Love is the Movement

I spend my days reading dense academic literature that analyzes the world problems, dissecting every known region of human endeavor, criticizing greed and racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and a million other of the bad things that humans do. Yet, in 200 years of academic social science, we know, to the most minute level, about the problems, yet, we have shown little progress in developing any ideas that actually work to solve them. Many still claim that socialism is the answer, the "system" that will work, but I find this somewhat absurd. It is a great theory, but the practice has had very mixed results.

But, what is most disturbing about social science, in general, is its lack of attention to the human endeavor called love. Love in the English language tends to have some problematic connotations, that is, everyone equates love with sexuality, so when I speak of love, I mean agape love - the desire to create a beautiful world with one's human brother or sister. And yet, this is a concrete social relation, not unlike capital, race, patriarchy, etc., etc., etc. It would seem that human freedom, if that is actually the goal for which we are working, must be predicated on the value of love.

Human systems produces values which guide peoples desires. Capital embodies value in the dollar, race and patriarchy embody value as exclusion of other ways of being, other ways of seeing the world. Each of these, the sort of big three of social science, has come into being as a result of institutional bodies which set the context for their values to gain traction in shaping how humans act in the world. These values must operate in a context where they seem natural, as the correct mode of action. Yet, love actually is natural; it requires no institutional context, no government, nothing. Indeed, it would seem that love functions in spite of these things, as these things and the values they emit are anathema to love. Capital is based on greed which is based on fear, race and patriarchy are based on greed and fear. Love cannot be greedy or fearful; if it is, it is no longer love.

And maybe, I am Pollyana, and so be it; I choose to be. On some level, be it implicitly or explicity, people have chosen to value wealth over their sibling's stomach, skin color over their sibling's creativity, and reproductive apparatus over their sibling's gifts, and all that it would take is for people to choose otherwise, to choose love. It really is that simple.