I'm familiar with that documentary, I've seen it. It was a stark contrast wasn't it?
To that I would say no expression of love is ever present and that love is one of many emotions. Other strong emotions, like anger, can temporarily override others.
By their very nature, all emotions are transient. Without things like reason and rules, none of them would have any meaningful staying power.
Scandinavians practice hügge (hope I've got that word right) and it's a great concept based on compassion and empathy and fostering feelings of warmth and nurturing. It's part of the fabric of Scandinavian culture, as I understand it. I think it's one of the reasons they're so mellow, chill, and reasonable. I really like Scandinavians.
As I recall from that documentary, they interviewed the father of a murder victim about how posh the man who murdered his son/daughter had it in prison. His response was something along the lines that society loses a(nother) member when someone who strays cannot be brought back into the fold and that him being treated harshly for vengeance wouldn't bring his loved one back. See what I mean by reasonable and mellow?
That was pretty profound to hear as an American and also completely obvious.
Ultimately, all the love, compassion, and empathy in the world isn't going to create a utopian society or be able to fix any society. There's always going to be that override. All the love in the world didn't stop that override when it happened. And now, a family grieves the loss. Love and time will lessen that grief, but it can't erase it.
The second thing is, anything in excess can end up being harmful. No one would argue that water is necessary and a good thing. But water can kill you in a few ways too. Love is like that too. You can drown from love. Women who stay in abusive relationships often do so because they live that idea of the man they're with more than they love themselves. Because love is selfless. Then they end up dead or broken. They swear they're in love. Who is anyone to say that emotion they feel is not real? They drown from love.
Bottom line here is that all emotions are necessary and of some use or benefit, otherwise they wouldn't have evolved. The trick is to keep them in check enough to not allow excess, to not give more credence to transient emotion than what is beneficial, to not put emotion in primacy to reason —they are tandem, and to learn to enjoy them all and reap the benefits of doing so.
