Everyone needs love. Everyone without exception. So why is there so much fear around and so little love? Let’s look to our leaders.
Come election time they’re full of love. They love babies, especially if there’s a camera around. They love Jesus but precious few of them follow his humble example. They love their country but they rarely leave their privileged lives to join the common folk in defending it. They love the planet but the millionaire class they belong to continues to rape it for profit.
Millionaire class? Yes. Most American lawmakers are at least 12 to 18 times wealthier than most of the citizens they represent. The position is much the same in Britain, France, the world over. Don’t believe me? Then let Google be your friend. Our politicians’ love of their constituents doesn’t come cheap.
Now hate, that’s altogether different. Our leaders are very good at hate. They’ll whip up hate against anyone and anything that threatens the status quo. Strip away the economic gobbledygook and the moral hogwash and their isms amount to little more than keeping themselves and their powerful pals in charge and the rest of us in our place.
And we are so easily kept. A terrorist incident or two ratcheted to the max by their media-owning friends and we are only too willing to accept yet more surveillance, more erosion of freedom, more control. Meanwhile the same media pumps out an endless stream of perfect images of imperfect celebs to keep us believing that impossible dream. Throw in a few mega-rich preachers to lend the Almighty’s authority to their morally vacuous politics and it’s job done. In his song ‘Working Class Hero’, John Lennon put it better:
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
We live in a world divided by race, state, class, and anything else the hatemongers can think of. From birth to death the majority of us are told what to do and when to do it. Who to trust and who to hate. What to think and when to keep our mouths shut. If you doubt this then try stepping out of line a few times instead of kissing arse as part of your daily diet.
Like any other commodity our worth is our weight in imaginary dollars. If this was not the case no civilised country would permit homelessness and hungry children. Not surprisingly then that we pursue self over selfless, I over I&I, and profit over everything. Love hardly gets a look in but fear is everywhere.
Now here’s the hippy-dippy bit so feel free to mock as you wish.
I believe that love is the default state for human beings but that we are taught to hate.
So, incidently, did Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist of ‘South Pacific’:
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
And so did a Nazerine who, when you look beyond the sophistory spouted in his name, was a simple man unafraid and unashamed to stand with the poor and the powerless against those who sought to exploit them.
From the Roman Empire to the American Empire and all the empires in between the rich and powerful have sought to pervert and ridicule the simple notion of universal love, the final commandment to love one another. For they know only too well that if we learn not to hate and not to fear we might just find the courage to take their power away.
Love is all you need.
