What if Love was viral? Imagine a world that became infected by LOVE-20 – a highly contagious infection of the heart? A disease that moved like wildfire through populations, causing an unfamiliar and unexplainable sense of wellbeing. A feeling so unrecognised and absent from the human condition that all you’d have to say is ‘I feel loved’ and next thing, it is followed by a desire not to go to work, not to go on Facebook either, but to sit and stare at the face of your sleeping baby – and in that simple act to find a deep contentment.
LOVE-20 is so deadly to capitalism they’ve been secretly inoculating us through social media, and TV, and print for years… LOVE-20 terrifies the entitled trolls at the top of their trickledown towers because LOVE-20 changes us.
Adversaries clutch each other in a long healing embrace; the battle finally over. Trump hugs Nancy Pelosi and tells her she was right, and that he really likes her hair, and he’s sorry how he’s treated women, but he couldn’t help it because deep down he never felt loved or good enough, and quite frankly women who didn’t need men scared him.
Pauline Hanson begs Indigenous Australians for forgiveness for her continual lack of compassion and understanding. Bettina Arndt gives back her OAM, and apologises to the family of Hannah Clarke for any harm that her comments, defending the man who murdered their daughter, may have caused.
Andrew Bolt admits to Bruce Pascoe that he was wrong to question his Aboriginal ancestry, and admits that for a lot of white Australians it’s confronting to discover how complex and well-managed Indigenous Australia was before white people stole their country and said they weren’t here.
Men would stop hitting and killing their wives. Multi-nationals would close their coalmines and share the patents to the renewable technologies that they’ve been hoarding. The Gaza strip would be a massive banquet where Palestinians and Israelis break bread together, raving about how great their hummus is.
Imagine the quiet chaos LOVE-20 would bring to a world curated by the architecture of hate and fear. How would we even work out who we were if there was no ‘other’? If we can’t define ourselves by what we are not – then who are we? Without the cancer of identity, individualism would die off.
We wouldn’t need mirrors – because we’d learn to see ourselves in the eyes of others. We would truly know what it meant to be part of a community; with our previous aching selves now as incomprehensible as a single grain of sand. It is the beach that has consequence, not one grain of sand.
How would you know if you’d caught LOVE-20? You’d have a compulsive desire to hug a homeless man and give him the contents of your wallet. You could no longer walk past the pain or circumstance of another without getting involved. You’d find yourself making eye contact with strangers and smiling at them. You’d not only pick up a hitchhiker, you’d drive them all the way home, and then give them your number for the next time they need a lift. You’d lose your ambition. You wouldn’t worry about what you were wearing. You wouldn’t care if you’re old, or ugly, or fat.
You would stand in nature and have a profound sense of gratitude for being alive; followed by a crippling sensation of grief for the unloving and cruel way we have treated First Nations, our planet, each other and ourselves.
What if love was an incurable disease that affected the compromised and the frail, the lost and the lonely with such potency that they became well again?
What does a loved world even look like?
Marx talked about capitalism’s use of alienation to keep people disconnected and compliant. I never quite got it. I don’t think Marx was a bit hippy calling for love either, but he certainly understood how separation from self and community created cogs for the machine. We have farmed a culture of self-loathing. Happy people don’t need retail therapy. Happy people don’t need to satisfy their egos with trinkets or big houses. Unhappy, endlessly dissatisfied people buy stuff to fill the chasm that exists when they feel disconnected from their environment, their purpose, their community and themselves. Disconnection is a long dark pit that kills the canary of hope. It seeds our deepest human sadness. The economic impact of LOVE-20 would be even greater than COVID-19. If all the world caught LOVE-20, the systems that exist to separate us would collapse. By losing our sense of entitled individuality, we’d finally become one.
Don’t keep Love in quarantine. Spread it today.
What a great piece, Mandy. To make sense
of all that’s senseless.
Love you L.o.n.g T.i.m.e… Mandy!
Love 20… coming to a cellular memory near you.. ???
It is infectious & so easy to be loving.
