The thought I keep avoiding

bell hooks and adrienne maree brown on enacting love

Sep 05, 2025

There is a thought I keep avoiding.

It is, ironically, a thought about love. And what loving my fellow humans looks like in an age of billionaires and genocide and planetary unravelling.

The thought goes something like this: we will not fix the problems we face if we can only bring ourselves to love the people who look and sound like us. The people whose opinions we find acceptable. The people who are suffering as a consequence of corporate greed and colonialism.

The majority of people reading this will find it easy to love those people because you are compassionate and empathetic beings.

It is much harder to summon love for far right racists, like the ones in England who stand outside accommodation for asylum seekers and graffiti xenophobic slurs on chinese takeaways. It is hard for me, right now, to find much love for the elected government of my country, who misguidedly seem intent on indulging the racism which exists in England, thinking it will solve their electoral problems.

When I think about these people without a loving mindset I just want to give up on them, and in my worst moments, demonise them as the source of all that is wrong in our world. I find myself close to hating them.

But what does that hatred do? Nothing much. Maybe it gets some easy clicks, but it does little to alter the systems of inequality and oppression which I claim to want to dismantle. Does it actually serve to deepen the divisions which the right uses to fuel inequality and hoarde wealth? Quite probably.

‘Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word ‘love’ is the source of our difficulty in loving’ - bell hooks

In her book All About Love: New Visions, which was first published in 1999, the cultural critic and philosopher bell hooks argued that Western culture lacks a coherent understanding of love. Too often, she argues, it is thought of only as a romantic sort of love. A passionate and tender emotion for one other person. In search of a more concrete definition, hooks opts for the one used by M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Travelled. Peck describes love as ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.’

‘Love is an act of will’ states Peck. ‘Both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.’

Returning to my extensive list of people I find it hard to love, I take comfort in Peck’s narrower definition. Love is an act. It is something I do as much as it is something I feel. It is also, if we use Peck’s definition, something generative. The act of loving someone enables that person’s own growth, as well as my own.

In the following chapters of All About Love, hooks examines love within different contexts and settings. Writing about love in the context of community, she notes that:

being part of a loving community does not mean we will not face conflicts, betrayals, negative outcomes from positive actions, or bad things happening to good people. Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life enhancing.

Reading this passage reminded me of my recent communications with a member of my extended family who is pro-Israel. My gut instinct was to just ignore their emails and messages, but I realised that doing so served neither of us. When this person emailed me reiterating their support for Israel (who they believe are on the ‘right side’ of the situation they consider to be a war) I decided instead to calmly reply to their message, stating my reasons why I disagreed with their view, but also stating that my response came from a place of genuine love for them as a member of my family.

I said: ‘This message is sent in recognition of our opposing views on this matter, but in love.’

They replied: ‘I agree.

We see things differently but still value and love each other’

Necessary truth spoken without kindness can land as a blow that produces a defensive response, rather than an opening for connection and action - adrienne maree brown

Looking back on this episode I now see that I was attempting to perform what the writer, activist and facilitator adrienne maree brown describes as a ‘Loving Correction1’. For brown, whose work invites us to embrace complexity and internal transformation, loving corrections are a recognition that to be human is to be in relationship with each other. Because of this, we need to find ways of communicating with those we disagree with in a way which does not destroy our relationships. This does not mean condoning their viewpoint or justifying their views, but speaking instead with a dual perspective of candour and love.

brown observes that social justice movements are increasingly focussed on ‘policing each other, disposing of each other, and destroying each other.’ She asks:

What does it mean to intentionally stay in relationship with humanity?
How can I strive to be in right relationship with everyone I meet?
If we understand that we cannot cancel other living beings from the world, then how do we find dignified ways of being in community?

By choosing to remain in relationship with my family member, I am also performing a correction on myself whilst maintaining a healthy and appropriate boundary. brown isn’t saying that we must love people when that situation or person will cause harm to us. But if there is a way of nurturing or maintaining a relationship in a boundaried and healthy way, then we need to try our best to keep in relationship with those we disagree with.

There is a passage in the book of Matthew2 that talks about love. It says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the rightous and the unrightous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

And I guess this passage is at the heart of the thoughts that niggle away at me at night.

Love my enemies?

It’s a big ask. At times it feels impossible.

But by reframing our understanding of love, as an action and posture to be worked through in pursuit of mutual flourishing, hooks and brown offer a way for us to begin this work in a grounded and meaningful way.

And as we do this we realise that we actually have very few ‘enemies’.

In fact, most of the people we think of as our enemies are actually just human beings who hold views that we disagree with.

This is just a fact of life.

The important thing is what action we take in response.