for Richard Stallman To paraphrase and adapt the words of Richard Stallman, if I believe I have a beautiful and/or interesting musical idea, I feel a compelling need, if not an almost ethical obligation, to share this idea with others, particularly with those who I believe will gain pleasure from the knowledge of or exposure to my idea. Likewise, I hope the feeling of this "compelling need" is reciprocal, that others who believe they have beautiful and/or interesting musical ideas will share them with me. I am certain that most of us who are musicians and music lovers share the desire for this exchange of musical ideas. Perhaps this feeling, this creative, expressive drive is the force that unites us most as a community. But, personally, my "compelling need" goes beyond simply the sharing of ideas with others: I also feel the need to permit, if not to encourage, others to build upon my ideas and/or to adapt my ideas for their own purposes, if they deem my ideas so worthy. And, yes, by this I do mean that I not only permit and but also encourage others to perform my works and to modify my works in any way(s) they deem appropriate and necessary for their own purposes. No doubt, my greater "compelling need" will give some readers pause. But should it? Musicians have always been inspired by one another's work. In fact, the processes of inspiration, emulation, derivation, etc. are so necessary to music that music would cease to develop and to exist without them. Furthermore, music would never have come into existence at all without referencing something. Hence, music is by its very nature derivative, and, if we ignore this fact---that the very essence of music is the process of evolution, copying, and adaptation---our premeditated ignorance will not make this fact not a fact. Some readers will suggest that a composer who states, "This song by so-and-so inspired me to write this new song" and a composer who states, "I took so-and-so's song, changed it a little bit, and created this new song" are expressing two entirely different ideas or phenomena. But are these composers' statements substantially different? These statements, at best, seem to express two different points on a spectrum of "originality" or "derivation," if we can believe that being "inspired by" and song is somehow less derivative than "adapting" or "remaking" a song, etc., and the validity of this belief seems rather questionable. How useful are distinctions between degrees of derivation and originality to us, the musicians and music lovers, anyway, if, in fact, these degrees can even be determined? If we ponder their usefulness for even just a little while, we quickly see that the distinctions don't seem useful at all. In fact, these distinctions only seem to drive a wedge between us, a wedge that keeps us working in isolation, rather than in cooperation, denying us the opportunity to develop each other's ideas clearly and openly and to further the state of the art, a wedge that denies the inevitably dialectical nature of music, and, as a result, chokes what music is at its very core. So how have we come so far down a road that is so obviously wrong and so contradictory to the very nature of the art we love? And whose interest(s) have this road actually served? As far as I can tell, not the mass of musicians and music lovers. Let's look again at the two earlier statements by our hypothetical composers: "This song by so-and-so inspired me to write this new song." "I took so-and-so's song, changed it a little bit, and created this new song." No one finds fault with the first statement, and the common view is that the second statement alludes to a composing process that is more "derivative" than the first. But notice what else is different between these two statements: The first is passive, and the second is active. In the first statement, the composer is acted upon by music. In the second statement, the composer acts upon music. Why is it that the former is commonly considered more acceptable than the latter? Why should the composer wait to be acted upon? Why should he or she wait passively to be "inspired," instead of taking action to engage in the creative act himself or herself? Is it that we still believe in muses? So it seems. Or is the issue proprietorial? Is the offense that, in the first statement, someone else's music acts upon the composer and, in the second statement, the composer acts upon someone else's music? But since we know that music is by its very nature created by emulation, derivation, etc., we also know that "someone else's music" is hardly only that some one's music. Music's collective and dialectical nature confounds normative conceptions of individual proprietorship. And what of the music lovers who are patrons but who don't participate in the creative, composing process? What about the exchanging and sharing of music in which these individuals engage? The fact is, these patrons are engaging in the creative, composing process, as much so as any of us who consider ourselves musicians and/or composers. Furthermore, these patrons are the primary means by which the "compelling need" of those of us who consider ourselves to be musicians and/or composers to share is satisfied. The fact is, we are all one community, and those who attempt to drive a wedge between us, fellow musicians, composers, and patrons, are not doing so to serve our interests or the interests of music, but their own interests. The problem isn't that musicians and music lovers share ideas and want to continue to share ideas. The problem is that the current model of the creation and distribution of music is at odds with the very nature of music itself. However, we can liberate ourselves from this model. We can do better. We are a creative community, and, as a result, we can find creative ways to make, distribute, and enjoy music that are healthy for our community and the art form we love.

What happens to us as we older?

Well, obviously, a number of things happen to us as we grow older--some good, some bad, and some that just are. But the "happening" or change, for lack of a better word, in which I'm interested, is how it is that we lose the values we had as children.

