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How All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks Predicts Today's Social Issues
10 Plays11 days ago
This is the book that will shatter everything you thought you knew about love. The moment when a 160-page book from 1999 becomes your roadmap for understanding why dating feels impossible and society feels broken in 2025. In this soul-stirring episode, I break down bell hooks' prophetic "All About Love" and show you how her warnings became our reality.
We're covering all the good stuff:
- Why hooks predicted today's dating app hellscape with terrifying accuracy
- The real definition of love (spoiler: it's not just feelings)
- How patriarchy created the toxic dynamic where women give love and men take it
- Why the loneliness epidemic is actually a "lovelessness epidemic"
- What "soul murder" means and how it explains online cruelty
- Why "focus only on yourself" wellness culture is missing the point
- And how community healing trumps individual healing every single time
This isn't just a book review. This is a mirror for everything broken in our society and a blueprint for healing it. hooks was observing in the 90s what we're living through now – the cynicism, the fear of emotional investment, the epidemic of people seeking intimacy without risk.
Reading this book healed something in me, and I know it will for you too.
Subscribe. Share. Choose love over lovelessness. The world depends on it.
Small steps, big healing. Keep growing! ✨
Book referenced in this episode: All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks
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Send in questions: contact+podcast@marisolmoran.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Marisol Moran
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello beautiful souls and welcome back to another installment of the Growing With Soul podcast. My name is Marisol Moran and I'm a certified life coach specializing in self-esteem and confidence.
Podcast's Mission: Growth and Healing
00:00:11
Speaker
The Growing With Soul podcast focuses on continual growth and healing, especially in the small steps we take every single day. If you are looking to heal, to grow and to connect with your true self, this podcast is for you.
Client Opportunities with Marisol
00:00:24
Speaker
Additionally, i am currently accepting clients, so if you are looking for any additional support or beginning your healing journey, definitely feel free to reach out and to schedule your very own discovery call through the link in the show notes.
Transition to Nonfiction: 'All About Love' by bell hooks
00:00:38
Speaker
So today's episode, I'm going to be deep diving a nonfiction book. I know as of late, I've been focusing on fiction and especially romanticy.
00:00:50
Speaker
And I do think that fiction has a lot of value. Like I may have mentioned in the past, it's my first love. I've always been a bookworm. But as I've gotten older, I've begun to appreciate what nonfiction has to offer, even outside of an academic environment.
00:01:13
Speaker
And when it comes to this particular book, which is all about love, new visions by bell hooks, I've been wanting to read it for a long time. I've been wanting, I've been aware of bell hooks since college.
Healing Through Reading: Insights from 'All About Love'
00:01:24
Speaker
I've always wanted to read her books, but I was an English lit and world literature major. So I never got around to reading any of her works within any of my classes.
00:01:36
Speaker
Additionally, I had a concentration in creative writing, so I definitely wasn't reading those types of books in my classes. And then it's just been a few years since this book came onto my radar and it's been on my TBR, but I finally read it.
00:01:51
Speaker
And reading this book has definitely healed a part of me. It has solidified things that I was already observing and conclusions that I was coming to.
00:02:09
Speaker
And it also really made me reflect a lot on so many different things.
Reading Pace and Reflections on Society
00:02:17
Speaker
If you follow me on Instagram, and um I think I've only talked about on Instagram, then you know that it took me forever to read this book. I started reading All About Love At the end of March.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's June. Okay, we are in June and I finished this book. And it's only about 160 pages. And it's not to say that the book is not good. I think the book is phenomenal.
00:02:45
Speaker
I am a slow reader to begin with. I am not drawn in to nonfiction. Like people tell me all the time, like, oh, like this nonfiction book is phenomenal. Like I couldn't put it down. Like it was so good. Mm-mm.
00:03:02
Speaker
It can be the most well-written nonfiction book. it can have it could have like won awards and accolades and be the best thing ever.
00:03:12
Speaker
and like I'm just like, where the dragons? like where Where's the magic? i'm not I'm not being sucked in here. Even though I know that it's going to be of value and that it is going to impart me potentially with...
