Somewhere, I read that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is all about love. I like that. I think it’s true—all kinds of discrimination, hate and suffering can only be destroyed by love.
In her book All About Love: New Visions, the philosopher Bell Hooks (or, as she prefers, bell hooks) defines love as the will to extend or expand oneself for the purpose of allowing the spiritual self to flourish—including the selves of others. According to the existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, love is edifying. Love is a verb; it does something. But that is not all! In a letter to his then-fiancée Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard wrote, “Freedom is the element of love.”
Love requires freedom. Or only free people can love.
I propose an understanding of freedom as being with friends. Freedom is the manifestation of a complete or meaningful relationship. Every relationship always assumes something that is not oneself. Love cannot therefore be reduced to self—love is, rather, an external force that arouses joy.
Seen in this light, I believe that the BLM movement shows a will to love, as it tries to overcome the devastating sadness that comes in the face of exploitation, discrimination, abuse of power, violence and death.
Denial is the pulse of racism
In the book How to Be an Antiracist, the historian Ibram X. Kendi writes that denial is the pulse of racism, while the pulse of antiracism is confession. What keeps some people in persistent denial is typically fear.
Fear is always directed towards the future. It could be the fear of losing. But it could also be the fear that something will never become a reality, such as equal opportunity, respect and dignity for all people.
Confession is the antithesis of fear, I suggest, because freedom is precisely its pivotal point. Confession is a way to get to know oneself better—that is, to see oneself through one’s words, which are always tested socially.
Confession is a way in which a community can build trusting bonds. This is a perpetually sensitive and investigative conversation. When Socrates conversed with his fellow citizens, he not only asked questions, but also spoke directly to the other. Philosophy is a kind of indictment that no one can escape, unless they wish to remain ignorant.
Most people—both white and black, as Kendi points out in his book—have behaved as racists, that is, assumed that one race is better than another. Racism is putting each race into a hierarchy. The term antiracist is, in this view, an active strategy of living with the intention of treating everyone as equals. When unconscious racism is made conscious—either because of self-reflection and self-criticism, or because of open and curious conversation—it does not bring shame but gratitude.
The moral is, no one wants to remain ignorant (or very few, at least). Similarly, one’s approach can be anti-violence, as Gandhi said, not only towards other people but towards everything living. The idea is basically to safeguard everything breathing—human beings, animals, plants, oceans—like one’s own baby.
Anti-hate is what binds all living beings together; it’s a way of fighting for something bigger than “just” your own territory and race, within your own timeframe. It’s a way of affirming the power of freedom and love in that which is in the midst of becoming.
The courage to think freely
Racism emerges when I am not capable of perceiving the others as an intimate part of my own self; racism is reducing the others to something unrelated or unconnected to me.
By the same reasoning, I emphasize love, because regardless of how ambiguous the term is, all people have experienced degrees of love, care and kindness. It can be a warm smile, a warm blanket on a cold night on the street, or another person who really gives one his or her attention.
The philosophers Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch both linked attention with love, just as they linked careful awareness to a critical and investigative approach to life. Criticism is not about cancelling or silencing another person, but about sharing experiences and realizations that can awaken new insights and joy.
The critical thinking of the individual—the confession—unfolds in the space between “what have I done?” and “what should I do?” The “I” that we want to behave properly and be responsible for his or her poor decisions or behaviour, requires an understanding of who this I is.
We are all shaped by the time and place where we grow up—for good and evil. “I” is nothing but an empty form that is continually formed, even in cases when thinking contradicts the prevailing institutional morality.
For the first many years, this formation happens unconsciously; later on, the individual becomes better able to say “no,” if he or she has learned to think and has the courage to think freely. Once we are free, we can gradually become better human beings.
None of us own life
Sur Works of Love, Kierkegaard argues that only love is edifying. Not anger. In connection with the religious injunction to love your neighbour as yourself, he emphasizes that the term neighbour does not refer to your race, your gender or your nation, but all people. Anyone, he writes. All people should be loved as equals (not equally). That is, treated equally. Treated with the same respect and rights.
With Kierkegaard’s call to love all human beings as equals, he turns love into a political concept that destroys the damning group identity politics of the time. BLM possesses such a liberating potential. BLM confirms the wisdom of Hannah Arendt, when she said that evil is the result of our thoughtlessness, our reluctance to think well and thoroughly.
Mindlessness is associated with a lack of attention, an inability to love.
Love is the vitality with which all critical thinking begins. It’s like a friendly bond that can make you and me wiser. That which is part of life in all its complexity: everything that breathes, shits and dies.
Love can only flourish when we—all of us—recognize that none of us own life, but rather, that it is on loan. It is the manifold powers of life that we cherish, not our ego, race or territory.
Love holds the potential for political change. It happens when all people are loved, as equals.
«LECTURE CONNEXE» THE POLITICS OF THE HEART: Notes on the Democratic Convention»
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