bell hooks' Definition of Love and our Present Political Moment

We begin with this political moment, this feeling of trudging through sludge with no end in sight. No, we're not lonely, but if we're doing the work, it can seem endless and insignificant. If we're not doing the work, we might be in a mire of our own confusion and fear.

Again, it's not lonely, but there are plenty who are unreliable or worse. There is, truth be told, no opposition party: witness Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) joining Truth Social, Sen. Bernie Sanders saying "actually, Elon makes some good points," and the President offering thoughts and prayers in the face of Donald "deport U.S. citizens" Trump:

The challenge is to think larger than electoral politics. This doesn't necessitate a wholesale withdrawal from parties and campaigns; at the very least, those serious about change can rally and find each other through such things. But it does mean that the real action must happen outside of elections. Politics depends on our ability to ask questions like these: What are my needs? What are the needs of my neighbors? How can I help myself, how can I help them? What are the needs of the community? How can they be addressed in a way which builds trust and enables us to take on other problems? In short: pure electoralism is doomed because it currently thrives on an inability to ask any of these questions, let alone reflect on potential answers. It thrives on mindless anger and constant blame, resulting in the loss of fundamental notions of society and community. People actually believe they can survive by throwing everyone else under the bus.

How much larger must one think, then? What is the question that points to the other questions about needs and community? I've learned from experience that people have a lot of pride as well as understandably faulty assumptions about whether they can support themselves. We're told incessantly that hard work and sound financial management mean we can provide for ourselves. It's hard to acknowledge we're bombarded by scams and run into the ground by a system paranoid it is not maximizing the value of labor. The question we need to ask must fight whatever illusions we use as a security blanket. It has to bring us closer to an acknowledgment of need.

With this in mind, I've found bell hooks' All About Love to be eminently useful. If you're wondering if you're ungrateful because someone deeply neglectful of you says so, hooks has a definition of love which enables one to distinguish between love and abuse. Asking about love not only creates a space where individual needs can be identified and addressed, but also where society and community cannot be dismissed as unnecessary. The rhetoric of angry techbros and wannabe finance gurus is by definition unwelcome; they want a hierarchy to establish power while all we want is some clarity on what we have to do.

hooks uses a definition from the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck: [love is] "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." (4) I like this definition for a number of reasons pertinent to politics. First, it speaks of extending oneself. Sure, there are people who stay in one place with set habits who we believe loving and supportive. They have somehow learned to extend themselves, to open themselves, to not refuse challenges. They are rare. I know of more who refuse to leave the house, whose habits are destructive, who will never admit how wrong they were or how much harm they caused. This latter group is stuck in one place in the deepest sense; their whole lives are an unending tantrum. I do not believe we can have the politics we need if we are crying about a loss, no matter how unfair it was. Extension would mean learning what we need to know and applying it quickly.

That brings me to the second aspect of this definition of love. Everything depends on "spiritual growth." It sounds so strange to think of political life as a sphere where we can grow, but I ask you to think about the times you've achieved something working as a team. That, if done right, is the heart of politics. You spoke to your team members; you tried to accommodate each other's vision; you worked to maximize each other's strengths; you were sensitive to a greater audience. We can easily substitute "community" for "team," acknowledging how different groups of people negotiate with each other in order to create a better life for all. The crucial thing to note is that there isn't just growth, but ever-increasing awareness of each other's potential. hooks indicates that there is a notion of spirituality which is beautifully grounded, not asking for miracles but simply wanting to see others at their best.

And that leads me to a third, concluding observation. It's an observation which might be accused of navel-gazing, as it begins with the contention that devotion to one's own spiritual growth can, in theory, enable better politics. That doesn't sound right–plenty of reactionaries and terrible people focus on their private lives, a spirituality which can never be critiqued. But I do think there's a lot to be said for modeling the behavior you want from others. This hearkens back to an older idea about politics, one from Aristotle, who held that political rule was ruling and being able to be ruled in turn. Aristotle also thought that if you found an idea to be good for you, it would be reasonable to expect it worked for others like you. This wasn't meant to enforce conformity or make everyone annoying, filled with advice more than sensitivity. Rather, it complemented the notion that the highest friendships strive for virtue.

If we're going to have a better politics, someone has to stand for something real. It can't just be junk propositions like "give defense contractors all the money they want" or "the businessman can run America like he did his casinos" or "group X is the reason for all our problems." None of that stuff is standing for anything; the thinking is lazy and the facts are neglected. At some point, someone has to say "this matters"–this being generosity, or justice, or freedom, or serious inquiry, or some other value entirely–and recognizing and standing for that entails spiritual growth. Two things about the current moment are highlighted when I say that: 1) the complete cowardice by elites in the face of a movement that continually advertises its desire to hurt others 2) the gross materialism of our present politics, which posits that people only care about money or power.

References

hooks, bell. "All About Love: New Visions." New York: William Morrow, 2000.