Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“Neoliberal capitalism is... hostile to reproduction. Neoliberal states have typically cut state provision of reproductive services, and increased automation... makes capitalism less dependent on human labour. This makes it appear that the state and capital are no longer interested in the reproduction of human life. But contemporary capitalism is as dependent on reproductive work as previous forms of accumulation...”

“The reproduction and survival of stigmatised groups is seen as less important in capitalist societies. While white, middle-class, and bourgeois people can expect longer, healthier lives, others are, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore puts it, made vulnerable to premature death. The different valuation of various forms of reproduction therefore reflects and recreates deep splits and hierarchies within the working class.”

“Those who are excluded from the labour market have to rely on the state, family members, community services, or criminalised activities to survive. These forms of reproduction are often stigmatised, for example through the images of 'welfare queens' and 'benefit cheats '— racialised stereotypes that also carry associations of stigmatised sexual behaviour and bad reproduction.”

“This lack of resources for reproductive labour has led to a diagnosed 'crisis of care' or 'crisis of social reproduction'... this more recent crisis is only the open manifestation of the underlying contradiction of capitalist reproduction, which has always been a feature of capitalism. Federici calls this a permanent reproductive crisis.”

“Feminists have often argued that reproduction must be made visible as work... not to make reproductive work visible... or to morally valorise it. ... Rather, feminist struggle strives to highlight capital's structural yet disavowed dependence on reproductive labour in order to subvert both this work and capital itself. It is by highlighting relations of power in our daily lives that we can struggle against them.”

“Workers who have the option of exploiting the labour of others have an advantage over those who do not, since that gives them more time for their waged work and more leisure time to restore their capacity for labour.”

“Reproduction is both a site of preservation of the status quo and a potential space for the radical remaking of the world. This tension enables a feminist struggle in the sphere of reproduction, a struggle which has the potential to disrupt...capitalist society. ...struggles on the site of reproduction subvert 'the image of social peace that has given capitalism the appearance of naturalness and viability'”

“Federici writes that understanding reproductive work as the production of labour power highlights 'the fact that in capitalist society reproductive work is not the free reproduction of ourselves or others according to our and their desires'. It also emphasises 'the tension, the potential separation, and it suggests a world of conflicts, resistances, contradictions that have political significance'.”

“It is always within my power to build a bridge. There is always a chance for reconciliation, a chance that one day he and I will sit around a table together and put an end to our history of clashes. And on this day, he will tell me his story and I will tell him mine.”
-Paul Coelho 2014

“When I read about clashes around the world —political clashes, economic clashes, cultural clashes — I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed. Even if my neighbor doesn't understand my religion or understand my politics, he can understand my story. If he can understand my story, then he's never too far from me.”

“I re-read The Alchemist regularly and every time I do I experience the same sensations I felt when I wrote it. And here is what I feel. I feel happiness, because it is all of me, and all of you simultaneously. I feel happiness,because I know I can never be alone. Wherever I go, people understand me. They understand my soul. This continues to give me hope.”

“The essence of true love is mutual recognition—two individuals seeing each other as they really are.”

“true love is all about work. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wisely observed: "Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure was more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work..."

Here is how he [John Welwood] defines it: "A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other's individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on a deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials..."”

“In his insightful book Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship, John Welwood makes a useful distinction between this type of attraction, familiar to us all, which he calls a "heart connection," and another type he calls a "soul connection."”

“In... The Bluest Eye, novelist Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as one "of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought." Its destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy we substitute romance for love.”

“Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas. Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that no matter what we experienced in our childhoods, no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness, no matter the extent of our dehumanization, romantic love will be ours.”

“To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”

“When we act, we need not feel inadequate or powerless; we can trust that there are concrete steps to take on love's path. We learn to communicate, to be still and listen to the needs of our hearts, and we learn to listen to others. We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love. The path to love is not arduous or hidden, but we must choose to take the first step.”

“Giving is healing to the spirit. We are admonished by spiritual tradition to give gifts to those who would know love. Love is an action, a participatory emotion. Whether we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize love. This is why it is useful to see love as a practice.”

“Giving is the way we also learn how to receive. The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love. A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers the experience of knowing we always belong.”

“Through giving to each other we learn how to experience mutuality. To heal the gender war rooted in struggles for power, women and men choose to make mutuality the basis of their bond, ensuring that each person's growth matters and is nurtured. It enhances our power to know joy.”

“In patriarchal society men who want to break with domination can best begin the practice of love by being giving, by being generous. This is why feminist thinkers extolled the virtues of male parenting. Working as caregivers to young children, many men are able to experience for the first time the joy that comes from service.”

“Much of the anger and rage we feel about emotional lack is released when we forgive ourselves and others. Forgiveness opens us up and prepares us to receive love. It prepares the way for us to give wholeheartedly. Giving brings us into communion with everyone. It is one way for us to understand that there is truly enough of everything for everybody.”

“Once we embark on love's path we see how easy it is to give. A useful gift all love's practitioners can give is the offering of forgiveness. It not only allows us to move away from blame, from seeing others as the cause of our sustained lovelessness, but it enables us to experience agency, to know we can be responsible for giving and finding love.”

“We live in an age of narcissism and many people...never learned or have forgotten how to listen to the needs of others. The truth is, if you want to make just one change in yourself that will improve your relationship—literally, overnight—it would be to put your partner's interest on an equal footing with your own." Giving generously in...relationships...means recognizing when the other person needs our attention”

“When we practice love, we want to give more. Selfishness, a refusal to give acceptance to another, is a central reason romantic relationships fail. In Love the Way You Want It, Robert Sternberg confirms: "If I were asked the single most frequent cause of the destruction of relationships... I would say it is selfishness.”

“While movies like Regarding Henry and The Fisher King spin sentimental narratives about ruling-class men suffering life-threatening illnesses that lead them to reevaluate how they spend their time, in real life we have yet to see abundant examples of powerful men or women pausing to create a place to do the work of love in their lives.”

“The practice of love takes time. Without a doubt, the way we work in this society leaves individuals with little time when they are not physically and emotionally tired to work on the art of loving. How many times do we hear anyone say that they were working so hard and had no time for love, so they had to cut back or even leave a job to make a space to be loving?”

“I am always amazed by how much courageous trust we offer strangers. We get sick and enter hospitals where we put our trust in a collective body of people we don't know, who we hope will make us well. Yet we often fear placing our emotional trust in caring individuals who may have been faithful friends all our lives. This is simply misguided thinking. And it must be overcome if we are to be transformed by love.”