Tag: government

Jesus, The Man of Difference and the Revolution

25.12.2021

Today, the world celebrates the birthday of Jesus Christ. When we look back at thousands of years of Christianity, it is easy to reduce all the complexity of that system of thought and the identity of its founder. One almost automatically thinks of how the religion was tied to war, imperialism, racism and the state in modern times. One thinks of the immorality and authoritarianism of organised religion and the Church. The feminist arguments against patriarchal monotheistic religions come to mind too. In this view, Jesus becomes the origin of oppression and conservatism. Because of such ideas, and the relentless march of a scientific reason which denigrates religion, I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say the hostility to religion in general, and to Christianity and Christ in particular, has almost become insurmountable.

However, let us try to be just to Christ. Historically, Jesus was a revolutionary. In many ways, the early version of Christianity was the religion of resistance. Christ went against the Roman state, the biggest superpower in the Western world at the time. This was his achievement, his badge of valour and the reason he holds the place in the minds of men that he has today. Today, this is how I choose to remember him. In many ways, Jesus is the model for the revolutionary consciousness. Against the state, which held the monopoly of power, wealth and men, which monopolised thought and being, Jesus and his small band offered an alternative world. This was a world in which success did not mean territorial expansion, being rich and subjugating other populations. Christ’s world was not an empire. This was an independent and non-materialistic world, a completely different form of organisation which required a completely different identity and character.

Jesus was a model for the revolutionary because he had nothing to offer against a dominant power than an idea. The idea was of a different form of being, living and thinking. Jesus was a world-builder and a builder of the human mind. Throughout the ages, this is how resistance against the superpowers has played out. There is one man or a small group that has that precious, world breaking and making commodity, difference. Jesus was the origin of difference.

Indeed, what marks Jesus and his origin is difference. He was born out of wedlock, the standard model for conception. He went against not only the Roman state, but also the Jewish religion. He aimed to break free of power wherever he found it.

Today, when the state is ever more ascendant and has thoroughly co-opted Christianity for its iniquitous purposes, when the conservatives and blind conformism have taken over society, when a new form of cultural imperialism is at its height, the birthday of Jesus stands as a model for the revolutionary and for the transforming consciousness. Yes, I am not a Christian. Yes, I do not follow the teachings of the Bible. But I judge Christ not as a god, but as a man. The inspiring, pioneering, matchless Man of Difference. And like others, I wait, ever so patiently, to see another coming of this difference into the world.

Abstract Love vs. Situated and Local Love

25.09.2018

The choice between abstract love and situated and local love is evident in a quote by E. M. Forster –

“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

Let us characterise abstract love. Abstract love is love of the country in the above quote or the supporting of “causes”, which are “public”, or, rather, “publicly accepted”. A “cause” can be defined as either a “charitable undertaking” or “a principle or movement militantly defended or supported” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online). Abstract love supports “principles” rather than human beings (the opposition is between friends and the abstract entities of country and cause). The country is an imaginary entity which is also largely publicly supported in the idea of abstract love. A country is largely an idea. It only has status as a piece of fiction. There is no such thing as a country. There is just a varied collection of people in a geographical space, who all live varied kinds of lives, not some kind of unchanging, abstract entity. Abstract love says that you should love all these people that you don’t know for whatever reason because of the abstract idea of a country and for abstract principles. Think about that in detail. There are no intimate human relationships required, no close contact with the recipients. In abstract love, the love that is most supported is the love of the stranger, of the anonymous. In abstract love, there is a morality which is that you should love a fictional idea more than you love those close to you: politicians tell you to love the country. This is felt like a compulsion by Forster who has to resist it strongly. What is the object of love in abstract love, the idea of the politicians? The country is seen as something larger than a single human being, as more universal. There is an idea of the larger versus the smaller, or the general versus the particular. The country is public, the individual is private. The country is emblematic of “good” group membership, community, etc. Love of the country is therefore contrasted to the love of the individual human being who just stands for personal love.

Let us now characterise situated and local love. In this form of love, you support individuals who you love. You know them. The reason that you love them is that you know them. You don’t love strangers and help them: it is those close to you that you love. This love is entirely intimate. It is situated because you just happened to be somehow connected to the person by complete chance. It is not about principles, it is about your own situated love. Biographical details are more important in this form of love than principles and sharing publicly accepted group affiliations. This love relies on an idea of the domestic sphere rather than the private sphere: you love those close to you, not those that political figures tell you to, as in the case of the country. It is about what you yourself choose to support as an individual. In situated and local love, you are not a removed and detached “objective” thinker with ideals of “universality” (abstract love pretends it is this – it is not, as you will know if you meet any nationalists). You are subjective. You favour the particular over the general, the smaller over the larger – the individual over the nation state. That is, you choose your own private group of membership (in friends) over what is publicly accepted as the main form of membership (nationality).

I have already said which love I choose. Why did I choose the smaller over the larger, the particularistic over the general? Because who else is going to help the poor members of my family in India? I have noted that they are systematically oppressed. Yet, for all the talk about altruism and abstract love, they have no support.

You might say that the abstract thinkers are in the minority and that is the problem with the world. After all, there is no one helping the people that are starving. But there is a morality to local and situated love. This is that you should tend to your own garden first before you start addressing other issues. First of all, my mother helps her family. Then, if she can, she helps people from our socially disadvantaged community on the basis of group identity. My mother is particularistic, not abstract and general. It is the same with the rest of our family. According to lovers of abstraction, this is seen as self-serving, selfish, etc. It is seen as a bad form of group identity and belonging (i.e. tribalism). It is seen as the inferior form of loving since it is situated. But the strength of situated and local love is that it is from insiders and local: who else is going to help anyone in that community that is outside that community? How many thousands of years of oppression have my people faced? No one helped us except our own. That is reality: people are selfish.