ABSTRACT
Roman poet, atomist philosopher and scientist Lucretius opens his poem De Rerum Natura with a dedication to Venus. This is more than a simplistic following of a literary tradition, even while a seemingly strange act for a thinker so opposed to religious ‘superstition’. Lucretius’s Venus, as the goddess of love, is the embodiment of the universe’s powers of creativity. Some 20 centuries later, French philosopher of science Michel Serres finds in Lucretius a thinker whose ideas are closer to more contemporary nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory than he (Lucretius) is given credit for. In placing Venus, love and creativity at the head of his work, Lucretius simultaneously relegates the power of Mars and undermines the cultural and political importance of war. Serres takes this further into a critique of strategy (from the Greek for ‘head of the army’): a word whose use to valorize scientific endeavour he finds repulsive. This provides the impetus for this chapter to wonder: what if our attitudes to the future were divested of military, warlike and deathly validations and presented with and through love instead? As Anticipation Studies are a fairly new entry into the Futures world, they have the opportunity to develop differently. So, how might anticipation – as an act and a discipline – be lovely? To qualify ‘being’ with the adverb ‘lovely’ is no off-hand act. This recognizes that to create anticipation as loving not military, is to work in an ontological fashion. This chapter will examine these in order: first, to position love and friendship as a philosophical attitude; second, to position the development of anticipation studies in its relational ontology; next, to evaluate the tensions between love and war in futures work. Finally, in conclusion, I articulate the loving, anticipatory, relational ontology in terms of two important concepts: life – as Robert Rosen regarded anticipatory systems to be characteristic of living; and treaties – which serve, for Serres and Lucretius, as the loving versions of strategies.
