I’ve just joined the board and would like to pose a question
that has caused me considerable confusion.
Is it possible to be a lover and not a revolutionary? On the
other hand is it possible to be a revolutionary and not a lover?
Mebbe I am not thinking dialectically?
I would appreciate a collective pondering of the question in some depth. It is an urgent one as we are in revolutionary times and I need your
advice.
what i think you are asking, is whether our will to power and need for perfection are compatible. correct me if i am wrong.
if i’m not though, then as with nearly all philosophical questions, the answer can be found on the perfect world topic, and all posts from Pangloss concerning perfection and enterprise.
when living in revolutionary times, collective aesthetic movements, the expression of love becomes that much more urgent.
At first I thought that one could equate a revolutionary to a fighter. From here, one could argue that fighting is born out of hate for the enemy. Therefore a revolutionary must be a hater and not a lover. However MJ’s view of the world seems a bit too simple.
Instead a revolutionary is no ordinary fighter. His fight is born out of love AS WELL AS hate. In other words, the revolutionary hates the current political status quo in the country, the ideology of the country and its current political system and wants to overthrow it and replace it with a system that he loves enough to fight for. Therefore he hates one system and loves the other. But on top of this he must love his people, his country and what he sees as his country’s political potential. His act is self-sacrificial and therefore must be a result of a love of some kind. Therefore it seems to me that on the whole there must be a whole heap of love in the revolutionary, for both his ideology, his dream and his country’s potential in his opinion.
So in response to the question: On the other hand is it possible to be a revolutionary and not a lover? I would say NO, as I have argued. In response to the other half of the question: Is it possible to be a lover and not a revolutionary? I would say yes depending on how you define a revolutionary. If you are talking about political revolution, then you can love another individual but be entirely apathetic with regard to your country and its future/ideology. Therefore you can be a lover and not a revoltuionary.
oh my god, oh my god. i think you have my theory, but using different words. instead of love, i use the word ‘perfection’, where every person realises their own personality, and hence the individual perfection of their existence. my argument was similar to oscar wilde’s, that people cannot realise their own perfection, or take their given share of love, if they are too focused on survival and on the accumulation and maintenance of private property.
a loose (yet incoherent) argument for a socialist revolution would be that if all people had equal private property, then all people would start from the same point in the process of realising their own personality.
my argument though is that perfection or love will only be felt in equal amounts by a cultural revolution, not political (though this would follow according to the following social changes). if people found their perfection from within themselves, embracing what will to power they have, creating their own morality based on what obstacles were in their way, instead of finding their perfection through their dominance over others. this might sound anticompetitive, and hence unrealistic, but my argument would be that the application of ‘know yourself’ and ‘every act for yourself, and others, rather than in self-interest’ as a compatible combination which overrides the need for competition (for love, respect, status). if every person from the start of their life saw life in terms of perfection and imperfection (terms which denote movement, and hence development and self-improvement) instead of through good (themselves) and evil (all that is not yourself) then people would not being living an illusion of what is a right act or what is a wrong act.
bizarrely, if you think of love as a product, its output would soar, if people thought in this way (the challenge), and its distribution would be far more equal, and less confused with lust, a survival instinct. this, i see, as the next natural step in the development and improvement of our species.
send me private messages if there are areas which make no sense. it has to be understood before it’s subjected to criticism.
i like the fact that you see things dialectically. check the ‘no political system can ever work’ topic.
i didn’t quite understand the final question. dialogic?
By ‘dialogic’ I mean the theoretical ie the dialogic carried out practically in everyday life. A dialogue between theory and practice, praxis. Bakhtin.
I will read the other threads and especially the replies here, they seem
very helpful
I like:
'if you think of love as a product, its output would soar, if people thought in this way (the challenge), and its distribution would be far more equal, and less confused with lust, a survival instinct. this, i see, as the next natural step in the development and improvement of our species.
Yes, this is helpful. Love as a product? Why not. There’s certainly a ready made market for it. It is difficult to
place an economic value upon it (which is hate) as it has exponential characteristics when it occurs and merely adds and accumulates. Love makes love, in all its forms. Love is always in demand.
readmypostondeferringvaluejudgementsontoothers…although what you’ve asked fit with ideas on postmodernism i’ve had…people have posed that the only response to postmodernism(which nobody really seems to know what it is- so zeitgeist) is romaticism, revolution is now so commodified via postmodernism that revolutionary icons are used to create dotcom millionaires- just think how highly we value them for what they’ve done, smake che onto a t-shirt…oh, what a novel idea! have a million, put your kids through prep-school…oh, like me bend over for you to…you get the picture—
what do you f’@@king mean by lover and revolutionary anyway…a lot of people attempt to present themselves as revolutionary to get laid by chicks with herpes and beads on their wrists, others present themselves as lovers but then thats for the same reason as those revolutionary blokes…fucked that this seems to be such a male orientated critique…
whatever…talk to the hand, it’s got a much more informed opinion that my face…