To Love is to be Obligated
After having discussions with some friends about the piece I wrote most recently, I began to think more about what connects the spiritual and emotional parts of my life with the political. It occurred to me that if the incorporeal essence of conscious existence is linked even when separated by time, space, and corporeal boundaries, it stands to reason that the fates of individuals are connected as well. How could I hold myself above or below another person who is ultimately a vessel for life just as I am? While I am categorically an individual with my own cognitive function, body, and potential for action, am I truly a single actor totally free of association?
Of course, I’m only asking this question because some of the most influential people of the last half century have told us, in more words or less, that there is no such thing as a social responsibility beyond what we choose. In the formulation of the Neoliberal (yes, that is a real thing and not a slur that the mean lefties call you on the website-fka-Twitter), individuals are nothing more than actors in a market whose value can be quantified, commodified, and assessed by others by how useful they are in their ability to produce, often for the monetary benefit of others with even greater influence over the market. Put simply, you are alone until you engage in a transaction, and everything is a transaction. Everything is a transaction because our society is one in which the dominant mode of production is predicated on the exploitation of workers who produce commodities for the market; the internal logic of economics which dictates how we procure the basic necessities of life will naturally become the internal logic of our less explicitly economic relationships to other people. There are a million sources that you could go to for this information in more depth, so brace yourself for that google rabbit hole that you’re about to go down.
As the epicenter of global capitalism, America baptizes its children in this ideology. As the epicenter of imperialism, America has relegated much of the world’s population to dependency, forced to serve and obey the order prescribed by the master who may portray themselves as paternalistic or nakedly thieving, often simultaneously. As writers such as Walter Rodney and David Graeber have written in various places, shifting economic demands will necessarily alter the disciplining forces of a productive member of society; pastoralists in pre-colonial southern Africa (the region, not the modern nation) were responsible to the family, the feudal Chinese serf was responsible to the tax collector, and the English proletarian was (and is) responsible to the bourgeois owner of the industry in which they worked. Cultural forces, be they traditional holdovers from previous generations or religious convictions, will affect this as well, but only so far as they are able to be maintained without severely limiting the productive actor’s ability to maintain their survival within the economic framework of their society. In a class society, be it feudal, capitalist, or otherwise, the overwhelming majority of individuals have no say whatsoever in what that economy looks like, and therefore have no say in who they must answer to in order to secure their necessities for survival.
Our responsibilities are dictated by what can be called the “agents” or “subjects” of history. Historical forces and their coinciding social formations are not accidents, inevitabilities, or simple “laws of nature,” but consciously articulated systems implemented by interested parties with the power to breathe life into them and maintain them. Since humans were capable of organizing themselves, revolutions have been fought to decide who the agent of history should be, either out of naked self interest or to shape social relations to reflect what can be seen to be more just or efficient for the reproduction of the social organism.
A commentator on an earlier piece of mine once gently chided me for criticizing modern masculinist ideology without providing insight into what would be preferable and how to go about supporting the adoption of a healthier set of beliefs and actions. I still believe that to be a critic is perfectly fine, and limiting the scope of your analysis to the exposition of contradictions doesn’t mean that your work is without utility. However, I have kept that challenge in mind, even if I believed at the time that I had little authority to suggest anything when I had little confidence that I had figured out an answer worth sharing. If I may be so bold, I would like to make an effort now to assert that I might actually have at least one thing figured out. Follow me, if you will, now that I have briefly sketched some of the background that informs the ideological stance I will take below.
If you know me or my writing at all, you should have some idea as to what I believe is wrong with the world, what I think it should look like, and who the agent(s) of history should be if we are to right the ship. To be as blunt as possible, I am a socialist and as such, I don’t believe our responsibilities should be to the small group of people who currently own vast swathes of the productive parts of the economy or the politicians that serve them. As I mentioned earlier in this essay, coming around to a certain political stance or ideological disposition can take a variety of routes, and I believe mine was a sense of responsibility not to the ownership class, but to living beings in general.
A formative memory of mine came when I was in college, living with a close friend who still challenges and stimulates me, nearly a decade later. We both came from highly privileged backgrounds and were trying to sort out where we fit in a world that we were becoming increasingly conscious of, as college students tend to do. One night, probably after lifting an irresponsible amount of weight for an irresponsible amount of time and following it up with an irresponsible amount of Ben & Jerry’s, he said something along the lines of: “we had it pretty easy, compared to most people. We would kind of be assholes if we didn’t use that to help other people so they can have it easier, too.” This crass assessment has become a sort of guiding principle for much of what I do and how I discipline my rationalizations. What we agreed to that night was to accept responsibility for improving the lot of not just ourselves, but the broadest possible social body.
It is important to note that this sentiment, when still coupled with the conception of the neoliberal Self, is clearly paternalistic and self-aggrandizing. It is no reach to follow this declaration into a sort of benevolent dictatorial disposition, where one sees themselves as an agent of history, because only they know best how to organize society in a way they deem just and orderly. Even with a good heart, following this path is necessarily going to take one down the path of tyrannical, ruthless imposition of their values on populations that they see as more or less worthy. The reason I am a socialist instead of what has been termed an “Effective Altruist” is because I believe that a system that rewards an individual who is then capable of affecting the lives of billions is not one that is capable of recognizing the dignity, value, and intelligence of the exploited. Benefitting from such a system requires one to play by the rules and follow the logic of exploitation that produces people in need of altruism in the first place. To put it simply, if rich (usually white and usually male) people made a mess of the world, it might not be a good idea to have them keep meddling with the places and people that they meddled with.