00:03:26
Speaker
you know, wisdom and and what have you and potentially make my life better. I'm just like, okay, I'm going to get through this. I'm going to read this book now. it takes a concerted effort for me.
00:03:37
Speaker
Anyway, with this book, there was all that. And on top of that, you add that it does make you think. It makes you reflect not only on yourself and your own journey when it comes to healing and when it comes to relationships, romantic and not romantic, but it also makes you really reflect on the current state of the world.
00:03:59
Speaker
So i'm going to get into all that. Needless to say, i really enjoyed this book. I found it to be phenomenal and i found it to be extremely valuable and thought provoking.
00:04:11
Speaker
so right now. If you want the book, I highly recommend you get it right right now. And i do have a link to it in my show notes. So just let it sit like super convenient for you to get it.
Central Themes: Love and Healing
00:04:23
Speaker
But let's get into it So like I mentioned, this book really made me reflect on the current state of the world. And ultimately, I do see its overarching theme as being or the overarching theme is that love in and of itself is the cornerstone of healing and all healthy relationships.
00:04:45
Speaker
There's a caveat caveat to that. Like, I say love, and you have an idea what love is? I used to have an idea of what love is, and it was shifting and changing, and like I was pondering and musing.
00:04:59
Speaker
um But like what I was thinking might not be the same as what you were thinking. So when I say love is the cornerstone of healing and healthy relationships, hold on to that because we're going to get into that too.
00:05:15
Speaker
With that being said, ah thought that kept coming up for me while reading this book was that, like, how could this book be so...
00:05:30
Speaker
i don't know, like, timely is not the right word, but how could this book... resonate so heavily with the present day and it's 2025?
00:05:42
Speaker
How can it resonate so much with the present day when bell hooks was of making all these observations in the 90s?
Global Lovelessness in 2025
00:05:53
Speaker
Okay, like I can't even emphasize that enough. This book was published in 1999. So bell hooks was observing all of these things in the early to mid ninety s And yet, in 2025, it seems as if everything she was observing then that was beginning has come to fruition.
00:06:14
Speaker
So for context in terms of today's society, in 2025, I think that our present world, especially here in the United States, can be marked as a society of heightened lovelessness.
00:06:31
Speaker
Globally, we have a genocide that is being funded by the United States by American tax dollars. Nationally, we have a government that is shipping people off to other countries to effectively be in concentration camps.
00:06:48
Speaker
without due process. Since I even began the outline for this episode, that has been intensified. And I am in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, where i was born and raised. It is my city.
00:06:59
Speaker
And right now in Los Angeles, there are ice raids happening throughout the entire county. And essentially, these are a lot of them often unmarked cars, people wearing regular ass clothes,
00:07:15
Speaker
what looks like kidnapping essentially happening in the present day. Literally a protest happening relatively nearby while I'm recording this.
00:07:28
Speaker
And then when you add that, that context to maybe even something a little bit more personal to yourself, a little bit more micro instead of the macro, we go online and And we see so many people, whether it's online, maybe even in your personal life, maybe you're this person as well.
00:07:46
Speaker
But there are people complaining about dating culture and how dating apps are absolute hell and how no one really wants to even commit to a relationship anymore, let alone commit to dating.
00:07:59
Speaker
having a productive date, having a fun date where you actually are in a an agreement to get to know each other. Like there's there's all this going on, all of this chaos, all of this turmoil, whether it's on a macro level or on a micro level, and you have this context of lovelessness, to put it succinctly.
00:08:26
Speaker
Now that's 2025, but let's go back and see what Bell Hooks is saying in 1999.
Youth Culture and Fear of Love
00:08:33
Speaker
In the very introduction of All About Love, Hooks states, "...youth culture today is cynical about love, and that cynicism has come from their pervasive feeling that love cannot be found." Expressing this concern in When All You've Ever Wanted Is Enough, Harold Kushner writes, "...
