If you cannot love then what is your liberation for?

A litany against interpersonal pettiness in the face of systems collapse. A prayer for us to cultivate a love ethic even as (because!) we resist violent systems.

I haven’t read Marx but you haven’t read hooks. (or Saito, for that matter.)

Why are you and I fighting? We are not enemies. (When you punch across at me, your emotional body is bruised in the same place.) What are we actually fighting for?

Liberation, of course.

Ultimately, liberation for ourselves and for those in lands terrorized and decimated by our own government. Collapse is imminent. But can we love one another on the way down? Can we love one another? If we cannot find tenderness and care among our comrades— those we share a deep sense of justice with— then where can we find it? Certainly not within the violent systems we seek to tear up from their roots (thank you Davis). Certainly not in the planet-killing instant gratification of plastic trinkets nor the flat, metallic companionship of chatbots. Most of our new, innovative “pleasures” these days are wrapped in poisons which sit in our bodies, clog our arteries, grow us cancer, feed us dread, or further divide us from one another.

If you cannot love, then what are you fighting for? What world are you fighting for if not one in which we can stand in front of one another, naked in our need for true camaraderie, rubbed raw by empire, and receive a balm, a bandage from one another so that we can go out and fight another day, not as empty shells but overflowing with renewed hope?

My sword is radical love, my shield is self-respect, and the only borders I recognize are our boundaries, “the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously” (thank you Hemphill).

Here's the thing: The People Always Win.

For every person marching in the streets this summer, there are 100 more at home and at work who agree with them. But once we’ve won, what will We be? What will We have, without love? Without care and community? Without the ability to stand in front of one another and say, “in our own little mundane battle, you have wounded me, and we both need medicine now?” While we practice resistance we must also insist on defining and refining our love ethic (thank you hooks).

Let me be clear about what I (and those before me) mean by love ethic: The mutual commitment to my spiritual growth and yours (thank you Fromm). The ability to see when harm has been done and the desire to engage in mending together. The vision to build new communities, new societies, where care is the core, rather than competition and extraction.

If We haven't practiced loving then what will We be left with when empire falls?

Is Our liberation even complete if it has no room for love?

We resist now so that We may cease fighting someday. In the presence of peace, who can We hope to be if We haven't practiced how to love on the way down?

—s.r.g 2025

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This morning’s free write started out addressed to a specific friend, and may be the beginning of a book, or at least a discarded section of an essay I’m writing: Love Drought Part 2: Men on Men in which I interview black and brown men about dating and politics in Los Angeles. (And don’t worry, Marx is definitely on my reading list.)