Think about the values we learned as children--don't hit your neighbors, share with others, clean up after yourself, don't take things that don't belong to you without permission....How is it that along the way we lose these basic values in the name of maturity?

How is it that we learned that it's OK to hit your neighbors, at least "under certain circumstances"? Or that it's OK not to share with other people because competition is somehow virtuous and the "American way"? Or that's it's OK not to clean up after yourself because it's too expensive or inconvenient or the magic of economics will somehow "clean up" after us? Or that it's OK to take from other people, as long as we have some sort of rationalization for doing so?

Look at the values we had, the values we were taught as children, and look at values that have been ingrained in the majority of us as adults. How did we become so perverted? What happened to us? And how did it happen? How is it that we expect more of children than we expect of ourselves? How is this not a sad commentary on all of us and a sign of one of our greatest failures?

Of course, when I say that we "hit" our neighbors as adults, I'm speaking somewhat metaphorically. Most of us don't literally "hit" our neighbors, at least not usually.

But, unfortunately, we do far worse things. We drop bombs on our neighbors. We torture and abuse our neighbors. We cage our neighbors in prisons like animals and execute them. Yet, as children, we knew these things were wrong.

As children, we knew it was wrong not to share our toys with others. Yet, as adults, we have yet to recognize that sharing far more critical things, such as food, housing, and health care has any value at all. Or even sharing something as simple and "free" as love.

As children, we knew if we spilled our milk that it was wrong not to clean it up. Yet, as adults, we don't think it's important to clean up after ourselves when we spill toxic waste into the environment, endangering the lives of people and other living things, or that we should even do something as simple as make the effort to recycle the trash we generate daily.

As children, we knew it was wrong to take things from other people without their permission. Yes, as adults, we think it is acceptable to take entire countries away from their inhabitants.

So how is it that we arrived at this terrible transformation for the worse? For most of us, the transformation likely didn't occur out of nowhere all at once. More than likely, the transformation occurred slowly over time, as a series of small compromises, little lessons we learned that taught us that our childhood values didn't work in the "real world" and that we had to give them up in order to survive.

I apologize if I sound as if I'm promoting some Wordsworthesque idealization of childhood; that is not my intent. I do not believe that children are naturally "innocent" or "virtuous," whatever those things mean. I am not trying to suggest anything at all about the nature of children themselves. What I am interested in are the basic values that parents teach their children, and these positive basic values come from adults, not children.

Why do parents teach their children these values? We cannot help but wonder why parents would teach their children something that they, more than likely, believe will inevitably become corrupted and in which they no longer believe themselves. Are parents trying to give their children a delusional, positive, romantic view of the world, so long as the corrupt world will allow.

Though I'm sure many parents want to give their children positive world views, I don't believe that this is their primary motive for teaching their children these values. I believe that parents teach these values to their children because they believe them to have real-world utility and purpose. The evidence for this utility and purpose is obvious--look at the world we live in, and look at the world we could live in if everyone followed the values commonly taught to children.

Fortunately, we don't have to become children again to employ the values we teach children. Remember, these values come from the adults who teach them to children, We simply need to realize that if these values are worth instilling in children, then they are worth retaining and employing ourselves.

Undoing many of the compromises we made along the way will not be easy, but we can succeed if we are willing to try. We only need to be willing to accept the hurt and pain that come from making ourselves vulnerable--like children. We may chose not to "hit" other people and be "hit"' in return. We may chose to share with others only to be robbed or, at least, to have the kindness not be returned. But, in general, these things will likely not occur, and people will respond positively to our "childish" values, and, as a result, our lights will shine a positive and transforming force upon the world. And, like resilient children, we will survive the times we are hurt.

I believe in love.

To our postmodern ears, the above statement likely sounds foolishly romantic, naive, trite, corny, and not remotely ironic and cynical enough (i.e. intellectual enough) to be worthy of our consideration.

We likely could amuse ourselves for hours, conjuring up, quite easily, words and phrases to marginalize a statement like "I believe in love" and, by doing so, make ourselves feel smart and clever because we are far too wise to fall for such foolish ideas.

Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we know we would depart from such colloquy wondering why we cannot believe in such ideas and why we are so afraid to believe in them, knowing that, deep inside, we do, in fact, long to believe in love. And this awareness would likely bestow upon us feelings sadness, emptiness, resentfulness, and a longing for something to fill our seemingly endless void.

However, my above predictions are probably irrelevant with regard to this brief essay, as the kind of love typically ridiculed by the cynical is not the kind of love of which I speak. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech,

When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.

While I am a secular person and not a believer in the "metaphysical," I, like Dr. King, mean neither sentimentality nor "emotional bosh."

