Paper short abstract:

What makes love good? The person who loves, what they love, or how they love? I will focus on guru devotion- love from a distance to someone who is not an equal. What can we learn from comparing guru devotion to positive figures like the Dalai Lama with guru devotion to destablizing ones like Trump?

Paper long abstract:

What makes love good? The person who loves, what they love, or how they love? In this paper, I will focus on guru devotion- love from a distance to someone who is not an equal. What can we learn from comparing guru devotion to positive figures like the Dalai Lama with guru devotion to destablizing ones like Trump? Central to my analysis is a question raised in Hannah Arendt's dissertation, Love and Saint Augustine: what is the difference between worldly-love and other worldly-love, between God as transcendent, and therefore anti-political, and God as imminent, incarnate in other human beings, where love can be quite political? I investigate the Protestant bias that excessive love leads to superstition and its relation to the secular rationalist bias that religion sullies politics and vice versa. The empirical basis for paper will combine reports on the US Presidential election this spring and fieldwork in India in April and May 2023 among the Dalai Lama's supporters following accusations of pedaphilia lodged against the Dalai Lama by internet trolls connected to the PRC government. Guru devotion might help to explain the seemingly paradoxical reaction of followers who love their leader more when he or she is attacked by outsiders. Given that premise, what does guru devotion do and undo to the communities led by charismatic leaders?