Plague Journal, The Space Between
Yesterdays rumination touched on the thought that love or the absence of love has to do with what takes place in the space between us. Love is not a substance but our description of a negotiation — of my sense of being, of my identity in juxtaposition with yours, in the relational space that is between us. What we mean by love is a negotiation, a never ending re-formation of the self, and by extension of the world that we wish to inhabit. Is that unsettling? Should I feel unease that I need to being all of my “baggage” to the table? What is left out, either by intention or by ignorance, will haunt our negotiation. My words will fail to present my sense of being at this coordinate of space and time, and you will inevitably mis-understand… You may respond offering anger and frustration, because you cannot connect. Or worse, perhaps you will offer your own cynical misrepresentation, a sly feint, or misdirection. How bad can it get? Relationships often fail spectacularly, and expensively.
I know you want to ask, “what is my point?” My extension I suggest that all relationships, not limited to individuals brought together by romantic attraction, but relationships within a family unit, and relationships between groups of different religious, ethnic, and racial heritages within a nation, are inescapably political. There is a reciprocal demand to re-form a sense of identity, to re-fresh and re-create a joint conception of destiny, a new narrative.
Is this any longer possible? Given the proliferation of technology, the seduction of automation of our species into technology’s wealth extraction objectives and the exponential spread of conspiracy-minded fundamentalisms, severing the capacity to think, rendering reason impotent — does politics make any sense in the end?
