Romantic Love is Dead

Or, more accurately: romantic love never existed and only now has our culture exhausted its means of retaining the illusion that it ever did.

How did I come to this conclusion?

I was reading Shakespeare earlier in the day and was thinking to myself "Why is it impossible that this sort of poetry with these sort of themes would be written today?"

Think about it: the biggest movie in America right now is "He's Just Not That Into You". What people want most, deep inside, is some great personal accomplishment. A beautiful romance is no longer enough to satisfy someone. There are no more comedies or romantic comedies. None among the many people my age that I know are at all optimistic about the idea of love or marriage or any variation upon the theme. And these are all idealistic, intellectual, soulish, Berkeley students in the humanities and social sciences. Imagine all the other crooks out there who just want to become big business owners. That kind of thinking negates the possibility of ideal love even before the seeds of it begin to grow because of the powerful feelings that accompany sexual attraction, which is what most people mistakingly refer to as 'love'. 

Perhaps culture will shift and begin to more distinctly acknowledge the love of family over the love between young couples - Coriolanus will be performed more often than Romeo and Juliet. But such things are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. 

People are frighteningly pragmatic in the ways they seek love. For the most part, things go unsaid concerning romantic attraction. When it is brought up, it is reduced to only the basest terms of convenience - 'sex is healthier than not having sex'. Is this really where we have arrived?