On Love & Needing an Enemy
I was listening to some Bill Hicks DVDs with my partner who had never experienced them just a few days ago. It came from the early 90s but it was still fresh. I've always felt close to Bill. I grew up in a secular environment unlike him, but I grew up being the class clown. People sometimes told me I would become a comedian one day. Instead I grew up isolated, depressed, frustrated with the world and without such an outlet due to an anxiety disorder and a phobia of crowds.
But I've relied on comedy in tough times. Bill stands as my favorite. He was a complex individual, capable of great insights (largely inspired by psychedelics!) but also extremely crass humor. The most important of Bill's messages is his belief in love. That is "the point" of his act, according to him. "Love" has come to mean very little, from wanting to possess others, to a mere biological urge to procreate, or something corny and fleeting that we have become conditioned to believe through media (J. Gordon-Levitt's rant in 500 Days comes to mind). We no longer believe in love just as we don't believe in transcendence. This lack of a reason to believe in love and fraternity--anything that is bigger than us--is very much at the heart of our lack of engagement with the world.
But we still believe. We have to. People throw the world "nihilist" around frequently. I've been called one when I was at the apex of being at odds with the world as an antinatalist. I've always refused the label. At no point did I stop believing completely. I believed, among other things, that some people--ignorant people--were doing more harm than me. I believed that I saw more and felt more than others. I believed that life was a futile series of catastrophes awaiting its final catastrophe. In other words, conditional truths and fatalism that turn out to be the beliefs of an invalid. It's the behavior of an inhibited part in a whole.
We believe, and one belief that will not be taken from us is the belief that we are better than others--that we have enemies. There's nothing that we are more certain of than who our enemies are and how the world would instantly become a better place if we could vaporize them in an instant. We seldom think that this, in turn, makes us the same as our enemies, in that instant. A never ending cycle of violence ensues without conscious awareness of this tendency.
When an organ is sick, its cells will all become sick too. We, the cells, are a the product of a sick society, the organ. Economism, hyperindividualism, Manicheanism. We are inseparable from the neoliberal system we were brought up into. We have been imprinted. We carry those value judgments, that competitiveness -- that barbarity -- wherever we go. Propertarianism and profit has led to the atomization of the individual and the near complete collapse of social solidarities. In such a system we have to wage war--attempt to dominate others in order to justify our existence. We bring that attitude to our personal belief systems and rationalize that it's for the greater good.
We don't have the wisdom to avoid seeing things through the eyes of fear. How much we'd have to undo! Our very identities depend upon this. We need an enemy because we don't have the courage to see ourselves in others -- to see the bigger unity in which we and others exist as necessary diversity. We have forgotten our roots, the evolutionary importance of love (Maturana), the psychosocial necessity of a spirit of fraternity, cooperation and co-creation instead of competition and opposition.
We are lost, stagnating and degenerating, and the few who can guide us towards a process of regeneration are buried under a mass of noise and garbage. Few have felt the calling--and have the courage--to dig through it, spend time with it, and remind themselves every day that there are alternative paths. That human beings are extremely plastic and we are not doomed to degeneration and insufficiency. Our societies are sick but as they are dying a slow death they might not take us with it yet. There is still possibility for regeneration. Improbable and uncertain, but without a belief in the improbable, we only repeat human barbarity. We are the enemy.
But I've relied on comedy in tough times. Bill stands as my favorite. He was a complex individual, capable of great insights (largely inspired by psychedelics!) but also extremely crass humor. The most important of Bill's messages is his belief in love. That is "the point" of his act, according to him. "Love" has come to mean very little, from wanting to possess others, to a mere biological urge to procreate, or something corny and fleeting that we have become conditioned to believe through media (J. Gordon-Levitt's rant in 500 Days comes to mind). We no longer believe in love just as we don't believe in transcendence. This lack of a reason to believe in love and fraternity--anything that is bigger than us--is very much at the heart of our lack of engagement with the world.
But we still believe. We have to. People throw the world "nihilist" around frequently. I've been called one when I was at the apex of being at odds with the world as an antinatalist. I've always refused the label. At no point did I stop believing completely. I believed, among other things, that some people--ignorant people--were doing more harm than me. I believed that I saw more and felt more than others. I believed that life was a futile series of catastrophes awaiting its final catastrophe. In other words, conditional truths and fatalism that turn out to be the beliefs of an invalid. It's the behavior of an inhibited part in a whole.
We believe, and one belief that will not be taken from us is the belief that we are better than others--that we have enemies. There's nothing that we are more certain of than who our enemies are and how the world would instantly become a better place if we could vaporize them in an instant. We seldom think that this, in turn, makes us the same as our enemies, in that instant. A never ending cycle of violence ensues without conscious awareness of this tendency.
When an organ is sick, its cells will all become sick too. We, the cells, are a the product of a sick society, the organ. Economism, hyperindividualism, Manicheanism. We are inseparable from the neoliberal system we were brought up into. We have been imprinted. We carry those value judgments, that competitiveness -- that barbarity -- wherever we go. Propertarianism and profit has led to the atomization of the individual and the near complete collapse of social solidarities. In such a system we have to wage war--attempt to dominate others in order to justify our existence. We bring that attitude to our personal belief systems and rationalize that it's for the greater good.
We don't have the wisdom to avoid seeing things through the eyes of fear. How much we'd have to undo! Our very identities depend upon this. We need an enemy because we don't have the courage to see ourselves in others -- to see the bigger unity in which we and others exist as necessary diversity. We have forgotten our roots, the evolutionary importance of love (Maturana), the psychosocial necessity of a spirit of fraternity, cooperation and co-creation instead of competition and opposition.
We are lost, stagnating and degenerating, and the few who can guide us towards a process of regeneration are buried under a mass of noise and garbage. Few have felt the calling--and have the courage--to dig through it, spend time with it, and remind themselves every day that there are alternative paths. That human beings are extremely plastic and we are not doomed to degeneration and insufficiency. Our societies are sick but as they are dying a slow death they might not take us with it yet. There is still possibility for regeneration. Improbable and uncertain, but without a belief in the improbable, we only repeat human barbarity. We are the enemy.
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