Love matters
Barbara Pensom is challenged by a small but thought-provoking book
Now that he has retired from life as a professional economist, David Cadman wants to talk to us about the power of Love. In his book, Love Matters, he tells us ‘in Earth days I am old. And I love according to my age – foolishly, deeply and without condition’. All too familiar with its absence, he sees that Love ‘needs to be brought back into our lives’. ‘Through acts of compassion and care’ Love will help us to find new ways of tackling the difficulties that we face: economic, social and environmental.
Love is not without its troubles, for he finds his own experience mirrored in the myth of Aphrodite, who, though she is the goddess of Love, gives birth to the twins, Terror and Fear. He learns from his encounter with the Buddha that Love cannot be possessive; by ‘letting go’ we have nothing to lose – ‘Love is a moving pulse, a breathing breath, a streaming stream’. Though rational thinking leads us to believe that things are ‘separate and apart’, ecology and climate change are showing us that everything is part of a whole; this ‘interconnectedness’ is what Love is all about. This realisation will help us to ‘find a way of being that unites us with Love, with Divine Presence’.
The author has read widely – in Gnostic and Buddhist writings, the work of Plato and Thomas Aquinas, and more modern environmental philosophers – in his attempt to perceive the orderliness of creation. He also draws on his own experience of human love as son, husband, father and friend and, increasingly, he values his faith as a Quaker. With William Penn, he feels urged ‘to try what love can do’.
David Cadman is an economist who does not believe in ‘The Economy’! An economy is something we must make for ourselves. The current dogma, which suggests that ‘enlightened self-interest’ for individuals must result in the wellbeing of all, is false because it assumes that we are separate one from another.
We must work towards a ‘Steady State’ economy that does not assume that constant growth is necessary to ensure the wellbeing of everyone through ‘high levels of unsustainable borrowing’. But this ‘new economy’ requires Love for its creation. It is we who must change. We must get used to ‘enough’ rather than ‘more’, ‘cooperation’ rather than ‘competition’ and ‘together’ rather than ‘separate’.
The author’s manner of presentation is arresting and thought-provoking. Each chapter deals with the different ways in which Love has an effect; each begins with confession, in the voice of Love, followed by argued exposition, which is finally reinforced by parable.
This delightful ‘fairytale format’ cannot fail to impress his argument on the reader’s mind and his message about the ‘Economy of Love’ will linger in the memory.
Love Matters by David Cadman, ISBN: 9780956690036, £15.39.
