Sternberg called love involving only intimacy "liking," love involving only passion "infatuation," and love involving only commitment "empty love" (because commitment with no passion or intimacy would be pretty empty). A love involving only passion and intimacy he called "romantic love" (which might die off if there is no commitment formed). A love involving only intimacy and commitment he called "companionate love" (the kind that long term couples tend to settle into once the youthful passions cool). A love involving only commitment and passion he called "fatuous love"--it's fatuous (i.e. stupid) because if you make a huge commitment to someone out of passion but know hardly anything else about them then it doesn't take a genius to see trouble ahead.
Then comes the last and supposedly best kind of love: "consummate love." This is love with intimacy, passion and commitment in equal measure.
Why am I telling you all this? Because consummate love--the exceptional kind--is worth pursuing in everything we do, not only in our potentially sex-enjoying and/or baby-raising relationships, but in all of our endeavors, including political activism and moral witness. Are we going to exude consummate love from all pores at all times? Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to try. If you notice an element missing in a love you're called to, try to cultivate it. Commitment, in relationships and activism, can be increased by actually taking small at first but real and increasingly larger steps towards commitment. These steps are a "foot in the door" to larger commitments down the line. Don't take these steps if you don't want to take them, but if you want to become more committed, that's how to do it.
Intimacy can be cultivated in personal relationships by sharing and disclosure of self, by seeking to know more about the other, and by really trying to get around the barriers that people throw up between each other--like resentment, blame, and judgment. Intimacy can be cultivated in activism by seeking to know better the issues and people involved in that activism, and getting around the interpersonal and intergroup barriers there too.
Passion is perhaps the hardest aspect of love to cultivate. We tend to be led by our passions rather than to lead them, and to some extent this is appropriate: passion is something we naturally prefer to surrender to rather than to manufacture out of obligation. Listening to our passions is generally a better approach than trying to beat them into supposed correctness. But a more passively receptive approach to passion can go wrong sometimes. For instance, in relationships, if we don't feel passion that we once felt, we often conclude that there is no basis for it anymore, and then we wind down any existing intimacy or commitment accordingly. But passion can be blocked by things other than the hand of destiny.
Sometimes, of course, passion is stifled by the actions of others over which we have little control. If those actions and attitudes are actually harmful deal-breakers, and the other party doesn't turn away from or at least try to change those alienating or abusive actions and attitudes, then letting the passion cool enough to sever the link is probably healthy and sane. But sometimes passion gets stymied by roadblocks that we put up ourselves. They are roadblocks that we didn't have to put up, and we can take them down once we've seen how optional they are. Sometimes these roadblocks are minor, and sometimes major--even serious betrayals of intimacy or commitment. The latter especially are likely to cool passion because of cognitive dissonance. However, if we recognize, make amends for, and turn away from those betrayals, then the passion that was there before can sometimes come again.
My focus in this series of five articles has been on the obstacles we face to mobilizing opposition to fast-tracking the TPP, but it could have been about anything else that calls for passion, including passions that are closer to your heart. If you're moved by my call to action on the TPP, I hope it's a "gateway" to acting with more consummate fullness on the passions that are more properly your own.
I've sketched a few sources of potential betrayal of (or, less harshly, diversion from) one's own values and callings that social psychologists have identified over the years. I can't swear by the science behind these assertions. Some of the social psychology findings I've mentioned are probably not cross-culturally universal , and others may atrophy in reliability as historical trends muddle along (possibly with the help of enlightenment effects).
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