I am reminded of Erich Fromm who advised that people should replace old roots of blood and clan by new roots that allow for true love for all people.

In a 1960 interview, Huston Smith asked him:

” Is a matter of geographic extent involved here? If a person were related in brotherly love to his family, that would be too small a group and this would be a wrong-rootedness?”

Fromm answered: “Indeed, I would say that unless one can love all men, one loves nobody; because if one is only loving one’s family, it is really an enlarged egotism.”

(Isn’t this another form of saying: “Love thine enemy as thyself”? What is the true value of one’s love for any one person, if one cannot love others?)

pdf source at the International Erich Fromm Society: http://tinyurl.com/298bcy