00:08:51
Speaker
I am afraid that we may be raising a generation of young people who will grow up afraid to love, afraid to give themselves completely to another person because they will have seen how much it hurts to take the risk of loving and have it not work out.
00:09:06
Speaker
I am afraid that they will grow up looking for intimacy without risk, for pleasure without significant emotional investment. They will be so fearful of the pain of disappointment that they will forgo the possibilities of love and joy.
00:09:21
Speaker
Is that not what I just described? Is that not what we are seeing and experiencing constantly? Anybody who is single and on the dating scene, is this not the current state of things?
00:09:36
Speaker
When I go, especially online, now, mind you, I don't often work with clients who are looking to date. I'm not a dating coach. So I often get the after effects, the afterwards. know, like if you've been in a relationship, it's horrible, horrible relationship but and you're destroyed. And now you're working with me.
00:09:58
Speaker
That's where I come into play. So we're talking about the front end of that whole process. We're seeing people who... are now talking about this constantly online.
00:10:11
Speaker
And when I go online, and maybe again, it's my algorithm, but i tend to see people who are in like maybe like 25 to 40 talking about this. And then if you go on the comments, sometimes people do reveal their age in the comments. So you might see somebody who's older and they're like, I'm in my 50s. I've been single for the last like 10 years after I got divorced. I'm like, never going do that again.
00:10:35
Speaker
Cool, all the power to you. But like in terms of what I tend to see in terms of the people who are posting the videos, I would say roughly 25 to 40.
00:10:45
Speaker
So with that as well, so we're talking about this horrible dating culture, people not wanting to actually go into deeper relationships.
00:10:58
Speaker
Even though there is, i would say this, yearning for romantic love. Because underneath the complaints of shitty dates, people not being ready to commit, people lying, and what have you.
00:11:13
Speaker
Underneath all those complaints that we see online or from our friends, there is a yearning for romantic love. It's never just said outright. Because honestly, I think it would be taboo for people to say that, societally speaking.
00:11:29
Speaker
within that discourse to sort of heighten it or intensify it, there is this constant discourse as well that solely focuses on the self.
00:11:43
Speaker
Where people are talking about, I literally saw TikTok about it today, where the woman, she she looked like she was in her 20s, but she was talking about how like, Focus on yourself. Don't worry about dating. Don't worry about getting into relationship.
00:11:56
Speaker
Just go and get your degrees. Focus on your career. Make your money. And like, just do you live your life. and i And I've seen videos like that also from the male perspective that have that similar vibe of like, don't even think about dating. Don't give it any thought. Just leave it alone. Don't worry about it. Just focus on you. Focus on like your own career and your own development, your own healing.
00:12:22
Speaker
and Just focus on you, you, you. Just me, me, me, me. me
00:12:27
Speaker
There is some validity to all of that. There is definitely value in focusing on yourself, focusing on your education, focusing on your career.
00:12:40
Speaker
De-centering men is a huge conversation that I see pop up from time to time as well. And I do think that's important. So there is value in all of that. At the same time,
00:12:55
Speaker
We as human beings are meant to be in community. And for many of us, we do still want romantic love. i fully believe that there is nothing wrong with a wanting romantic love.
00:13:17
Speaker
And there is nothing wrong with saying that you want romantic love. Like, it's okay to just say it. We don't need, and i the thing about it is that it also doesn't reflect poorly on you.
00:13:30
Speaker
It doesn't. It doesn't make you desperate. It doesn't make you, like, needy. Like, none of that. I think that we can focus on our education, focus on our careers, you know, get our bag.
00:13:41
Speaker
We can, you know, make sure that we are creating wonderful, full, fulfilling lives as single individuals and still want romantic love.
00:13:55
Speaker
To round that portion of this out, Bell Hooks does, i think, put it rather succinctly when it comes to this type of discourse where she says, ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.
00:14:15
Speaker
So there is a lot of cynicism, i would say, going around in today's society when it comes to romantic love. But it is because we've been burned, we've been hurt, we've been played, we've been disappointed, we've been betrayed.
