"All's fair in love and war." - Or is it?

This quote tends to grab attention. Its meaning is laced with highly charged notions of cheating, breaking the rules, and striving selfishly for personal gains. "All's fair in love and war" traces back to the English poet John Lyly (1578). Since then, it's become a common idiom, suggesting that love and war are exceptions to usual moral standards. For example, if I've fallen madly in love with someone, who in their right mind can stop such a union? It's written in the stars. Whether I’m in a committed relationship with someone else makes the slightest bit of difference. It's "meant to be". The same applies for war. If the goal is to win, if I need to get ahead of a particular leader or situation, some strategies often considered unethical may need to be employed to prevent even more unethical outcomes. For many years, I struggled to accept the proverb's sentiment. Cut deep by the insinuation of any ethical transgression associated with these positions. But the world doesn't work this way, no matter how we slice it, and I was naïve to assume it did.

To love is all too common. War is, too. To fall in love is to succumb to our primal urges, decide on the person and then choose them over and over again. To fight is not dissimilar. We succumb to primal drives of anger, violation and a sense of vindication. We decide when we want to kiss, go on a date, have sex or break up. We choose when to fight, when to engage in conscious boundary crossing, when to demand our desires over the other party's, raise our voice, adopt manipulative tactics, and ultimately win (or lose). Most of the time, these two polarities actually co-exist. Intimate unions, friendships, and working relationships are all met with conflict, even in small amounts, and it doesn't have to be explosive. The to and fro of give, take, love and destroy are in a delicate bouncing back and forth the world over.

I've met many people who equate shouting, violence or overt aggression as signs of conflict. I've met many who will only believe that big bouquets of flowers, unconditional doting on the other, romantic dinners, holidays and constant kissing or lovemaking are signs of love. Could we ever consider it the other way around? Can we dare to let ourselves go there? Too much kissing, forceful dinners or worse yet, sex? What about a screaming match that brings out the truth, a punch in the face that gets an assault to end and the attacker to back down? No wonder these two ways of being are some of the hardest, if not the hardest, human conditions to navigate. If we are to place strict standards around our relational worlds, then why on earth are we surprised if they are broken or, more so, ignored? If we hold ourselves in only one place, what happens when we must engage in the opposite?

This is where challenging notions of postmodernism can overwhelm and dominate, ultimately leading the crux of our discussion down a huge paradoxical rabbit hole. You're probably wondering, "Why is she bringing up this now?". Whilst I don't allow myself the space to unravel huge discussions in this blog, I'll leave the whole post-truth debate for another day, but I will say this - truth does exist. Science and mathematics are the best portals to our empirical interpretation of these truths, and both adopt a position of being willing to be proven wrong. Postmodernism argues that we invented science and maths, and truth is restricted only to these measures we created; therefore, how can we know what's true. I personally find this a very anthropocentric stance. How can we invent something that we ultimately came out of? The paradox continues. For us to even have the intellectual and physical longevity to make such a claim depends on the modern medicine we are privy to using. Science and mathematics have helped establish our position in the world as progressive, intellectual beings. For one, we can live past 38 quite well now. That's a magnificent scientific achievement. However, and this is where the importance of my argument returns, this comes at a vast and often unfathomable price for the human condition.

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky stated, "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth." As our life expectancies have increased, so too has our intelligence but so too has the immeasurable awareness of our nauseating freedom and the time we have to use it well. When I contemplate human connection through love and war, these have often been the best vehicles for truth to play out in a human way. Whilst on many levels' the relativism that postmodernists peddle can be valid, for example, how different cultures work with food, art or community or how my clients might experience something like being fired may differ from one another and don't necessarily share a common truth, the notion of individual human freedom and autonomy ultimately transcends across the entire human race with history demonstrating this time and time again. Whether it's Nelson Mandela willing to accept death to campaign for anti-apartheid South Africa, Afghan civilians clutching to the side of a US military jet, risking their own lives to escape an oppressive regime, survivors of the Holocaust persevering under extreme conditions with only the mental notion of hope to help them through, or the Baltic chain where 2 million people joined hands across the Baltic states to peacefully demand independence from Soviet rule. Along with many others, these examples prove to us the importance of human freedom and autonomy. So, where does this long and confusing discussion take us?

On one hand, I argue that certain truths are there and unavoidable; on the other, I say, - all's fair in love and war. Do what you feel you need to do but know the consequences. But this isn't always the case. These universal givens, combined with the facts of being human as well as our creative and nuanced identities, must collaborate. We are social creatures and are always in the world with others, whether we like it or not. Even a rebellious decision to leave society and live in the woods bears social repercussions in loneliness, neglect or, perhaps more positively, solitude. I'm curious to ask whether it is a self-fulfilled prophecy?

So, is all fair in love and war? Dostoyevsky may say no. The guilt and paranoia that follows could be too much to tolerate. I say use your brain and tap into your sense of personal authority. Recognise the importance of every choice and do not burden someone else with the notion that you don't have one (and the consequences that ensue) - that in itself is a choice. The messy feelings of justifying heinous or even just unpopular acts should highlight the responsibility you're evading (if there is any). Still, it should also be cause for considering where the rules came from. Are you being asked to commit an unethical act by an external powerful force or organisation? Are they right? Where does your personal authority come in, and what would it mean to engage it? Is that right for you? Are you right? Ethics are never linear; they are never clear-cut, and with that in mind we must stretch and challenge ourselves as we try to understand, navigate and make best use of them, whether that be in love, war or else...