Love Radicalized: Thoughts on Unlearning Harm and Rebuilding Love for The End of The World

Love in Late-Stage Capitalism, Love as in Care Work, Care Work as in Showing Up

Jun 23, 2025

When I think about the state of the world right now, there is one thing that seems so obvious to me – all the evils are founded on one of two things: the hatred of other people, or greed. Too often it’s both. But the hatred people feel about others who are different is overpowering – so much so that it leads to wars and genocide. Love is missing. It didn’t just happen like that. Like everything else, it’s taught and accepted. While some of that is rooted in how we were brought up, the company we keep, our friends, family, classmates and colleagues, in today’s world it’s also online.

Every day, people everywhere are spending so much of their time consuming media, and while we may not be completely conscious of it, this media we consume is sending us messages constantly. These messages could be political, as they often are, but social messages are being sent to us every day – messages about the society we live in. They teach us about friendship, family dynamics, religion, and culture. They teach us about who we are, other people, and our place in the world. They teach us to hate, distrust, or even feel superior to women, people of color, immigrants, disabled people, poor people, trans people.

Love in Late-Stage Capitalism

In a modern capitalist society, which in some sense, celebrates self-love, it is still anchored in capitalism. Self-love largely involves consumerism – buying products and services as a way of loving oneself. It’s too often about skin care routines and not enough about self-kindness, and the radical action of detaching oneself from societal expectations and norms.

Romantic love and modern dating is also heavily influenced by capitalism. Hetero-normative dating advice influencers will tell you that men and women must fit into these specific categories, and check these boxes, about what makes a man masculine, and a woman feminine, and most importantly, what makes you valuable. And all of it is not so much in our best interests, as it is for those who benefit fiscally from these messages.

Unlearning Harm, Rebuilding Love

So the question is, what is love outside of these systems? It’s radical. It’s pulling yourself away from these messages and re-imagining what love can look like outside of it. It’s rooting your values in care, compassion, and respect for all human beings.

When I approach my partner, in any kind of difficult moment, I try to tell myself, “I am a human being, he is a human being” and that’s the core truth that we start growing our solution from. We focus on compassion, understanding, and acceptance. I speak with kindness always and lead with care. Almost always, a solution will sprout from this place because at its center is love and respect for another human being.

While these values are applied to romantic love, they can also be applied to platonic love, and to a love for all human beings. Love for all human beings leads to systems of support and community building. When we lead with this, we break down and begin to unlearn decades of harmful messaging. We start thinking about everything differently. We begin to value our communities a lot more and want to protect them. We want to protect those whom the system seeks to harm.

Love as in Care Work, Care Work as in Showing Up

Love is one part mercy, and one part care work. In one part, we must extend mercy to others. In another, we must extend care work. Mercy means we must have compassion for those who we could harm instead. Care work is caring for those who need care. And the best way to think about care work is in how we “show up for others”. This can mean so many things and greatly depends on the needs of each person. That could mean bringing a sick neighbor food when they are ill, and other services like cleaning their homes, running errands for them, and providing childcare. It can mean giving comfort to those experiencing an emotional crisis. It could mean offering a couch or bedroom to those who are housing insecure. It could mean buying groceries for those who are food insecure – or driving them to a food bank. It could mean assisting someone in securing welfare or legal services, or organizing with your community to meet the needs of a community member.

Ultimately we must believe that “if we show up for others, they will show up for us”, and I don’t mean this at just a personal relationship level, but scaled up further. I am a low energy having, physically and mentally disabled woman. I receive a lot of mercy and care from others. Much more than I put out. In fact, my survival depends on it. I mean this both at a personal relationship level, and on a community level.

Loving at the End of the World

I’m no expert on love, and I don’t think anyone can be, but many of us are experimentalists still. Why? Well because everyone needs to be loved, and we all need community. Like you, I love when it hurts. I love against all odds. I love when the cards are stacked against me. Or when everyone says not to. I’ve struggled with relationship building and maintenance. I know “abandonment issues”. I “worked on myself”, meaning I sat down for psycho-therapy. I’ve experienced the pain in loving under mental illness and harmful systems, as so many of us have done, and yet still believe in the power of love, and its ability to remake our world.

You can’t have revolution, or create a better world without love. You can’t have love without care work being the foundation of it. We have to believe that caring for each other, leading with love in its purest form, is an act of rebellion. We are creating a new kind of culture where the care work we do for each other is so powerful that it can challenge a harmful system that dehumanizes others daily.

Loving at the end of the world is standing in a place of complete uncertainty, not knowing what tomorrow will bring, but showing up anyway. It’s about facing the struggle and still trusting in your allies, in the ones you love, and those who love you – trusting that together, you can survive, even thrive, in these terrible times.

I apologize for any typos. I am just a girl after all.

I also have a Ko-fi, where you can buy me a coffee for $5!