00:14:31
Speaker
That doesn't mean that it's pointless to go on ah journey, for lack of a better word, to find your partner. It might be a little bit more difficult because you've learned.
00:14:47
Speaker
Maybe you're on a healing journey. Maybe your standards are higher. So finding someone who's going to meet them is not going to be as easy. But it's still possible, and that's the important thing.
00:15:01
Speaker
As you can gather by this point, um this book is very heteronormative. Like I said, it was written in the 90s. So it does examine the dynamic between men and women and also the experiences of men and women.
Power Dynamics in Love and Relationships
00:15:15
Speaker
So before I continue, I do want to define love in and of itself. Bell Hooks does define love and then sort of builds on that definition throughout the book. So she begins by defining it as focusing on the affection portion.
00:15:31
Speaker
So affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love, we must learn to mix various ingredients, care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.
00:15:44
Speaker
She then builds on it by saying and highlighting that abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affection, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love.
00:15:56
Speaker
Additionally, when love is present, the desire to dominate and exercise power cannot rule the day. Those are two very important points, especially when we begin to talk about dynamics of abuse manipulation control when it comes to romantic relationships.
00:16:13
Speaker
she does sort of point out how there is this sort of nexus when it comes to love between patriarchy, patriarchy um our childhood experiences, and then how we want to essentially have power when it comes to interpersonal dynamics or just in general.
00:16:35
Speaker
And also how in in love and in relationships there is this like a give and take between individuals. And what she observed is that often women are the ones who are giving love and men are often the ones receiving love.
00:16:51
Speaker
So in it, she highlights that most men feel like they receive love and are therefore and therefore know what it feels like to be loved. Whereas women often feel that They are in constant state of yearning, wanting love, but not receiving it, even when they're in relationships, which creates an imbalance and creates the foundation for a power dynamic.
00:17:13
Speaker
And often when in that sort of power dynamic, it can lead to abusive dynamics in a relationship. But quickly touching on childhood,
00:17:26
Speaker
Bell Hooks does state that when it comes to boys in general, in their childhood, boys are often taught to hide their feelings, mask their feelings, constantly taught that, you know, like boys don't cry and things of that nature.
00:17:39
Speaker
And how when you are constantly masking and hiding your emotions, you eventually begin to lie about how you feel. and then it makes it easier for you to lie just in general, especially when you look at the context of lies as a way to to obtain power in interpersonal dynamics.
00:18:00
Speaker
She goes into much more detail in the book about that, but just keep that as context because we then look at the greater context of that when it comes to patriarchy, where she says that patriarchy tells us daily through movies, television, and magazines that men of power can do what they want, essentially whatever they want, whenever they want. And that that whole aspect of is freedom and that it's this freedom, this ability to do whatever they want that makes them men.
00:18:33
Speaker
So when you have that notion and then you apply that to relationships and romantic relationships, it does not set up the foundation for a healthy one. So it would then make sense that men go about and find ways to get whatever it is that they want without actually having to create the foundations of a healthy relationship that's going to have that connection, open and open and honest communication, emotional intelligence and intimacy. like It's not going to have all that if this foundation of masking your emotions, lying for power and patriarchy is the foundation of how you begin to create relationships.
00:19:12
Speaker
On the flip side, let's look at women really quickly, where women, on the other hand, are often experiencing relationships or these types of relationships. You're negatively impacted.
00:19:25
Speaker
So Bell Hooks states, even the wealthiest professional woman can be brought down by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and it's consistently lied to to the degree that she trusts her mill companion lying in other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem
00:19:46
Speaker
how many of you have been in a negative relationship. And by the end of it, you are completely shattered. You have no confidence, no self-esteem. You're like a shell of a human being.
00:19:59
Speaker
Raise your hands because I'm right there with you. Like I mentioned earlier in the episode, that's why I come in as a self-esteem and confidence coach. Like it is after these types of relationships where often I might work with someone to build yourself back up.
00:20:14
Speaker
Because part of what feeds into that dynamic is that women are taught to constantly give love, to be the ones to provide that love instead of being the ones who receive it.
