Why Love Is Our Most Powerful, Lasting Form of Activism

This article points to a solution in the right direction. We all know what she means by “love”, or do we? Each of us may distinguish love in a different way. Whether it is eros (selfish) or agape (spontaneous and unmotivated) makes no difference I suppose. What depth each attains depends on the individual and the situation and both are unions of a sort. And then there is the Why of it. As in what do we get out of it? One answer goes back to Aristotle, that having a relationship promotes self-knowledge, that it is a reflecting mirror reflecting our character back at us. That it brings out the best (or the beast) in us. The reason for existence. We justify it because of that, maybe. Well, it seems like it’s selfish, as well as spontaneous and unmotivated all in one. But then it seems, looking around at the world, love is also replaceable, when people get divorced and “trade up” for a new person, when possible, since love can also mean a love of life and the need to experience everything we can. Until we overcome some human perceptions we haven’t even conceived of yet, whether “love” is the final answer is impossible to understand.

Robert Lightfoot
http://robertlightfoot.blogspot.com/

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From the high hill of a now destroyed thirty year marriage I would like to thank you for this article, doubtless the best valentine I will get. "What will happen" said my closest friend "when you make a move toward yourself"? Seven years later now I can say my selfish decision has led me to a series of selfish people. So, yes, how we love a person not only speaks of our willingness to love the world but how deserving we are of the love of someone. A gift of this greatest of all human attributes.

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I disagree with one statement, "because love is so rarely a choice." That seems to be about loving just one other person. I believe that LOVE, not just romantic love, can encompass the WORLD. And we CAN choose to love, and be loving toward EVERYONE.

Isn't "romantic" love a needy love? We feel incomplete, and some other person will "complete" us? And then they may not live up to what we "expect", and so we drop them and go on endlessly looking....for something that WE need to give ourselves.

It all starts with loving ourselves, just as we are (and that includes forgiveness). We need to realize that no one outside of ourselves can give us the all the love we really want - that love must come to us from our own heart first.

You can only give "water" to others when your own "well" is full.

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lack of education in understanding relationships and improving basic interpersonal and communication skills.

Feb would be best served as a "Understanding Relationships" month. In addition, school curriculms would be better off making it MANDATORY courses in discipline and understanding relationships. It's pathetic that neither the right nor left gets it.

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This article is just more of the syrupy nonsense that has been clogging up Alternet recently.

So-called romantic love is largely a social convention fostered in the Western world as an offshoot of feudalism and the oppressive Christian church. Promoting romanticism and quick marriage (dominated by the Church, of course) was a good way to keep the population under control and producing more cheap labor.

Now the same process promotes resistance to progressive change -- and still creates cheap labor. As in the past, most women marry for economic reasons, choosing the wealthiest acceptable man they can find to help raise their offspring.

Then, after the babies are produced, the woman typically jettisons the husband, takes a large chunk of his income in divorce court, and goes merrily on her way with the offspring.

There is nothing pretty about the long-term effects of modern "romance," which usually leaves men and women disappointed or devastated in some way. Just look at the hard data on marriage, divorce and single parenthood.

Marriage is outmoded and should be abolished as a government-sanctioned activity.

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Oh lordy - words about love on an inane, commercialized "holiday" about love that enriches a few, leaves many feeling unworthy, and forces others to decide between paying the light bill and looking like a schmuck to their current mate. Hows about we take all the time, effort, advertising and cash used on this ridiculous day and channel it into something that really "gives some love" to those less fortunate than us?
What a waste of space and time in an otherwise great publication.

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Courtney-

Perfect Valentines Day message. Thanks to you and AlterNet.

Barack Obama ended his presidential announcement speech last weekend with the words "I love you" (scripted or spontaneous?)

It differentiated him as the new generation of leadership who is much more likely to say/write this healing phrase without fear, embrassment, shame or derision. I view it as a good hopeful sign?

Be Well,

Dr. Rick Lippin

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Author wrote:
...love is so rarely a choice. Love is an instinct, an accident, an epiphany, a stomach ache. It can feel like incarceration and pardon, alienation and intimacy, tragedy and comedy. It so often grabs us by the collar and drags us in whatever direction it feels magnetized. We don't choose it. It harangues us.

That is not love. That is hormonal teenage infatuation. Love should be a choice. None of this cupid-struck-with-an-arrow-I'm-powerless crap.

This is the kind of mentality that causes hundreds of thousands of women around to the world to "fall in love" with death row murderers and other violent psychopaths in prison proclaiming they've found their "soul mate." VOMIT.

