Hope, Resistance, and the Power of Love…
We are living in a time that is marked by war and terrorism. We are living in a time where corporate greed and the will of a few rule the masses. We have people living and dying in the streets of the wealthiest country in the world. We have a crumbling infrastructure and a very costly, inefficient health care system. We are nearing the end of some of earth’s natural resources and are experiencing the environmental deterioration of our planet. Fresh and salt water fish are becoming extinct at rates over 800 times what have been found in the fossil record. Our ruling elite are willing to trample over the people, animals, and the environment all for the sake of capturing more wealth. We have all of this happening right now, yet here we are…
People are an interesting species. We can rocket down a path of self-destruction and annihilation, but we have, within all of us, something that can’t be crushed or broken by the greedy and powerful. We have love, and from love springs hope. Suzanne Collins, in her popular “Hunger Games” trilogy, uses hope as a mechanism to fight back against the capital. Her central “bad guy” is President Snow who says “Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear.” Hope is futuristic. It is our belief in a better tomorrow. For many, hope is all they have left. Hope is not easily extinguished. Anne Frank, who went through some of the darkest times in human history wrote,
Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.
We are witnessing, globally, an awakening of the human spirit. People are rising up and making their voices be heard. You will hear main stream media downplay the significance of the Occupy movement by saying that it hasn’t brought about any change in our laws. You will hear that it is ineffective because it is fragmented and not singular in focus. You will hear many things to discourage acts of civil disobedience because all of these acts are a threat. They are a threat not to ‘national security’, but rather, to the foundations of corporate power. Therein lies the reason that main stream media, pawns of the elite, will belittle resistance actions like Occupy or the blockades of the Keystone pipeline. They want us to have no hope. They want us to rely on them for our existence.
With all of the negative forces that seek to control our very souls, we as a people, are finally resisting. Each of us, in our own way, through planning, organizing, or sharing information, is fighting back against the machine. Love propels us. It is the engine that drives us forward each day. Chris Hedges, from Empire of Illusion…
Hope exists. It will always exist. It will not come through structures or institutions, nor will it come through nation-states, but it will prevail, even if we as distinct individuals and civilizations vanish. The power of love is greater than the power of death. It cannot be controlled. It is about sacrifice for the other – something nearly every parent understands – rather than exploitation. It is about honoring the sacred. And power elites have for millennia tried and failed to crush the force of love. Blind and dumb, indifferent to the siren calls of celebrity, unable to bow before illusions, defying the lust for power, love constantly rises up to remind a wayward society of what is real and what is illusion. Love will endure, even if it appears darkness has swallowed us all, to triumph over the wreckage that remains.
One of my favorite books is Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie”. In the book, Albom discusses many of life’s difficulties and mysteries with Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor. Discussing what is most important in life, Schwartz says,
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
This is excellent advice from a very wise man. What would happen if we all just learned how to give out and receive love. The war, terrorism, and greed, all products of fear, would succumb to the power of love. Finally, Morrie leaves us with this portrait of hope…
Love wins. Love always wins.
thejumbledmind 
…”Our ruling elite are willing to trample over the people, animals, and the environment all for the sake of capturing more wealth…”
Of course they are! How else do you get to be the ruling elite? Actually, they were, and always will be, willing and able to do much more than that, or, they wouldn’t remain the ruling elite.
I loved your post and I particularly enjoy the writing of Chris Hedges, but, if …”The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”… you would think that SOMEBODY, other than those perpetually on the short end of the stick, would have figured it out by now. “Love may Always win”… but, it doesn’t win anything tangible and it won’t make your mortgage payment or fill your belly. In fact, if you acquire enough of it, it will probably get you killed, or, at least history seems to make that point.
Beyond that… fear never succumbs to the power of love, unless you are talking about training dogs or horses. In humans, the fear of death trumps EVERYTHING. What you are talking about is culturally sanctioned balderdash designed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy. The culturally “sanctioned” kind of madness that keeps us all from going insane.
If you haven’t already, I would read this if I were you.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fear-death-and-politics
It will give you something to think about, besides what a cold hearted old fart I must be.
Again, I very much enjoyed your writing.
All the Best
Mrs. N.
Thank you for reading and commenting.
I believe that the use of the word love in this piece is more aimed at the idea of respect over intolerance. Love of others does not have to be a mushy kiss but a respect and reverance for human life.
Love is the ability to see the plight of others before the “supposed” needs of ourselves. As Mr. N so rightly stated and further emphisized in sharing that link (great read by the way and thank you) that fear csn make us react outside ourselves. However, that says more for our faults than dispands the ideas of this post. To accept something that is so distorted as our response to fear just because it is how we react does not invalidate the idea of something better.
Therefore, would love and awareness not bring the ability to look past conditioned responses and catch our selves before we react? Are we incapable of acting rationally at tough times? I hope not. Those are the times that you need wits about you. Not “your with us or against us”.
Great post sir and very true. Love will win as long as we stop fearing its implication as weakness.
Thank you very much for commenting.
Great post! Love it. The hardest thing to do with Love in my opinion is to give it to your enemies.
It’s also the most dangerous thing. It is perhaps the most highly exploitable weakness. But, on the bright side, historians write lovely things about you after you have been killed.
If this life is what its all about than it is definitely a weakness.