00:20:27
Speaker
So she then further... states, all too often women believe it is a sign of commitment an expression of love to endure unkindness or cruelty to forgive and forget in actuality when we love rightly we know that the healthy loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way
00:20:52
Speaker
That is important because as much as we may love someone, maybe love someone unconditionally, it is not to the point that we allow ourselves to continue to be harmed.
00:21:03
Speaker
I know that can get a little complex. I know it's not always that easy depending on the dynamic of that potentially cruel abusive relationship. But if you are able to remove yourself from that situation, that is ultimately the greatest form of love. Because you got to love yourself too.
00:21:24
Speaker
One of the things I do want to touch on that was a part of the book, and I want to touch on it very quickly, so definitely get the book to read on it a little bit more, is the current dynamic, I suppose, or current...
Impact of Loneliness and Community's Role
00:21:39
Speaker
I guess, phenomenon of the loneliness epidemic and specifically the male loneliness epidemic, which centers on men and not having deep friendships and really not being able to sustain any kind of emotionally healthy or intelligent, emotionally intelligent relationship.
00:21:57
Speaker
And I see this naturally often from the women's side of things where women are expressing experiences of negative dating experiences and where, Men are not wanting to commit. They're being really noncommittal, even though they're going on dates.
00:22:14
Speaker
They're feeling like maybe they're owed something. Men just aren't really all that interested in even getting to know them, even though they're on a date. like there's They're not conversationalists anymore. They don't ask you any questions about yourself. And I think that this dynamic and that like this loneliness epidemic And results can result in and is resulting in men also feeling like resentful towards women.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I do remember a few years back where there was this whole thing of like, men are lonely because women won't date them. But it's also like, if we're not the, if we're not choosing to date you, like, bro, take a look in the mirror kind of thing, you know, but like women were being blamed for And I think that's still kind of happening, but a little bit more under the radar.
00:22:56
Speaker
And one of the things I also feel like is a bit anecdotal, but I do feel like there has been an increase in men and ah potentially boys, because you can't always tell someone's age by their profiles, are just leaving more sexist and cruel comments on women's social media content, like more so than before. Again, that is anecdotal, but I have been seeing it a lot more lately.
00:23:20
Speaker
um so with all that kind of like being the context of it, and sort of And again, like that last bit kind of being in relation to like men taking out their loneliness on women. i've been I've put a lot of thought into this. I think about it a lot anyway.
00:23:35
Speaker
And I really do think that the thing about this loneliness epidemic is that it therere it's it's deeper than just loneliness. Because the thing about a loneliness epidemic, like, is that it's chronic.
00:23:49
Speaker
And if it is, if it's a chronic loneliness, it's not just that you're lonely. It's that you're living in a state of lovelessness. Because to be lonely isn't just a lonely in a romantic way.
00:24:00
Speaker
It's also like lonely in a no community kind of way. Like, where are your friends? Like, where, like, yes, you can want and yearn for a romantic relationship and romantic love.
00:24:10
Speaker
But that doesn't mean that your life isn't full in other ways. like you don't, know you're not close with your family. You're not close with your friends. But if you're chronically lonely, you don't have any of those other things either.
00:24:21
Speaker
So that means that there is this state of lovelessness. And I do think that if people are in a state of of lovelessness for a long time, it can lead to overall negative mental health.
Mental Health and Community Healing
00:24:35
Speaker
But one of the things that Bell Hooks does touch on in this book is that living in a state of lovelessness, we feel we might as well be dead. Everything within us is silent and still we are unmoved.
00:24:48
Speaker
Soul murder is the term psychoanalysts use to describe the state of living death.
00:24:54
Speaker
That is intense. like Like, being in a loveless state, and I mean love generally, not just romantic love, is such a big deal that it's been labeled as soul murder.
00:25:08
Speaker
Which honestly could, like, I would say that that that makes sense that somebody living in that kind of a state is going to be resentful and mean.
00:25:20
Speaker
and even to people don't even know, like like people leaving mean comments online, like they're not happy people. And if you're a guy who is experiencing or, you know, what you're experiencing is what can be under this male loneliness epidemic.
