If intelligence, love and revolution are to converge, this is to happen under the horizon of a kairós, a frugal opportunity, or as the anticipation for its coming. It is in the opening of a feasible possibility that revolution can project an end to attain, after which it becomes commemoration, reformism, or gets dissolved in the never ending line of permanent revolution. Intelligence, on its part, needs to be capable to detach itself, at some degree, from the practical interests that compose revolution as well as the enactment of love. This detachment can only be partial, for it is necessary in order to question the certainties of revolution and love, yet it has to be put to an end through the faith that these elements will be enacted with its complicity.
This triad is an unstable one, not only because, as mentioned, each one of its elements can lose its catalyzing aspect, like a rancid pharmakon, but also because of the way each element can enmesh with the other.
Love, seen as a personal opening towards otherness, which results in an enrichment by such opening, deepens the space of which is feasible by inaugurating mutually binding expectations. On the other hand, it is also harassed by the efforts of marketing and institutional management, no less than by self-deception and prudish tendencies, to be defined as a theatrical role with defined steps and dialogues. The desires that arise during the enactment of the rituals and interactions that turn love tangible, however, can prefigure the shape that a revolution in the current state of affairs can take, since it is through them that the scope of the agency becomes palpable.
The occurrence of love may pass by leaving behind a chrysalis of simulacra, in which case its revolutionary potential becomes a reformism that aspires to restore the state of things that these simulacra represent. As care, love needs for a stability that is certainly far from revolution, being a kind of aftermath. The time of opportunity does rarely last enough so as to be fully aware of it, so it implies taking a leap through the suspension of doubt.
Revolution prompts the breaking off from the cornerstones that define a way of living. It proclaims the dissolution of continuity with the ancient regime, often arising from the opposite of love: rejection, haste and the vomiting of given circumstances. Revolution needs intelligence as long as planning is concerned, but once the regime is torn down revolution is set off, leaving space for the reconstruction that love is able to attain as the anticipation of a life worth living, and as the establishment of new conventions built over ruins.
Intelligence inhabits the space between the opening up of realizabilities and the care for the preservation of a valued state of things, which come to be cognized in a deeper manner as long as they are taken care of. By its character, it must be skeptical of the certainties that drive revolution, fearful of falling into self-deception. Only by interrupting its epoché to make way for practical commitment can intelligence be complicit in revolution.
The violence necessary to bring about a revolutionary change is what limits the role of intelligence to planning, because every tragedy leaves behind questions about the alternatives that could have prevented it. These questions haunt intelligence with a greater echo than the mantra of revolutionary certainties. Given the time and care required to get to know something in depth, intelligence has a conservative character, on which care depends, which is no less important than the projection of possibilities attainable through the founding violence of revolution.
Instability is to be found in the kairós that opens the space for the convergence of intelligence, love and revolution. Its opposite cannot go as far as to be is reiteration in a negative form, for it is rather the quenching of the ardor of its pathos. As a numbing, an opposite to this triad results indifferent to the peculiarities of given instants, covering what comes to happen under the fog of inertia. Anticipation for the kairós of ILR supposes introducing a bracketing of the certainties that become the sediment of routine.
The opposite triad to ILR could be dullness, contempt and reformism. Such a triad certainly does not display itself with the vigor of its opposites, precisely because it is represented by exhaustion, which no longer repairs in its own discomfort, nor cares for it.
As the uncritical acceptance of received certainties, as aversion towards their stirring, dullness supposes the sedimentation of a given way of life. The treatment of others is nowhere close to the discovery of the peculiarities that define the haecceitas of singular individuals. It is rather the constant comparison of the person that somehow happens to be closer to a previous archetype that is fitted along the tradition implied in such way of life. Instead of opening the space of possibilities that is feasible to attain, dullness secludes the ways of action that individuals can opt for. Be it through routines, an impoverishing rationalization, or through the dismissal of that which is lesser known, dullness reduces the complexity of the surroundings, but not so as to give potency to the actions of an individual, but to reduce subjective implication to the world, a world that is not even negated but stays there as an unavoidable condition. Dullness even lacks the energy of imbecility, which at least is positively convinced of whatever it acts upon.
