By Dominique Michal
Applying an Ethic of Love to Current Global Crises: When
Confronting Challenges to Democracy, Community, and Individual Freedoms; the Overuse and Pollution of the Land; and the Destruction of Life in the Biosphere?
By Dominique Michal
Vladimir Vernadsky forsaw today’s crises. He wrote:
“We live in a critical epoch of the history of humanity. … Serious and profound events are unfolding in the domain of human thought. … We are studying a very small space – but inseparably linked to an immensity of the cosmos in establishing laws and regularities in the history of the chemical elements of our planet. Profound analogies – an even more than analogies – exist within.”
I would be tempted to start with the following quote from Ann Hathaway’s acceptance speech when she received the Human Rights Commission Award in 2008:
“Love is a human experience not a political statement.”
I must confess I do have hard time to bring together Love and Politics.
Has love ever been in the driver seat of politic?
Not sure that history would give us sound examples
Has love has ever lead countries, counties, or villages?
Have the very first nations been structured around an ethic of love?
Or was it that looking after each other was just a survival answer to their environment? Is the idea of love in politics a resurgence of the “Summer in love” in the 1960’s?
And yes! an incredible number of philosophers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, politicians have talked about it over the years: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Pope Francis, Vaclav Havel …to what avail?
Our political challenges today, imply the question “should we take an unselfed loving approach to the solution of today’s challenges which are incredibly complex, difficult to apprehend and to understand, protean, totally intertwined. Whether we are talking of Climate change, or the rise of autocrat regimes or thee rising numbers of military conflicts around the world, displaced populations: over A hundred million people today, close to a billion expected in 2050 on the move because of the impact of Climate change including lack of potable water, and excess of water in rising oceans etc. Let us not forget Home Secretary Braveman in the UK talking about being serious in stopping the invasion of migrants…As one First Lady worded it: “I don’t care do you?”
To this I would add the rise of the importance/power of the so call social media, the incredible power of some individuals due to their fortune including Elon Musk, Marc Zuckerberg, the lobbies in Brussels or in Washington DC…. which are starting to dictate what is right or what is wrong, and what rules/laws should be put in place or changed.
In light of all this I wonder:
How can my neighbor in the small hamlet of Cungy, in the Department of Nievre, in France, feel a sense of belonging to this wonderful world. He feels there is no love for him in this world.
The level of anxiety created by this grim future is overwhelming for the young generation. Young individuals and newlywed couples are making the conscious decision not to have children. The most important and visible sign of love and hope –“a baby”- is seeming to fade away. There is no love for them in this world, they feel.
Actually, the problem widens as politicians want to pretend that they do have the solution or the answer. They oversimplify the issues to claim they are in control. Some lead by fear whether Trump or Putin, XI or Erdogan.
In fact, all these problems and their challenges are intertwined, and call for an international, concerted answer. All the individual bodies who intend to tackle those problems, present recommendations supported by appropriate expertise, and all the appropriate data. These actions are not enough. And do not change anything. This is not the answer.
Citizens are feeling more and more excluded, have greater disdain for politicians, the numbers of absentee votes in real democracies are increasing. The gap between the electors and the elected is widening. Democracies are at risk.
Any solution?
Well, according to Bell Hooks, the now famous author of All About Love: New Visions, states: “Love is profoundly political; our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth.”
And Love in this sense is not just tolerance about another’s perspective. Tolerance is a weak, noncommittal position. Cory Booker, the Senator from New Jersey in referring to the founder of Pennsylvania William Penn, remarked on Penn’s view of tolerance as follows: “Tolerance says I’m just going to stomach your right to be different, that, if you disappear from the face of the Earth, I’m no better or worse off.” Love, on the other hand, insists upon active engagement between citizens, Booker suggested. “Love knows that every American/Human being has worth and value, that no matter what their background, no matter what their race or religion or sexual orientation, love, love recognizes that we need each other, that we as a nation are better together: when we are divided, we are weak, we decline, yet when we are united, we are strong,…”
It goes farther, in our countries (with some exceptions) we need to restore an effective democracy with effective power at the lowest political levels of community: the county and villages. After all small is beautiful!
Can there be love far from the eye? Can there be any ethic of Love exercised for those far from our immediate view. I believe that love is a means to reintroduce the complexity of the challenges we are all facing. Care is a means to act.
The great challenge is to make sure to call upon individuals at the core of political action to make them aware of the need for Selfless Love in the political process.
This is true for the complex issues of the refugees. Thankfully, today groups of citizens in various countries are doing a critical job supporting families and individuals, and very often going beyond the efforts of their own countries. They do it with love, care and understanding. No one is a refugee by personal choice. It is a basic reflex of survival.
The same can be done for climate change for which more and more initiatives are coming from the grass roots rather than from the top.
Farmers increasingly understand the concept of sustainable farming and apply it in their farms. No farmer wants to see his/her crops burned by the sun or by drought.
We need to go back to a system where one size does not fit all.
We all can see the light at the top of the hill. How to get there depends on everyone’s ability, perception, and faith and, in the end, love means to listen, to be aware and to trust, and the ultimate revolution will be achieved when politicians listen to their own citizens, trusting their judgment and then doing what is right and good with compassion, care and even love, at every political level.
Is this Utopian?