What my friend and I crudely agreed upon that night, bathed in the light of some Dragon Ball Z special on the television and full of ice cream and protein powder, was that we were obligated to the exploited of the world, precisely because there was no acceptable alternative in our eyes. To skirt this responsibility was not an option, because to do so would undermine the values that we were formulating our lives and personalities around. We knew we would fail, and we knew that from our vantage point, born into the imperial core with all of its benefits and restrictions, we had a hint that we could not be the agents of history without undermining the project. My subsequent years of study have confirmed my suspicions, and yet I remain as committed as ever to my responsibility to open or at least unlock as many doors as possible for the working people who will organize and leverage their power to make the actually revolutionary changes that I am incapable of making. There simply is no other way for my life to be lived.
People are really scared of obligation, I’ve found. A young parent-to-be often expresses their excitement at being a parent that uncomfortably stands shoulder to shoulder with the looming obligation that chains them to their child for life. Men will often make crass jokes about marriage as the end of their wild and free years when life still retains some magic. Waking up before dawn to punch the clock can feel like marching into despair’s maw. On some level, I get it. When you’re obligated to something or someone, there will necessarily be a mourning period that comes with it. You only have so much time, and your freedom to choose how it is spent will become more restrained when more responsibility is stacked on your shoulders. Growing up is hard, and being responsible for others is a scary thing.
Let’s try a different perspective while allowing space for all of this to remain true, using my own life (surprise, surprise!) as an example. My wife and I met when we were twenty-three. I was set to start a Masters program in a month or so, and she was in the process of getting divorced; this was a time for new beginnings, when summer south of the Ohio river can drive you into a sort of mania. We fell in love so quickly and thoroughly that we were frightened. How could we not be? We were both exiting long-term relationships that left us wanting to explore and experiment as young people are supposed to, and here was the perfect opportunity to find out exactly who we were going to be as we hewed off the last rough edges of childhood. Lo and behold, we did exactly that, just at a much quicker and less independent way than expected.
I won’t be airing any of her laundry here, paltry as my readership may be. Sorry, but the specifics aren’t your business, reader. However, she did enter the relationship with binds that she did not wish to share; she was still technically a married woman, after all. She told me almost to the point of annoyance that she did not want me to feel “stuck” with her and whatever trailed her, that her problems should not be mine. Surprising myself, I was stupefied by this. Why the fuck wouldn’t her problems be mine? It seemed obvious to me and hopefully to her, that we were absolutely stuck with each other. That’s what love is. People like to think that isn’t so, that we can simply pick up and leave whenever we feel we need to, but I don’t feel like romance depends on choice. Rather, I believe that love is at its strongest when you can’t imagine a world in which you are without that person.
Let me take a quick detour and say that abuse is not romantic in any form, and being literally restrained from exiting an unhealthy or dangerous situation is horrific and without excuse. I assure you that this isn’t what I’m referring to. Having your horizon stolen is not the same as coming to the conclusion on your own that a horizon without that person is not one that you wish to see. Alright, back to the sappy stuff.
To this day, I assert that love is an obligation. I love my wife more than I love anything or anyone I’ve ever encountered. Call it codependency if you would like, but I have lived three decades of life and not a single episode before July 3rd, 2017 can compete with the days since then. I knew immediately that her problems were my problems, her joy was my joy, and there was nothing I could do to change that even if I wanted to. A friend coined a healthy relationship as one of “mutual subordination,” an arrangement where the Self is subordinated to the Union, where two have come to an agreement that their individual interests are no longer individual, but shared. This is something that categorically obligates the two to not only one another, but what they now share.
As I said at the beginning of this piece, there is a pervasive understanding that you as an individual are the most important person in your life, and everything else is to be understood in relation to yourself. If you’ve been raised this way (and you have), then the idea of mutual or political subordination of the Self is terrifying, anathema. To do so would require a radical epistemological restructuring, an undermining of everything you learned to value. And yet, I run headlong into these obligations precisely because of the power in solidarity and love. When the world is your responsibility and vice versa, there is no more loneliness or isolation. When your lover accepts you in your entirety and you reciprocate, you will never again be without a home. It becomes an obligation to maintain that bond, whether it brings you pain or pleasure. It will bring you both, but you will be grateful for either if only because you will be assured that you do not experience these in isolation. Remember when Prince said “would you run to me when somebody hurt you, even if that somebody was me?” Real power and real romance alike come not from being able to walk away and choosing not to, but accepting that there is only one way to live with pride and one way to be actualized.
So there you have it: my contribution to the Discourse. It took me a long time to feel like I had any meaningful advice to give and even if it is dreadfully corny, I do believe it’s advice worth hearing. Sincerity is inherently corny and for once, I’m actually trying to be sincere. Hopefully you’ll feel fulfilled the way I have, whether it be with a spouse, a child, a friend, or a movement that brings you closer to a just society. I still believe that everyone is born deserving of that, and the world deserves people who are willing to accept that.
