"I Love You. I See You. I Believe You." Wait, What?
On Solidarity
If you’ve ever been on social media, you’ve probably seen people write something like this: “I love you. I see you. I believe you.”
Really? You love someone you’ve never met?
You see me even though I’m just one of your thousands of followers and you’ve never heard my story?
You believe me even though I hardly believe myself, knowing how devious the mind can be in setting up its defense mechanisms?
The line is usually offered as a gesture of sympathy or solidarity to some marginalized group, a group presumed to be unloved, unseen, unbelieved.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I find myself disbelieving both the genuineness and efficacy of the expression. I want to use my reaction as the basis for exploring the notion of loving a group without knowing every member of the group, which may or may not be another way of saying solidarity.
Gershom Scholem famously berated Hannah Arendt for not having any ahavas yisrael (love of the Jewish people) to which she responded that love is for individuals, not for groups. But is this just semantics? Would Arendt object—and should we—to some other form of concern for groups, (be it our own or another), even if it were not called love?
I think of the line “I love you. I see you. I believe you” as a pledge, a signal, but is it worth much if it’s not backed up by “fundamentals”? Probably not.
A deeper criticism I have is that the statement is offered unconditionally. As long as you meet the criteria of belonging to the right group you merit loyalty. If loyalty is offered entirely on the basis of group membership, it seems both shallow and unsustainable. I would rather have someone love me, see me, and believe me because they know me, not because they are partial to whatever classification to which I happen to belong. I would rather have someone love me, see me, and believe me because they know the parts of me that are difficult to love, see, and believe. A blanket statement, lacking in fine print, is usually too good to be true.
But here, I am quibbling again with words. Perhaps the deeper and better question is whether solidarity itself is a meaningful concept, or whether it is superficial for all the reasons aforementioned and more. Perhaps there is a time and place for superficiality. Perhaps, as the term “ally” implies, solidarity is more of a tactic, a form of strategic partnership, than anything else. And that’s fine. But why give it such moral overtones? Why not simply see it for what it is—a form of Machiavellian cultural politics?
Why am I wrong?
In solidarity, Zohar
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