Love, Death and Fear

Abstract

Based on fundamental ideas of Marx and Freud, this essay examines love, fear and death from a social and historical perspective. It applies this examination to the contemporary state of social relations. The most important argument is that hostile aggressiveness has triumphed over love by making people fearful of each other. While the essay is generally pessimistic, there is hope that love can win out in the end, but that doing so requires social revolution that would destroy the current world system of capitalism.