I’m still waiting for the Love Movement…

What happened to the ‘love’ culture, or more specifically concepts advocated for in the “Summer of Love” in 1967? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love) A movement that aimed to reject the conformist and material culture and promote peace and community of the world and all its inhabitants? Such values seem eradicated in our present day mainstream society. Our overemphasis on our superficial material culture is causing a general decline and stratification of our country and we have seen major political movements to not only bring attention to the fact that such stratification, marginalization, and oppression still exist- but it is an ongoing war between capitalist and humanitarian interests.

Martin Luther King Jr. is a key figure in promoting the Love movement.

In a publication in 2006’s Outlaw Culture Love as the Practice of Freedom, Hooks uses Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Power Movement to discuss what happened with the Love dynamic.

“King…had ‘decided to love’ because he believed deeply that if we are ‘seeking the highest good’ we ‘find it through love’ because this is ‘the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.’” (p.244)

It was believed by Martin Luther King and still believed by some today that in order to rid ourselves of pledging allegiance to current modes of hierarchical domination- racism, sexism, imperialism, classism, we must adopt a love ethic that is in the interest of not just ourselves but for others. When we adopt a love ethic for ourselves- we create blind spots (unknowingly supporting current modes of domination) — often opposing one form of domination but actively supporting a systemic other. A feminist that ignores racism for example. We should be fighting for justice for all- and realizing that “we are more than our race, class, or sex” .

“The ability to acknowledge blind spots can emerge only as we expand our concern about politics of domination and our capacity to care about the oppression and exploitation of others”

Activism doesn’t work when it only accounts for self interests even though, as Bell Hooks points out this is what regularly gets us involved in activism ( a what can it do for me mentality). We get involved when our self-interests are threatened. Which creates a fight in the name of self-interest, not a fight against a mode of domination.

“Often, then, the longing is not for a collective transformation of society, an end to politics of dominations, but rather simply for an end to what we feel is hurting us.”

This is problematic because it fails to acknowledge the interdependence of modes of domination, and this failed acknowledgment perpetuates those very systems we claim to work against. Taking a look at the civil rights movements, Hooks notes the shift away from the love ethic toward a power ethic, and provides insight of how this can happen.

Sexism and misogyny were essential to the freedom of patriarchal manhood- a manhood (normally embodied in black political leaders) that “equated love with weakness, announcing that the…expression of freedom would be the willingness to coerce, do violence, terrorize…”. It is this “masculinist sexist biases in leadership” that “led to the suppression of the love ethic.”

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom” -Hooks