This is the kind of BS that keeps women feeling disempowered when they're with LOSERS who aren't appropriate partners.
"I can't leave because I love him."

I don't buy it.
I appreciate the sentimentality of this Valentine's Day nonsense but love is a choice and we need to choose wisely.

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It appears some of those commenting here didn't actually read the article. Romantic love and commerical holidays celebrating conformity are just what she's critiquing! Make love what YOU want it to be, regardless of societal expectations. Then you're truly progressive.

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Notice the inserted tidbit about our current fluff choice for President - old Obama himself. Nice insert! Not for some of us however. Why doesn't AlterNet publish this piece in Modern Romance Magazine?

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Who's writing yet ANOTHER book on this generation's obsession with food and fitness.

Science h. logic.

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http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2657422
http://www.crimethinc.com/library/english/join.html

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Those you are connected to by family or sexual relationship should already know that you love them. If you choose to make a statement about love on this day, may I recommend something?

1- Make peace with someone you have grown distant from or had a long-standing break with. Not for aggravation- for peacemaking.

2- Show some kindness to someone you know that is less than lovable. We all have people in our lives that are hard to know, hard to understand. A little grace and kindness can warm even the coldest heart.

3- Do something for your significant other today that does not require money. Deeds not only have more value than words, they also speak louder than money.

4- Have a family member, friend, neighbor, etc that is currently far from home? Give them a call or an e-mail telling them that you are thinking of them. It's more important than most people realize.

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Asked Prof. Bernard Beckerman, of Hofstra College (later Editor at the Folger Library) in a monongraph of that title ...

His premise was "NOT ROMEO" ... every other character in the piece who interacts with Juliette tries to help and protect the girl. Nurse, Mother, Friar Lawrence, Cousin Paris. And they all pay somewhat of a price for doing it, and suffer greatly when they fail.

Romeo is actually the "boyfriend from hell' who separates Juilettre from her family and gets her killed. Had the two lived ... the tragedy would have decended into pathos as the two grew old together in an xile and poverty they were never raised to cope withal.

Now ... imagine the reaction of Dr. Beckerman's undergraduate actors, when AFTER the opening performance, he revealed to them that that was exactly how he had directed the play! Fortunately ... the very provincial reviewers at Newsday and the Hofstra Chronicle never noticed the difference.

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This is a post of mine on Daily KOS for today - my first apolitical piece blogging - but it felt appropriate. It's too long for here, but enjoy. I hope.

I erred and left out the following second and third paragraphs:

We tend to complicate love in how we react to it, what we do about it, and even how we know it for what it is. We get it tangled up with lust, possession, dominance and other things. If you’re unsure that what you feel can be named “love”, there’s a simple test, a definition of sorts: If the happiness and well-being of the other is necessary to your own, it’s love. If you’ve gotten far enough to recognize that much, try to keep that the core of how you deal with it, and the rest, if you work to stay honest, can almost always be worked out.

The only real limits on love aside from our inherent mortality and time are those we choose: numbers, gender, arrangement – none of it matters to anyone but those involved. The more we love, the more we can love, but absolute freedom is the necessary place for a healthy existence. Anything else is the equivalent of an emotional flowerpot, and love is a wild thing, never to be domesticated. Try transplanting a forest orchid into a flowerpot and taking it home. No matter your expertise or caring, it will die. So too with love. Where it goes, it must go of it’s own nature and volition, else it will not thrive; it cannot even live.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/14/13717/8326

Ian

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Love is a stomch ache. It just emanates thru your body and ain't nuthin you can do about it. Perhaps, when Shooter Cheney references our bellies when he scolds us on our lack of stomach for his warped vision of not loving his war enough, his gift to an ungrateful nation of bleeding heart pussies, he's actually begging us to rejoice and join him in his loving worship of his true valentine, his angel of death , at his alter of darkness. Quite a heartfelt gift on Cupid's day.

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The title to this piece associates love with activism and then veers off into romance and mentalism. The usual hard hitting activist comments are absent from this romantic fluff and rational paralysis of love. Love is indefinable and free of labeling as the forest orchid metaphor in one of the last comments nailed. Yet, when stripped of its pseudo-love baggage, it is a powerful activist word. The hard headed activists who rail at the criminals destroying love in the name of love are the real lovers in my opinion. The activists who attack church going, state serving, money chasing corporate and political hyprocrites are expressing love, although they would be the first to deny it. Religions are the last to practice their own teachings when it comes to confronting the power structures which say the only test of love is action on behalf of the poor (not charity which cripples the poor). American sheeple who don't say anything or feel anything in their hearts for suffering people right next to them or across the globe are love hypocrites. The title to this article had it right when it linked activism and love.

