To the point here, you cannot love in the abstract. When you see “love is all you need” it is an attractive sentiment, but I think what such people are loving is the self image they form of themselves as loving people.
True love does not have ego involvement. It does not involve me looking at myself looking at you. You are the whole picture, one that is separate from me, and one which has its own direction and purpose which must be seen prior to any effort at me helping. Many people don’t need help, even if they want it; and many are hurt by it, even though they think they need it.
Sometimes the path of decency is watching a ship drift by in the night, without saying or doing anything.
There is this compulsion among many I see to feed their anxiety, to satiate it, by finding someone or something to help. This is the root dynamic of the “Daily Cause” movement, and the reason silly ideas like Global Warming have such staying power.
But the people being helped–and I have said this many times–are the people more or less forcing themselves on others, who might well have done better unmolested.
Take food stamps. It is not actually an act of charity to spend taxpayer money on advertisements intended to increase their use. Handouts damage self respect, which damages independence, which leads over time to greatly increased risks of depression, and overall societal dysfunction.
Even when my children were little, when they were confronted with some challenge the rule was they had to struggle with it for a while. More often than not, they were more able than they thought. Occasionally they would come to me and say “I struggled for five minutes with X, and I still need help”. Then they would get help. In my view, this basic dynamic needs to be the social dynamic in any emotionally healthy culture. It is not presently the dynamic in the United States, and we are paying the cost, literally and figuratively.