What if we centred radical love at the heart of our politics?
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash: Block colour painting of two hands together, palms facing upwards
Early in 2020, The Guardian Australia asked an interesting question: if you could do one thing to transform the nation, what would it be? (It’s a question we read very differently in hindsight, with knowledge of the pandemic and a nation transformed to come!) There were some great responses – still worth checking out.
It’s tough, of course, to name just one idea. We know that the world is made up of an interplay of systems and power dynamics and shifting those is beyond any single ‘silver bullet’. It got us thinking, and we went back to our guiding principles and looked at the values debates Australia reMADE has had over the years. A recurring theme of love permeated all these discussions.
So we propose one big idea — one that has the potential to bring together the concerns of economic, identity and environmental causes and movements. One that speaks to the yearning in many Australians’ hearts for a different type of politics, beyond left vs right, which the many are moved to join, invest in and shape.
What if we centred radical love at the heart of our politics?
Notes about love and care from one of the first Australia reMADE (A24) gatherings
“Why can’t we talk about love?”
The question was met with the sound of a collective indrawn breath and then the clamour of voices – “no one wants to listen”, “we tried but you can imagine the eye-rolls”, “it’s hard when you’re a woman fighting for credibility”, “can you see the headline – ‘budget fails love test!’”.
This was a conversation not so long ago amongst a group of civil society leaders.
The frustration, reticence, even embarrassment was understandable – given the context. Our politic revolves around core mantras entirely alien to such a values proposition. You know them: we live in an economy, our role is to consume, we dig things up and cut things down, we value things by price, private is best, individuals are doing-it-for-themselves while governments get in the road, etc, etc.
Pile on an increasingly authoritarian politics fuelled by division and ‘othering’ and not surprisingly love struggles for oxygen and relevance. We’re operating within a political straight jacket that only allows twists and turns within its confines; even for those advocates of justice, equality and sustainability. Doomed to forever be oppositional, never propositional.
Yet we know there’s a desperate thirst for something different when Australians talk about their lives and aspirations. People want to talk about a different story for us all. One that centres on care and compassion, moors and connects, while allowing us to be inspired and to imagine.
It was out of such community dialogue that the vision Australia reMADE was born and we’ve seen it bubble to the fore around initiatives like NDIS and the “Say yes to love” referendum. But it came most vividly to life during our bushfire summer.
Photo by Jack Bassingthwaighte on Unsplash.
We witnessed and experienced collective grief and despair for our neighbours, our wildlife and our vegetation – for our loss of innocence and sense of security. We responded in community with compassion, generosity and love. Australians weren’t acting as consumers, as value-maximisers, as market players. We didn’t necessarily know each other but we still cared and helped.
And that is what radical love is about. It is about caring, cooperation, community and connectedness to each other and to our environment. Feminist bell hooks writes in All About Love: New Visions, “when we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.” And from that connection we can build toward a new collective good.
This is not soft sentimentalism we’re talking about. This is love as a verb. A choice. A commitment.
This is not soft sentimentalism we’re talking about. This is love as a verb. A choice. A commitment. Love that is active, powerful, embracing – a love that creates something bigger than us all and that pushes us to be, collectively, our better selves.
Radical love anchors a new politics. It creates a new starting point for every conversation. It recasts the values underpinning every debate. It rewires the rules for how we think about success and progress. It embeds a new common sense. It helps create the community conversation required to shape the pathway forward.
Rev Dr Martin Luther King consciously ‘decided to love’ and deployed this as his animating theme to build a broad-based civil rights movement. Closer to home the Uluru Statement from the Heart consciously and persuasively appeals to our hearts and sense of justice, eschewing a politics of division. It’s a strategy that’s been pursued effectively in Tasmania, where ‘love-bombing’ of Parliament has delivered a significant step-change. As trawlwulwuy woman, Dr Emma Lee puts it “through love we desired to reset the relationship and create a vibrant and vital Aboriginal Tasmanian identity that is welcoming of new governance relationships.”
Radical love is already a growing part of our movements and our politics – we just need to name it and mainstream it.
A permanent paradigm shift requires a powerful force for change. This won’t come from institutional political players captured by our current system. And it won’t come simply from the politics of dissent and fragmentation. Building a mass movement large enough and assertive enough to fundamentally change the political paradigm will take more, much more.
For that we need Dr King’s animating thematic of love and the vision and politics that spawns. Radical love has the potential to be the bridge that connects our many social movements. Whether the lens is economic, identity or environmental our silos disappear if the starting point for our political conversation is love for people and planet. And as bell hooks reminds us, “the moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression.” This is key to ensuring that new coalitions that grow to support this new paradigm also learn new ways of dealing with inequities and injustice. In the birthing of the new we strive to come to terms with problematic legacies so they are not carried forward.
So in answer to the question, “why can’t we talk about love?” the answer is simple. We can if we choose radical love as the heart of a new politics. A politics that puts people before numbers, that is for all of us not just some, and that recognises our planet’s beauty and majesty not just its bounty. It is a politics that will need a coalition to lead and a groundswell to win. Radical love is key to both – as impetus and guide. It is doable. We need to let go of the issue-silos, the cynicism, the need to ‘fit in,’ the quest for perfection and the despair.
We need to become more comfortable and assertive in talking about love; acknowledging that this makes us more vulnerable to mainstream dismissal whilst becoming more open to newcomers. But if we want to cast off the straitjacket and remake Australia in 2020, radical love is the place to begin.
LOUISE TARRANT
Louise Tarrant is a lifelong unionist and spent many years with United Voice (including as National Secretary). Louise is passionate about dismantling the concentration of power and wealth that undermines our national sense of a fair go and fair play, that hollows out our democracy and puts business interests ahead of our environment. Louise is currently on the Board of Greenpeace Asia Pacific and is the Chair of the Australia reMADE Secretariat.