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bell hooks, the guru of love as revolution, wrote: "The moment we chose to love we begin to move towards freedom." I think she's wrong, but not by much.

It is not the moment we chose to love that we begin to move towards freedom, because love is so rarely a choice. Love is an instinct, an accident, an epiphany, a stomach ache.

The reason why the author may think hooks is wrong is because she evidently defines "love" in quite a different way from hooks. In contrast to the second paragraph I pasted above, hooks (from what I remember of her books on the topic) defines "love" as a practice, not a feeling. The feeling matters too, of course, but I think it is that understanding of love-as-practice that makes hooks' work on the topic so revolutionary.

-- S.N.

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This article makes a very good point, and, judging from many of the comments here, I think a lot of people might have missed that point. We have a tendency to make a stark distinction between those events and actions that occur in the 'political' realm and those that occur in the 'personal' realm. The fact is, though, that the personal and political are really one in the same; they are just manifested on different levels. I think this is why so many people in today's society are quick to say, "I don't get involved with politics." What they don't realize is that they are involved because everything they do, no matter how small, has some effect on society as a whole. One of my favorite novels, John Knowles' A Separate Peace, does an excellent job of illustrating this idea. If you haven't read it (although you probably have, at least if you went to high school/college in the US), I would strong recommend reading it. The important thing to remember is that your relationship, your group of friends, and your community are all microcosms of society. Real change has to start there. As Gandhi said, "be the change you want to see in the world."

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"A generation of women insisted that the personal was the political, that they would only be in relationship with those who respected their full humanity, and we -- their daughters and sons -- are engaged in far more fair partnerships as a result."

If women didn't marry men who hated women, the world would change. But misogyny is the air we breathe. Men hate women. Period. Women hate women. Society is like that. Feminists are those who think this over or grow up with feminist relatives or friends but it's not the norm. Women already married to men who hate women will eventually clash and not get along. It's better to be alone than together in a nightmare.

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The intro says "Who you love and how you love them is as much a statement about your social conscience as the letters you write to Congress or the votes you cast. It's harder to be good to someone else. "

But: because our self-help society becomes increasingly preoccupied with personal relationships and their attendant issues, and I'm talking especially the boomers and the psycho-spiritual junkies out there (live from Santa Fe here), the LIBERALS for heavens' sake, we're losing the world. Yes indeed, personal love is the crux of our learning and our sense of respect and care for and with others, but one can just as easily say, as I would, that "the letters you write to Congress and the votes you cast are as much formative or declarative of the soul and its longings as who you love and how you love them."

I'm also thinking now of Michael Franti's "it's not who you love, but DO you love" - and for me that means much beyond the interpersonal.

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People who want to see the world bettered -- made more just and honest and kind -- often set their gaze on the farthest horizon. Our instinct, as progressives with global perspectives, is to obsess over situations far afield of our own backyards -- Indonesia, Sudan, the Middle East. These situations stir a sort of Peace Corp romance within us, a love affair with that which might make us feel gallant and extraordinary for caring.

I am as guilty as the next bleeding heart of focusing the majority of my energies on problems I see as compelling in large part because of their strangeness to me. But when I sit with myself, quiet my righteous indignation, my whiny white guilt, my attachment to the idea that I am a humble truth teller among powerful fibbers, I realize that it is not the world outside of me that is in most desperate need of my world-changing instincts. It is the world inside of me, the world between me and my beloved.

As I type this, there have been 39 comments posted, yet I have not yet read one Alternet poster disagreeing with the psychological motives and obvious delusions of grandeur delineated above and requoted below:

a love affair with that which might make us feel gallant and extraordinary for caring.

when I sit with myself, quiet my righteous indignation, my whiny white guilt, my attachment to the idea that I am a humble truth teller among powerful fibbers

All of us would be much better people if we would focus on objective reality instead of one's subjective self-image and psychological whims. This can easily be done by behaving honorably and ethically is one's community and family life, following the principle of subsidiarity.

The "malignant narcissism" (that cares for for selfish ego-stroking whims more than understanding objective facts on the ground, and that engages in judgementalism and intolerance as it points fingers at distant Others) inherent in the above confession contradicts the philosophies of such teachers as Jesus, Gandhi, and John Quincy Adams:

Jesus-Remove the log from thine own eye...

Gandhi-Be the change you wish to see in the world...

Adams-Go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy...