00:25:36
Speaker
And then you're leaving these kinds of things. And it's like, yeah, yeah, like you're not, you're not a happy person. And it might be because of this. And that just makes sense to me. But I think that also highlights the importance of community overall.
00:25:51
Speaker
And Bell Hooks does touch on community and the importance of community in All About Love, New Visions. And I think that as someone who is in the healing and wellness space, the coaching space, the self-improvement space, I've always...
Critique of Individualism in Self-Improvement
00:26:14
Speaker
have been uncomfortable with and at least internally pushed back on the notion of having to improve yourself constantly for the sake of the self, which isn't clear, but like Like that there's this, and Bell Hooks does touch on it a bit in the book where she does talk about, there's this like, she calls it like a type of narcissism where people in like, especially like new agey self-improvement are very much like focusing on the me and the me and the self and the individual and the individual this and the individual that.
00:26:51
Speaker
And like, even though I don't think it's as explicit as maybe like new agey type of verbiage is, We do still see that a bit in wellness and coaching spaces where it's all about the self.
00:27:04
Speaker
And I think there's only so much we can do as an individual. but Especially if we look at, say, dating and healing within that context.
00:27:15
Speaker
Like if you were in a negative relationship and you've taken the time to heal and you're by yourself, you're single and you're healing and you've done so much amazing, beautiful work to heal. And now you're ready to date and you begin dating and you're triggered constantly. and you're like, whoa, I thought I healed myself.
00:27:35
Speaker
Girl, There is only so much healing you can do in a silo. Eventually, you're going to go out into the world and things are going to trigger you. And how you navigate those triggers are just the next level of your healing.
00:27:51
Speaker
So the fact that community is highlighted in this book and not just romantic love is amazing. and Just validates everything that I've been feeling for like the last five years about the coaching and healing space.
00:28:05
Speaker
One, so definitely appreciate that. um But also i think given the current climate of the world is extremely important because we need community now more than ever.
Community's Role During Crises
00:28:20
Speaker
And i do think that we are seeing it. ah i mean, again, I'm currently in the context of 2025 Los Angeles, where Community is being torn apart by external forces.
00:28:36
Speaker
And yet the Los Angeles community has come together in so many amazing ways just within the last like two weeks. And then we had No King's Day protests. And that was like millions and millions of people, not only in the United States, but all over the world coming together as well.
00:28:53
Speaker
so I think in many ways we are seeing community coming back in those capacities, but that doesn't mean we can't or that we don't need to continue doing work to facilitate healthy communities, even in the micro and local levels.
00:29:09
Speaker
So if you have appreciated this deep dive of the book, which honestly is not even that bit of a, I feel like i could talk about this book for like two hours, but I'm not going to do that. um But if you've appreciated this, if it's a resonated with you, if you want to learn more about how Bal Hooks talks about love, how she talks about love when it comes to friendship, which we've been talking about a lot on this podcast lately,
00:29:30
Speaker
Love and Community Again, which we've been talking about a lot on these podcasts as well, which if you missed those episodes, go back and check them out. Definitely check out this book. um Given that context, I do think that even if, you know, you're not cis het, it can still apply to you because of the friendship and community aspect as well.
00:29:50
Speaker
But ultimately, this was a phenomenal read, even though it did take me a long time to whom get through it. But like the book talks about, ultimately, you know, in order for us to truly love, we need to open up our hearts a little bit more and you're really, you know, take responsibility for ourselves, definitely, so that we can, you know, face those barriers in our lives that are blocking love.
00:30:16
Speaker
um The more that we are able to accept ourselves and where we are, the more we are able to open up to love in all of its various forms. So if you stayed this far, I definitely appreciate you. Thank you for tuning in today.
00:30:33
Speaker
um Leave a review and don't forget to subscribe. it definitely helps. And of course, if you are interested in working with me, you can go ahead and schedule your very own discovery call in the show notes.
00:30:44
Speaker
And until next time, keep growing.