The other day, I was walking around my apartment patio watching a cluster of birds who recently hatched. Fresh chirps filled the crisp, unseasonably cool April air, as I calmly stalked the Momma Bird, keenly watching her every move as she watched mine. I’ve been doing this every Spring for the last three years. By now, she realizes I’m not a threat.

Without doubt, these birds are aware of my presence and have come to accept, even work around and possibly enjoy, my morning routine. They sing. I smile. They respect me, as I do them.

These birds, these living, breathing, wonderful things, are my friends; they are part of my extended family. I love them, and enjoy their presence. I fight, resist, struggle and organize for them, as I do my fellow brothers and sisters who are human beings. It has taken a long time to come to the conclusion that my existence is not inherently or objectively more special, important or worthwhile than the creatures who inhabit the sand dunes in front of my apartment, but that process has been one of the most important journeys of my life.

We Can’t Eat Numbers

It’s easy to distort reality. It’s easy to get lost. It’s easy to forget.

It’s easy to forget that we can’t survive without a living planet. It’s easy to forget that the planet is inherently more important than the global economy. And it’s especially easy to forget those truths while living in a culture that values growth, mythical progress and material goods above all else. Indeed, life takes a backseat to calculated measures, GDP growth rates, investment opportunities, stock market fluctuations, opinion polls and geopolitical interests. However, one cannot eat stock markets, nor can one breathe investments.

Our current systems of government, commerce and culture do not value life. They hate life. And they most definitely do not represent or exude Love.

Upon reflection, I can’t quite recall the exact moment when I realized that even without human beings in my immediate vicinity, it’s virtually impossible to be alone. In fact, it occurs to me that one must be truly detached to ever feel lonely on this exceedingly magnificent, abundant and living planet. After all, we’re in this together: humans, plants, animals, bacteria, etc. The only difference is that other living things can survive just fine without human beings; we’re not needed.

On the other hand, without fresh water to drink, clean air to breathe and nutritious food to eat, human beings will undoubtedly perish, and quickly. None of those things require a global economy. In fact, the global economy creates the opposite: death, scarcity, droughts and destruction. There is no Love in economics. Economics, as a discipline, and in practice, is cold, calculated and rooted in the insane belief that we, human beings, have the right to extract what we need, whenever we want, and for whatever purposes we deem necessary.

As a result, without dismantling the fossil fuel industry, industrial agriculture, the military industrial complex, and various other destructive mechanisms and systems of power, our living friends will continue to go extinct. They will continue to die, unless we stop the destruction.

Re-imagining the Global Community

Extending love to every aspect of our lives, every thing, being, object that we come in contact with, requires discipline and values. In short, it’s hard work.

Here, love can make a grand entrance and rupture our understanding of what’s politically possible. Without love, we’re doomed as a species and planet. In our increasingly vapid global society, love has become a taboo subject, relegated to morning talk show hosts, TV sitcom narratives, Hollywood spectacle and self-help gurus. They’ve hijacked love and replaced it with a pretty digital screen, hoping humanity will get lost in the chorus of propaganda and nonsense.

But people aren’t inherently victims. People can fight back. People can learn. And they do.

One of the first things I learned when becoming politically conscious was the fact that I wasn’t properly loving myself or others. I realized, at nineteen years old (late in the game), that my love had previously been limited to my friends and family, and even then, through a very narrow scope and understanding.

My experiences in Iraq challenged the notion that I could only love those who were close to me. It was in Iraq that I began to contemplate a Global Community, a community that transcends time and space, borders, ethnicity and markets. During this time, I learned to love my Iraqi friends. I also learned to love myself.
When I came home from the war, I started to organize for the Iraqi people, and for myself. I owed it to myself to learn about history, explore the brutal realities of colonialism and the ongoing struggle to create a better world. Moreover, I owed it to the Iraqi people and the global society to speak the truth about my experiences overseas. Through doing so, I cultivated an appreciation for life. I learned to love people around the globe, for their lives are as valuable as my own.

Everybody Knows

Love keeps us alive. Without love, there’s really no reason to live. From revolutionaries such as Che Guevara, to artists such as Frida Kahlo and religious figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., love has served as the guiding light and a moral compass.

Yet, if we love the wrong thing, it can kill us. And that sort of love is dangerous. Love shouldn’t be generated and crafted by books, studies, calculations or culture. In its truest form, love can only be derived from the deepest caves of our precarious, contradictory and magnificent experiences on this planet.

Many people, and all living things, understand the dire reality we’re all facing: permanent and collective extinction. Birds, already forced to migrate outside their normal patterns, mimic the actions of human beings who have been forced to do the same as sea levels rise and farmlands wither. With love as our guide, we can properly comprehend our ecological reality without glasses or microscopes. As the great Leonard Cohen famously sang:

“And everybody knows the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just shining artifacts of the past

Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose what everybody knows”

In short, everybody knows, whether they admit it or not, that this particular stage in history is coming to an end. Global Finance Monopoly Capitalism, Western Civilization, Industrial Capitalism, whatever you wish to call it, is over. When is the finale? Maybe ten years from now, maybe a hundred years from now, no one is sure, but our institutions are indeed collapsing. It’s only a matter of time.

The question, of course, is whether or not we wish to create something better in its ashes, or re-articulate mistakes of the past. We have a grand opportunity to make fundamental changes in society. It’s impossible to argue that this system is sane, worthwhile or reasonable.

In the end, those operating with “love of land,” as my aboriginal friends often say, do not require studies or empirical data to prove to them that the Earth is hurting, indeed, dying. Humans don’t need a doctor to tell them that they’re sick, or that their child isn’t happy. People can feel it, see it, sense it. We must learn to do the same with the Earth and its many billions of inhabitants, human and non-human alike.

We must learn to love.

Vincent Emanuele is a writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt. He can be reached at [email protected]