The bracketing of dullness is attained through enthusiasm, the latter of which gets triggered by the unexpected. Curiosity in simplicity is that which dissolves the sediments of an impoverished way of life. The pathetic aspect of either love or revolution can prompt the stirring of dullness into intelligence, if dullness does not set off the happening of these. To get carried away by pathos can be enough of a motivation for intelligence to act and seek a situation that engages with its widening expectations. When intelligence gets a hold on the capacity to put its own doubting into question, it acquires the capacity for letting the subject act spontaneously upon its pathos, as if the leash of reason became elastic.
If dullness is to be seen as the opposite of intelligence, despise could occupy the place of love, although it could not be a feverous, implied, despise, but the closure of the individual towards other subjects, and not only the environment, as it happens with dullness. The least compromised form of despise also proceeds by the classification of those subjects that are encountered under the frames of previous conceptions, to which those subjects are compared.
The compromised form of despise fuels projects for anger to be expressed, yet it lacks the character of a revolution insofar as it does not project an end to attain, but an inconvenience to suppress. As dullness, despise finds itself comfortable in a numbness that is not to be disturbed.
Still, there is a form of pedagogical despise, which is needed for a person to show or be shown those self-deceptions of which others are aware. Such despise often makes the monoliths of highbrow culture look as unquestioned dogmas, yet it is the only way to realize the distance that separates the layman from knowledge. If intelligence is to be complicit with love, it must be humble enough so as to discern pedagogical despise from apathetic despise. Only then can revolution be oriented towards that which is worth rejecting and that which is worth realizing.
Whereas dullness and despise leave the current state of things untouched, even though such a state of things has shown to be untenable, the opposite from revolution aims for the preservation of the untenable state of things by fixing those superficial symptoms that make evident the need for a change. Reformism is essentially cosmetic, as the new editions of a best-selling device. What is needed of change is not to be found in the structure of the relations of a circumstance, but their details and the individuals that enact them. A reformist love would try to constantly repeat the same idealized circumstance, be it with different individuals, or at different locations, but would not enmesh with the profound questioning of a way of living or the certainties that it holds to.
In the anticipation for the kairós in which intelligence, love and revolution can converge, the subject comes to perceive the virtual space of possibilities that could become feasible, cleans up an inner space so as to make room for whoever can come in, and projects an alternative to the given, from which the direction of current actions can be judged.
It is through the cracks of self-closeness that an unexpected love can come to germinate. Its unexpected character is given by the fact that it was not anticipated by intelligence, although intelligence is necessary for frugality to persist and flourish. The happening of an unexpected love renders a sudden change that is not properly defined as a revolution for it was neither intentionally planned nor defines the existing state of things as coming to an end. However, the changes that an unexpected love can bring about can change the subject in a more profound way than if he were to update a previous project. In situations like this, the space of kairós opens up in which the triad that concerns us here can be made effective, as long as we are able to distinguish it from the simulacra of self-deception.
Caring for the open possibility of such a kairós must preserve the transformative potential that separates us from dullness, despise and reformism. It is not, of course, a question of keeping the triad of intelligence, love and revolution active at all times, but of remaining attentive to the way in which each of these factors interacts with the other, as well as to the ever-present possibility that they may drift towards their antonym.
What hurts in love is most often related to the triad of dullness, despise and reformism. This in the refusal to appreciate that in the other which escapes our understanding, our practical interests or a situation that we would like to preserve by attending the superficial symptoms of its pathology. The tearing apart brought about by the convergence of intelligence, love and revolution is not suffered as an affront to existence itself, but to that which has become stale and crude in it. If anything, the pain that it brings about is not experimented as suffering, but as the joy of the unexpected coming into sight and touch.
As it happens when moving into another city, self-investment is needed in order to inhabit a different space and make the time worth living. This means going out to see the surroundings, shortcuts, side streets, on the corner of which the unexpected appears and can run you over or invite you to stay for a while. As a furniture scavenger, able to discern the irreparable from what can be restored, or what just needs some cleaning, one finds oneself faced with unexpected opportunities when exploring this new world that is entered along another, with whom you carry the stray furniture.
A cheerful cynicism often comes when remembering that which has repelled one and which is no longer present. It is only when one fails to make the space towards which one drifts habitable that one runs the risk of being deceived by nostalgia.
I have tried to point out that the convergence of intelligence, love and revolution presents itself as a frugal opportunity, which becomes affordable to the extent that one is willing to cast one's soul adrift and take responsibility for the results. This frugal moment cannot be stretched, and every attempt to achieve its repetition engenders a rotten doppelgänger.
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