Love, or having no point of view.

It is a paradox: without language, how can I ever communicate to you, the reader, my point of view? But, with language, how can I ever convey no-point-of-view?

A love-based politics must inherently begin from this point, or rather, from this no-point. If we begin anywhere else, it is as if we are “looking at the blue sky through tears.” This means that any kind of language and thinking distorts what we see. THe more dualistic, the more binary my thinking, the more distorted my perception of the world. My mind becomes small and closed, and all but very few solutions are open to me.

However, as perhaps you are aware, there are many different kinds of problems that human beings face that require a more open perspective. We must begin to expand our minds, which means we must begin to deconstruct our thinking. We cannot solve these new problems with the same kinds of thinking that created them in the first place. We need new thinking if we’re going to connect with each other in new and radical ways. In fact, one of my teachers said to me, “if you’re thinking, you can’t connect with people; if you’re not thinking, you can.” So if we really radically want to connect with each other, then we need to radically cut through our thinking.

For example: we often study history to understand the present, and to make informed decisions about the future. But when we base out movement into the future on our habits from the past, are we not doomed to repeat our mistakes? Especially when those “mistakes” are slavery, oppression, corruption, hate, and genocide? In order to free ourselves from ignorance, anger, and greed, we must be able to imagine wisdom, love, and compassion. That takes practice. We must begin to lead with these.

What if we led with imagining a future free of racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia? A world without mass incarceration? A world without political violence? What would that look like? What would that sound like? What would that feel like?

A world in which I respect you, and I gain your respect, because we see each other as fully human. A world in which, if what you’re doing or saying is harmful, I choose to love you into seeing that you need to change. A world in which communities heal themselves. A world in which government works to ensure a fair shake for all people, and in which all people are participants in and are represented in governing themselves.

Love seems weak to those who don’t understand it and don’t know its power. But Mahatma Gandhi led an entire nation to throw off the shackles of colonization through the power of nonviolence and love. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did the same as a voice for black people during the Civil Rights movement. Had he not been assassinated, he would have kept on going to work to liberate the poor and working class, and oppressed in America and all over the world. Love is a force most powerful. What if we based how we governed ourselves on that?

Imagine…