Power of Love

I’d like to work a little this evening because tomorrow I’ll be working with autistic children and a little work every day keeps the thread alive.

I’ve been reading the Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature edited by The New Press Books. The interview is ever so telling about each man and they are both so fascinatingly beautiful. It’s a complex situation and Foucault misses the opportunity by neglecting to talk about himself so the public and the interviewer favors Chomsky and apparently miss the great depth with which Foucault is looking at the problem from the other side of the universe!! He doesn’t have a “linear” look that is always so much easier for people who are not used to explore, but he looks from inside at the nature of the beast!

This is a book that I’ll be looking at for a long time. I highly recommend it.

In page 208 Foucault continues to give us or me if you’d rather, clues on how to approach the other side of power that I am so eager to delve into: love.

Strange isn’t it? Who would have thought that the other side of the coin of love was power. Hatred doesn’t count, it has no other side of the coin but if I had to place it somewhere it would have to be within the realm of power in its dark side.

Foucault says:

“Power is not a substance. Neither is it a mysterious property where origin must be delved into. Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication, even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of power is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct –but never exhaustively or coercively- A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over him, not power.”

Could he be any more clear? How are we going to grasp love with equal clarity? It isn’t a substance or a mysterious property but it is a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication, even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of love is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct –but never exhaustively or coercively- A man who is psychologically chained up and beaten is subject to love being exerted over him, not power.”

Please laugh with me in the last sentence for I am very serious but also laughing.

This is only the beginning and the nature of the angel is such that I don’t think I can do more than be astonished with its light and run towards it when it isn’t looking, bathe myself in it for a little while and move out of its way before it totally burns me.

Were we young enough we would never have needed to speak about love or chain it down with words but we are too old to not talk about it. We must look at it clearly before it disappears if we do nothing to protect it. The problem today is not how much power and force are being deployed to kill each other but how much lovelessness are we delving into in our deadly lives. “The characteristic feature of power is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct” says Foucault and what I intend to explore is the fact that no one can determine another man’s conduct without love. What allows some men to determine other men’s conduct is the trust and innocence that most men still posses: Their trust and their love, their innocence and willingness. We need to awaken our innocence before we are run over by power. It is not by looking at what we are not that we’ll find who we are, the true nature of the human being is not power alone but the power of love.

I’ll be taking a lot of material from other sources on love to warm the nest of our own birth. This might take a lifetime but what is a whole generation for the sake of love?