Not to mention the words of Albert Camus in "The Plague":

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

My contempt for narcissists extends from those on the Left (who have Serb blood dripping from their hands) to those on the Right (who have Iraqi blood dripping from their hands), all of whom claimed the right to kill in the name of the obscene abstraction called the greater good that they fancied they knew.

"Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."

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The pro-interventionist campaigners in the West imbue conflicts with profound moralistic meaning, so that wars over territory or power become transformed into epoch-defining battles between the forces of purity and the forces of evil. This instantly ups the stakes, elevating what are pretty average civil wars into stubborn face-offs over historic values. So [the] forces in that poverty-stricken country are no longer merely fighting over land, resources, grazing rights and dwindling water supplies. They apparently are engaged in a war over morals and meaning...where one side has been adopted by liberal Islingtonians as righteous victims while the other – the government in Khartoum and its various alleged militias – have been condemned as backward, archaic, hate-filled fundamentalists. Just as we saw in Bosnia, this super-moralisation of civil wars certainly does nothing to encourage compromise or reconciliation; instead it entrenches divisions and inflames both sides to continue fighting.

The reduction of conflicts to battles between good and evil encourages one side (those favoured as ‘good’) to become more belligerent and to hold out against compromise or talks on the basis that they have powerful forces in the West on their side; and it encourages the other side (those labelled as ‘evil’) to become more entrenched and embittered. We can see this happening over Darfur. In May, Darfurian rebel groups initially held back from signing a draft agreement with the Sudanese government, even though the agreement gave the rebels ‘most of what they went to war for’, including: ‘large areas of territory’; a situation where Khartoum-backed militias would have to disarm first; a guarantee of affirmative action so that Darfurians will get public-service jobs; and the right to nominate the governor of one of Darfur’s three states and the deputy governors of the other two. Why did they hesitate over the deal? Because, as Jonathan Steele argued, ‘One-sided international media treatment of the crisis may have emboldened the rebels to increase their demands.’ Such Western coverage, said Steele, ‘could be having a pernicious effect and be delaying the chance of ending the killing’ . Again, it is a familiar story. The Bosnian Muslims, under advice from the Clinton administration and encouraged by widespread Western support, continually held out for better and better deals in the Bosnian war in 1994 and 1995, which made that bloody conflict drag on for months longer than it needed to.

In a perceptive piece in the New York Times, Alan J Kuperman described it as ‘strategic victimhood in Sudan’, where Darfurian rebels exploited the victim status awarded to them by Western observers in order to get a better deal. Kuperman argues that Westerners’ ‘persistent calls for intervention have actually worsened the violence’: ‘The rebels, much weaker than the government, would logically have sued for peace long ago. Because of the Save Darfur movement, however, the rebels believe that the longer they provoke genocidal reaction, the more the West will pressure Sudan to hand them control of the region.’ It may seem shocking to hear it suggested that rebel armies would knowingly provoke violence against their own people. But again, this is part of the logic of the humanitarian era....It is still alleged, for example, that Bosnian Muslim forces attacked their own people with mortars, and blamed it on the Serbs, as a means of winning further Western sympathy. Kosovo Albanian forces are alleged to have staged a massacre, by manoeuvring dead bodies, in order to encourage intervention over Kosovo in 1999...

Where in earlier eras rebel groups might have fought for independence, today, in the humanitarian era, they often execute stunts for pity.

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"Love is a many-splendored thing"....and there are many kinds and degrees of love.

If we all could learn to "love our enemies as ourselves" there would be no murders, wars, hatreds...but it is so hard to love truly and "forgive those who have trespassed against us...."

"What the world needs now, is love, sweet love..." Very true, there's not enough love, kindness, mercy in this world. But it is easier said than done to love those who are mean, or evil, or selfish, or too different from ourselves...

Could you love George W. Bush? Adolf Hitler? Osama bin Laden? The late Saddam Hussein?

Not so easy, is it? But if we don't try, if not to love, at least not to hate, we will always have wars, and rumors of wars, until the end of Time...

Gary

Gary James Minter
http://aidsvillagechina.blog.sohu.com
www.healthchina.org

P.S. in the meantime, at least try to do something to help those truly in need, those who are old, sick, dying, disabled, those who cannot help the situation they are in...give your help to those who truly need it, not to those who are just too selfish and lazy to help themselves....

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Love in its deepest, truest sense has nothing to do with law, or government, or established religion....except as people and organizations try to copy Love...

Love is a living thing, with a will and spirit of its own, and cannot be defined, controlled, or monopolized by anyone or anything, no matter how hard they try, or how desperately they wish it to be according to their will, or desires....

