Love and Politics--What?

This post is dedicated to those who've asked me, "what are you writing about?" Most have greeted my words with frowns, asking, "what do those have to do with each other?" (Claire) or "What do you mean?" (Rachel). One has smiled and said, "I'd be interested in reading that." (Maddy) Just being asked gives me a little more reason to write, and whether I'm explaining my ideas to the frowners or the smilers, it helps me to figure out what I want to say. So, this post is about what I want to say.

Politics:

well, I don't mean "government." And I don't mean what passed for politics today, in the US, UK, France, and other places around the world. The only love in that kind of politics, the politics of elections and bureaucracy and the status quo, is the love of power and money. Government has nothing to do with love; in fact it's the opposite of love.

By "politics," then, I mean working together in our communities to figure out what we most want and how we're going to achieve it. This idea isn't new, of course. Aristotle, as far as I know, first articulated it. More recently, Alasdair MacIntyre has developed a notion of this kind of politics. Notably, it is different from every other political theory I know today. And it is scary, because it makes the community important; yet, we've been taught to fear community--no doubt in part because capitalism cannot countenance the idea of community built on shared sister- and brother-hood. I will then have to talk about what I mean by "community" in my book, and that might be a bigger challenge than talking about politics or about...

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LOVE

We use this word, "love," in so many ways and so often that it has lost a lot of its significance. We know, however, what we mean by love. I love chocolate does not mean the same as I love dogs, which doesn't mean the same as I love my dog, Mickie. None of those mean the same as I love my friend, my partner, my family. We have different words for love: brotherly-love, erotic love, agape.

What do any of these have to do with politics, even politics in the way I mean the word?

In simplest terms, love is acting on and for those desires at the deepest core of who or what we are. To use God as an example: If God is love, then God had no choice in creation. The deepest desire of Love is to love and be loved, to act for Love. God has no choice in loving each and everyone one of us. God must love even Lucifer.

Let me move from theology to our every day: Love is acting. It is not a feeling/emotion. It is not some evolutionary calculation to ensure the survival of the species or the genes. It is acting on deepest desire. So, neither is it acting to get the next fix or because this chance of sex is here or because the cake looks good. Deepest desires are things I'll have to explain in the course of my book, but it's not our everyday desires, even if those desires might express in some sense our deepest desire.

If politics is about members of the local community pursuing their desires together, then it must be an expression of love. Anything that falls short of that is not as good as it can be.

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So why write about love and politics?

Our world is on the verge of collapse. We must eschew government and politics as we know them for the politics I'm trying to defend. It might be utopian in the negative sense--as impossible--but maybe we have enough time to change the way we do politics today. It will take all of us, require us to give up our everyday desires for longer-term desires. So, while I'm not writing a blue print for politics, I am painting a picture for what we need to do different.

On the other hand, again, not as a blue print, but as a a hope, I write this book for how the younger generations can grow communities after the collapse which seems imminent and immanent. In this sense, I write about love and politics in the sense of positive utopia. It's a hope that humanity continues and can build a better world  for the future.