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The Radical Principle of Love
Thank you for joining me at the Little Radical Reform School to continue our discourse on radicalism. I especially appreciate your attendance today given last week's disruptions and the walkout staged by over half of our radical friends. I'm sure we shall miss their radical contributions.
This week's scheduled topic is The Influence of the British Philosophical Radicals on Radical Reform, to be followed next week by President James Garfield and the Radical Republicans. However, I have received an urgent plea from David Coyote, who was disturbed by the inflammatory speech of our dissident colleague who grabbed the mike last week and called for my assassination. David urged me to interrupt our scheduled intercourse in order to introduce a new topic, The Radical Principle of Love. I decided to honor his fervent plea. I have had only one day to self-educate myself on the subject, so please bear with me - I'm sure I will raise enough points for discussion to keep us occupied this evening. I only ask that everyone please refrain from throwing beer and soda cans up here during my introduction.
I shall approach our topic through hate. Radicals have gotten a bad reputation because they hate evil and want to replace it with good. They believe that the many are oppressed by the few, and that something should be done about it forthwith instead of just talking about absurd reforms, or effecting reforms that accomplish very little if anything at all.
Radicals call for radical reforms to free people from oppression. Radicals love the mob over the powerful minority because they want to distribute freedom more broadly and to improve the well being of more and more people. They have in fact led the historical movement to expand the circle of freedom to all men and women. Since a few free people might not want everyone to be freed, and since all people might not want to be liberated from the oppression of a few free people, radical leaders felt it was ethical to hate oppressors and to preach armed revolution. Of course oppressed people are attracted by radical rhetoric with its special vocabulary of humanitarian and democratic terms expressing an indignant and sometimes inflammatory ideology calling for the eradication of irrational oppression and the rational construction of a better society. Of course those who feel their narrow interests threatened by the public interest respond with fear and hatred to the proposals for radical reform no matter how reasonable and just the proposals might be.
No doubt we shall always have such a conflict between the few and the many until the radical ideal is realized, for the essence of radicalism is to extend freedom (from oppression) to all people. What is the goal of freedom? Individual happiness, which is, of course, psychological or egoistic. Yet the individual is also a social person with attendant sympathetic interests in the general happiness, that he may have his own happiness, therefore everyone has a real and legitimate interest in the the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
Mind you, a radical intent is inherent in any plan for the more widespread and equitable distribution of economic and political power. The most radical program of all aims at the maximization of the welfare of the greatest number of people.
But if the radical root of freedom is in the individual, then every freedom fighter is a radical, is he not? Since people can gain freedom from oppression by controlling each other, will they not always be in conflict and therefore within a vicious cycle of hate? No, they will not, for rights depend on duties, freedom comes with responsibility. Freedom must have some ground to stand on in order to accomplish anything at all. We tend to forget that the 'person' is, so to speak, a synthesis of absolute, individual freedom and social restraint. Without specifically human society there is no person, no human species. People are naturally attracted to each other for good reason. We need company to be human beings and to enjoy our freedom. We have our families, tribes and clans. Through conflict and cooperation we have merged into nations. We have formed international leagues. Tomorrow the global. But some radicals do not feel they are members of the 'We', and others do not want to be part of the giant 'We' planned by the neo-liberal corporate coalitions. Radicals have various complaints and solutions, but it is clear that our destiny is in fact global and that we must take the whole world in our hands if we are to protect those smaller groups our remote ancestors grew accustomed to over a half-million years or so. The question is how to extend that basic love, given that our cerebral nature has given us the opportunity to race so far ahead of it with our so-called cultural evolution. It stands to reason that the principle of association is the same regardless of the physical size of the group. Some people like to swarm. But we may not like crowds. We may prefer the lingering parochial stage of our biological evolution. However, we may still enjoy our local preferences and diversity as members of the global community. We do not have to live on top of each other or to interfere with each other's lifestyles. We can be fond of our small group and of the human race at large. We now have the tools to realize the virtue in the man who says, "I love everybody, in the abstract."
What is that universal principle of attraction to unity in diversity called? What sums up the greatest good of the greatest number, the golden rule, the highest good, the social good, or, if you will, god? What is the common English name for the most radical principle of all, the flip side of hate? It is one name for an idea the Philosophical Radicals held valuable, but in the interest of a more objective science than subjective sympathy, they focused on its expression through the cultivated organization of the selfish interest in countable things. More and more people were attracted to one another to exchange good things. Not that they had to have those things - not that long ago, a chief spit on the things laid out by strangers, and said, "We have our own things!" So what really brought people together? I must mention a word that infuriates some people so much that they bite their tongues off because they feel they do not have enough of what it connotes, yet it remains universally popular among those who do have some of it - they do not take kindly to having their affection disparaged. What is it, in a word? I'm afraid I already blurted it out.
Love.
"Oh, for Christ's sake! Here we go again, get ready for a preachy sermon! He's going to pull out Jesus and dispense the opium to keep the masses oppressed! He's going to talk about praying for people instead of feeding them. He's not going to mention the millions and millions of people selfishly murdered in Christ's name!"
have no sermon to deliver. Nevertheless, I admit Jesus' name has been bandied about and abused. I admit he was a radical reformer who was tried and convicted of a capital political crime and crucified - for one reason or another, he was not convicted and stoned for his obvious religious crimes. I admit he was a advocate of genuine love instead of empty ritual. If he was not the son of god or god incarnate, at the very least he was a prophet of the radical principle of love.
By the way, I could mention any universal religion and its radical founder and speak of love. I see religion and politics as the love and distribution of the power of life over death. I think each individual has a nuclear core, a power that would endure forever, a godly power that wants no resistance whatsoever and would destroy anything impeding its movement. But the infant is not omnipotent, and through anger and fear it learns to cooperate with others, it learns to love in self-defense by returning the love of those who learned the same lesson. Now I see at the center of every religion the sacrifice of the individual power for the common good, and by that love the individual is made even stronger. Radical religion is, figuratively speaking, virtual suicide, by means of which the ideal is resurrected now.
"Love is hardly a political or moral principle, you cannot make people love each other. They have good reasons to hate each other."
Radicals have good reasons to hate evil. You are correct, we cannot make people love each other. The very idea of loving everybody disgusts many people. It is said that he who loves everybody loves nobody, and that there is no such thing as universal brotherly love. Ironically, those who preach there is no such thing as brotherly love do not have a lover. Fortunately, love is available to everyone in their self-love, a love that is in part injected into the person by others, for, as I have said, a person is a socialized individual, and individual who has learned to love - the absence of love in a human being rare and pathological.
At the very least, Radical lovers can help people make sacrifices for the good of all, educate people, for their own good or self-love, to stop hating and hurting each other. Just doing no harm is a form of love. Love is available to almost every understanding. What is love? Love is your life.
The 'instinct' of love is our social gravity. Just as we now employ our knowledge of the universal law of gravity to launch our ships to the stars, we can and we have employed our knowledge of love to bring heaven to Earth. Therefore I speak of the science of love. The effectiveness of the radical principal of love has been scientifically demonstrated. Although everything of value is not really calculable, there is a social science of love supported by statistics for those who need numbers as indicators and indexes of happiness. In this day and age many people demand quantification to support qualitative claims. Please rest assured, Love works, love pays.
Thank you for your attention.