So what is it that I do mean by love? When I speak of love, I am speaking of a force, a force that manifests itself in acts of compassion for which there is no apparent justification or reward (i.e. people acting out of compassion for one another without any thought of being rewarded for such action). I believe it is the manifestation this force of love that liberates us from the tit for tat economy of typical human interaction and shows us a superior way of being, a way of being that is not a utopian "pipe dream," but very real because it is exists and operates within us already.

I believe many of us have experienced the force of this type of love within our lives at some point in time, this powerful force of giving to others while expecting nothing in return. And though this shared experience is valuable, my primary interest is in how we can expand the influence of this force in our lives and extend its influence to touch all areas of our lives and, by doing so, transform our society.

I believe the answer to this "how" lies within us, most notably in how we view the force of love and in how we view other people.

Too often, we view love as force in which we are passive. Something happens to us "magically" or "supernaturally" without us taking action or against our will; something invades us from the outside and transforms us. Frequently, we also view love as something we "fall into," as if love is some sort of "accident." And too often we view love as something reserved for "special" people in our lives who are "worthy" for some reason or another of this special consideration or treatment known as "love."

However, the kind of love in which I believe is neither a force in which we are passive nor an accident nor reserved for a special class of people. The love in which I believe is a powerful force that we nurture, that we develop, that we exercise with intention, the intention being to transform ourselves, the lives of other people, and, consequently, our society as a whole.

The love in which I believe does not appear mysteriously out of nowhere, like some sort of unpetitioned, divine inspiration. The love in which I believe is like art in the sense that it originates with the creative force within us and evolves, as we do, over time as we transform ourselves into becoming more compassionate and enlightened people.

I believe we will never achieve a state of "perfect" compassion for other people, and such a state is not a state of love anyway. If we believe otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Love is also not a state of perfect "peace" though we can certainly understand why this view of love has it's allure. After all, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could somehow achieve a perfect state of "enlightenment" that enabled us to be effortlessly kind and compassionate to others? But such is not the case. Love is not easy. Love requires effort, hard work, strain, and toil. Love requires a lifelong inner conflict between our old selves and ideas and the newer, better, more compassionate and enlightened ideas of the person we are constantly trying to become. Love is a constant struggle in which we will fail many times. We simply have to come to terms with these failures and keep trying. This effort is love.

The love in which I believe is a difficult struggle, but this struggle is made easier when we transform the way in which we view other people. How can we transform the way in which we view other people? I believe this transformation can be accomplished if we learn to appreciate the uniqueness of the individual.

Yes, this idea may sound corny. But when I speak of "appreciating the uniqueness" of the individual, I am not speaking of some insincere, trite sweet talk that "everyone is special." By "appreciating the uniqueness" of the individual, I mean that we understand that, within all of us, there is something rare and valuable. That within all of us, there is something that has never existed before and will never exist again, and, as a result, there is something in all of us that is unique to all time. If we need to be compelled to love other people, then this uniqueness should motivate us to find every person "worth" loving. Loving things that are unique and special is natural for most of us; we simply need to understand that all people are unique and special.

But, at the same time, we also need to be "realistic." Loving other people is not completely "unselfish." We need to understand that when we love other people we also help ourselves because, when we love someone, we develop a special connection with that person that gives us more insight into that person's uniqueness. From this insight, we are able to learn not only about that person but also about ourselves. For example, we can explore such questions are how are we different from this person? What positive characteristics does this person exhibit that I do not, and how can I develop these positive characteristics in my own life? The answers to such questions can help us discover each others' uniquenesses as well as ways of developing their expression.

Perhaps, the most important aspect of loving other people, though, is that loving other people is the key to transforming our society. Individually, loving other people will bring us personal happiness, regardless of the effort and pain often involved, because we will feel better about ourselves for making the effort to love other people, and we will feel better for projecting the positive force of love, instead of negativity. Of course, socially, loving other people will bring happiness to others, as they will feel appreciated, cared for, and valued for just being who they are. Also, and perhaps more importantly, loving other people will motivate us to act in more positive and constructive ways when dealing with others, and this behavior will bring more happiness both to ourselves and to others and encourage others to engage in similar, more constructive behaviors.

I believe this constructive behavior brought on by love is the most important key to transforming and saving our society from the selfishness and violence that all too often characterize it an plague it. Though it may sound dramatic to some, I believe that, if we wish to continue to our existence, we have no choice but to transform our society through love and, as a prerequisite, to love one another. Furthermore, after much contemplation and exploration, I do not see any other way for us to curb destructive human behavior than through love. After all, other efforts have not been effective. So why should we not explore the more difficult but obvious option? If for no other reason than for this reason, I believe in love.