Intend the following declarative statements as suggestions, not rudely delusional commands. From a literary standpoint, have not finished the following. Just abandoned it for the time being.
Talk openly about violent revolution or other forms of violent social change so we can better judge it as foolishness or a wise approach. Am more comfortable with that when it’s part of talking about and acting on a higher form of love.
Love is why any cause, or anything else in the world, matters in the first place. Pardon the metaphor: use love to navigate your maze of contradictions.
The violence vs-nonviolence question misses the key issue : hatred vs a type of love King and others referred to as agape.
Crossed paths with plenty of folk, mostly on the left, famous and not famous, who seem to have the intellectual firepower regarding the issues they care about. But few of them seem to connect with people on a sort of spiritual level in a way that, say, King did.
Right wing extremism in the US seems more likely than left wing. But that’s not necessarily a credit to the latter. Moderates and lefties have criticized the Tea Party for promoting hatred, but in the least, Occupy or whatever new name or form it takes, IMHO has yet —w/ only a few exceptions— to talk loudly and clearly about agape love.
Occupy and other social movements would be more effective –all else being equal—if the shared message of agape love diminished egotism, personal ambition, jealousy and other states of mind we fall into in our unintentional slide toward hatred of ourselves and others.
It’s not enough to try to not hate. Most of us don’t set out to hate. Instead we sometimes end up there because of various forms of unenlightened self-interest. Striving to love is proactive. Without that, we default into states of mind where we’re more likely to end up hating.
Love is a sociological force for constructive change when we use it to defy social barriers that otherwise divide us.
We can strive toward agape love and use violence when we truly believe there is no viable alternative.
Don’t relish the thought and would like to think I wouldn’t relish the deeds, but I can imagine, in the pursuit of honesty here, harming and killing humans and non-humans without hating them, when I genuinely believe there is no viable alternative. Ideally, no human would ever be in that circumstance.
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