Noticed the WA gov are trying to have another go at Green activists for disrupting industry.
Well, I imagine they get a lot of that in the place people go to for the explicate purpose of putting down parts of a planet over 2 billion years old. It’s the perfect example!
While this horrendous situation is occurring globally we see primary industries weaponising a rabbit virus. You know.. well .. there’s not much I can compassionately add to that little parallel. Dumbf..kery!!!
My Dad used to say ‘some people treat kindness as weakness!’ I really did didn’t like hearing that. Unfortunately, as we see in society, there are some who do.. It is courage & kindness & the coolest crazy energy in existence. That’s why so many people choose the opposite.
What does a loving society look like? No predatory… herbaceously herbivores, symbiotic, energetically compassionate.. safe to be who we are with complete acceptance.. minus the social issues.. people are not having to hide behind booze to socialise & douce themselves in ice to feel artificial bliss & hide from pain..
more expansive, energetically balanced & excited about life..
did I forget to mention the minus of slave contracts & competition. The win-loose scenario that fundamentally binds the worth of civilisations
Animals roam the street in harmony they are no longer reflecting our predatory mirror to us we are not a threat to them to ourselves or each other… it’s flowing & lovely, with perfect timing & synchronistic moments & probably does shift priorities because in the right vibration things manifest easier so slavery becomes the job you love or the life you love.. Society is co-operative & sharing in balance, it’s a change of perspective. Vibration.. & you all knew that & I’m just talking to myself here. Haaaaa!
The real answer is: what does it look like To You? It’s your reality. Your creation. What does it feel like for you?
Eg of social differences : loving not loving.
DT wanted to buy the new vaccine from Germany exclusively for the US.. from the psychopath that tried to buy Greenland.
Germany said ‘no’ it’s for everyone!
I love you M-A-N-D-Y
Did you see Dumbf..kery?
My new fav word next to the word Love! It just rolls right of the tongue with languid grace.
Want to type the missing letters so much!
Love Bunnies of the world unite!!!
Create a better world. Claim your right to live loving. If you want to change the world. Change your own vibration. Live loving & create a new beautiful reality all the way around. Rebel! Rebel! That’s the rebellion!
Dumbf..kery …Dumbf..kery
Dumbf..kery..(I don’t get out much!) I
Thanks gorgeous
Blessings
I was a dreamer, like Mandy and John Lennon … I’m now a disappointed sombre recluse who’s heartbroken at we are doing to this planet.
Humans are going to get what they deserve, as Sir David Attenborough has been saying for yonks.
And then you see the selfish, myopic actions at the supermarkets going on when there is NO food shortages in Australia.
I rest my case…
First…. some see kindness as weakness. Offer
to help with a small financial problem & the
comeback thought is ‘what do you want from
me?’ Well, actually nothing. The person looks
& sounds unhappy & stays that way. The
assumption there’ll be a pay-back time; wrong.
To assume a ‘power play’ is a sadness one
cannot beat – the near end of being human…
Next… what on earth are you on about, Len??
Exemplary Mandy.
I love you Mandy!
This one of your best!!!
nice one, thanks.
The Virus is Morrison fault right ??
Oh, how I wish, Mandy. That was .jesus’ message – love.
Yes Mandy, this is one of your best!! So original, creative and so on-target!!! Maybe I have the LOVE-20 virus? I hope so 🙂
Wow, mastery of word-smithing, a brilliant piece of philosophical writing straight from the Heart.
I am now a carrier of LOVE-20, I am highly contagious and plan to spread my symptoms far and wide..,every day… starting NOW…Thank you, thank you Mandy, for reminding us of the most powerful force on the planet.
Can’t blame ScoMo but he could have managed
the real problems earlier. ‘Going to the footy?’
That helped the country. Most of OZ is listening
to the medical profession & are in the process
of going into ‘lock-down’ in the hope of saving
lives. So, do I make myself clear… we are doing
what we know is a good attempt at looking after
each other over the coming months – Barrow.