Power can only try to imitate Love, and it always fails in the end, because it destroys that which it tries to love....Just as during the Viet Nam war, the U.S. military would "destroy the village in order to save it."

No one can force Love, or pressure Love, or through will or desire create Love...just as no one can truly create Life (except perhaps Dr. Frank N. Furter!)...even sex does not create Life, it joins two already living cells, the egg and the sperm, together in a unique combination which can grow and evolve....

All the social conventions, religious traditions, government edicts, and greeting card company sales pitches are very pale, feeble attempts to imitate, symbolize, and cash in on Love. We should not mistake any of these for the real thing, the miracle and mystery of Love...

Gary

Gary J. Minter
http://aidsvillagechina.blog.sohu.com
www.healthchina.org

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I agree to a point, that the concept of 'Love' has been hijacked by commercialism and social norms. I think everyone will agree that the concept of matrimony is facing it's darkest period since whoever it was, thought it up.

Don't get me wrong, love and marriage are generally good concepts but as with most things in our lives, they too, over time have been tainted by commercialism, trashy journalism and a general breakdown in the social structure.

The peice is right though, about the fact that you can't and shouldn't determine who and how you love on whether you feel under pressure to do so, or whether or not it goes some way to making your life easier in some way.

I also agree that if people go through the right process and find true love, it is a step towards a better world.

This is because to find true love includes at the very least, some period of self meditation. There's no quick fix, and Tony Robbins couldn't write a book to help you do so. If He does, it's a scam!!!!!!

You are no good to anybody if you don't know who you are; because sooner or later all the things you didn't take time to find out about yourself, will become part of the reason your relationship didn't work.

If more people approached love and relationships in general, in this way, they and the world would witness a great change for the better.

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-Quote from Ozzy Osbourne

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Your point cannot be underestimated, but the article itself needs more passion, insight, to convince a cold world of such a thing as love.

Funny thing, it's like being drunk, drugged, or dizzy; it's hard to pinpoint the exact feeling unless you're currently experiencing it--otherwise, by default, only distance remains.

I would point to one of the most beautiful scenes in all of literature, the point in The Odyssey where Odysseus goes to Penelope disguised as a beggar, bringing news of her husband (himself) who has been away for years.

She, melting at the sound, with drops of
Tenderest grief her cheeks bedewed
And as the snow, by Zephyrus diffused,
Melts on the mountain top, when Eurus breathes
And fills the channels of the running streams,
So melted she, and down her lovely cheeks
Poured fast the tears, him mourning as remote
Who sat beside her.

The visible softening of Penelope, as compared to the coming of Spring here, the melting of years of frozen longing, creates a universal metaphor for what the hope of love can do.

--JLE

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Ayn Rand on love

Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it?

Imagine a Valentine's Day card which takes this premise seriously. Imagine receiving a card with the following message: "I get no pleasure from your existence. I obtain no personal enjoyment from the way you look, dress, move, act or think. Our relationship profits me not. You satisfy no sexual, emotional or intellectual needs of mine. You're a charity case, and I'm with you only out of pity. Love, XXX."

Needless to say, you would be indignant to learn that you are being "loved," not for anything positive you offer your lover, but--like any recipient of alms--for what you lack. Yet that is the perverse view of love entailed in the belief that it is self-sacrificial.

Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that involves no sacrifice of others to yourself or of yourself to others.

To love a person is selfish because it means that you value that particular person, that he or she makes your life better, that he or she is an intense source of joy--to you. A "disinterested" love is a contradiction in terms. One cannot be neutral to that which one values. The time, effort and money you spend on behalf of someone you love are not sacrifices, but actions taken because his or her happiness is crucially important to your own. Such actions would constitute sacrifices only if they were done for a stranger--or for an enemy. Those who argue that love demands self-denial must hold the bizarre belief that it makes no personal difference whether your loved one is healthy or sick, feels pleasure or pain, is alive or dead.

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"You can save a lot of money, staying drunk and horney." --lyrics from Paint Your Wagon

(sung to Yankee Doodle Dandy)

Just had to add that. This is the only movie Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin ever made together--a musical!

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"If everyone swept his own doorsteps, what a clean world it would be."

~ Goethe

Yes, dear reader. There are people who do not try to improve the world, which is not only hopeless, but also vain and disastrous. Instead, real heroes do what they can to improve the world around them.

Click the link to read about French and Indian heroes who saved lives, one by one, without the violent blunt instrument of taxation and government.

"Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one. One by one."-Sting

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