womanwho must remain chaste before marriage.

　　Think about the youngest sonwho must obey the eldest son,

　　who in turn must obey the patriarch.

　　But a phenomenon

　　started in the 13th century,

　　mainly in the Renaissance, in the West,

　　that caused the biggest identity crisis

　　in the history of humankind.

　　This phenomenon is modernity.

　　We can basically summarize it through a triple process.

　　First, a process of rationalization of scientific research,

　　which has accelerated technical progress.

　　Next, a process of political democratization,

　　which has fostered individual rights.

　　And finally, a process of rationalization of economic production

　　and of trade liberalization.

　　These three intertwined processes

　　have completely annihilated

　　all the traditional bearings of Western societies,

　　with radical consequences for the individual.

　　Now individuals are freeto value or disvalue

　　any attitude, any choice, any object.

　　But as a result, they are themselves confronted

　　with this...