Whenever I need a pick-me-up these days, I go to Go Fund Me pages set up for families of frontline workers who have died of Covid. The last one I visited was for the family of a nurse who died just days after delivering a baby girl. The fund-raising target was set at 2000 pounds and the last I checked, it had raised 185,000 pounds--nearly 100 times more. Countless small donations, many of them accompanied by touching messages. When I read them, my eyes well up with tears and my cynicism about the socio-political implications charity disappears. Some of the donors must have been Tory voters, some of them Blairites but the differences don't matter. Love is party- and faction- agnostic.
Love and hate are powerful drivers of human action,which is something that has always confounded social scientists. We have words to describe politics of hate like fascism, but struggle to explain it or predict where it will lead. Doomsday predictions are a safe bet, possibly because people seldom remember them when they don't come true. However, we have even fewer words to describe politics of love or rather the potential of love as a political force. Which is why there is something to be said for Gandhi, for all his flaws.
Love and hate are powerful drivers of human action,which is something that has always confounded social scientists. We have words to describe politics of hate like fascism, but struggle to explain it or predict where it will lead. Doomsday predictions are a safe bet, possibly because people seldom remember them when they don't come true. However, we have even fewer words to describe politics of love or rather the potential of love as a political force. Which is why there is something to be said for Gandhi, for all his flaws.
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