The Will to Love

Recently I wrote a piece about gnosticism which, for inexplicable reasons, blogger decided to delete just as I was uploading it. And this, despite the fact that recently it had boasted about its new capacity for an automatic saving of drafts.

So, that may have to wait awhile.

Today a Slovak friend was telling me how Revolutionary possibilites in the world have died because as soon as anyone makes a stand in any kind of efficacious direction, consumerist capitalism comes along and commodifies its productions in a way that upholds and defends the very system it explicitly challenged.

In this we see exhibited the triumph of the banal, the unopposed triumph that defines and enshrines our post post modern times.

Anyway, I agreed with him (actually the above is my paraphrasing of his position) and added there will never be anything revolutionary or novel or new happening in human society without a transformation of desire.

Hitherto moral systems that have sought to defend virtue and enforce 'the good' have sought to do so against the drift and natural inclination of our natural desires.

Because of this we witness the good so often coupled with the necessity of self-sacrifice. We are told to deny ourselves and do what we dont want to do. Only in this way do our moral efforts count. Only in this way is our virtue meaningful, only in this way is it possessed of value, does it please God, or the state, or whoever.

The problem is this kind of talk just doesnt wash anymore does it? People can't be persuaded to do what they don't want to do anymore. Indeed the very heart of our capitalist system rests upon and is the apotheosis of self-will.

Which is why the only hope, and the only sane prospect, is for people to actually want to be 'good', and to want to be selfless, and to want to serve and love their fellow men and enemies without any taint of the suspicion left lingering that what in fact they'd rather be doing, if only they were more honest, is something else altogether..

I'm not sure how this will be brought about but I'm certain that the deconstruction of the self-martyred basis of virtue is the only future of hope, and our destiny on the other side of our current decadent impasse.

p.s I am at a loss to understand why the formatting is so weird and uneven above?