This entry is thus apt to contain a few bad as well as good examples from my past love life.  Hopefully enough time has passed that I can do this without it just looking like an exercise in bitterness, because I honestly don't intend it that way at the moment.  Those of you with any doubts on that front can feel free to contrast the essay below with past instances of overt bitterness and to thereby make the difference clear.

Getting on with it though:

In "Ethics," Badiou laments the way we in contemporary times treat human beings just as 'that which can suffer and die like any other animal,' and construct all of our ethics around this, thereby turning ethics into a conservative, negative exercise of "how can we ward off evil?" rather than a progressive, positive exercise of "how can we actually make the world a better place?" 

An example of the problems that this causes in Badiou's view is the way we do a lot of handwringing and bandage-solutions in response to human rights violations, but tend to be pretty gutless about addressing political situations that lead to those human rights violations in the first place. 

Badiou prefers an ethics that better focuses on what sets human beings apart from the rest of nature, i.e. that through which they reveal themselves as defined by something greater than their ability to suffer and die.  He calls this 'immortality', not in the sense of literal eternal life, but in the sense of 'rising above the limitations of a mortal being.' 

In order for this dimension of human existence to manifest, an 'event' must occur.  The 'event' is the originating source that births a cause greater than oneself which one then devotes oneself to.  Such an event can occur in one of four possible areas: science, art, politics and love.

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Specifics:

1) The 'event' is something that seems, from the perspective of the status quo world, impossible. 

In the case of love: what are the odds that this person, and this other person, so well-suited to one another for mutual self-cultivation and joint spiritual evolution, would meet one another? 

And yet their meeting is the precondition of everything wonderful that happens as a result.

2) The status quo world lacks the words to adequately describe the event, and endlessly comes up with opinions that dismiss it because of 'the facts' of the situation. 

In the case of love: doubt comes from outside via opinions such as "long distance relationships never work" or "a relationship between a Christian and an atheist will never work" (hey, I can rip off other peoples' biographical details as well as my own ), but also from inside via such opinions as "I'm too fascist about my living space to ever live with another person" or "I could never commit to just one person because I get bored too easily." 

All such opinions are basically of the form "true love between these two is impossible because of what I know of the facts of this situation," and dismiss the existential ability of the human being to make a new choice.  They thereby lower human beings to the level of unthinking nature-that-just-keeps-doing-what-it-has-always-done, no matter how 'intelligent' such opinions may seem.

3) However, to those involved in the event, it is an inspiring and compelling force that moves them to redescribe and reinterpret the world they formerly thought they knew, thereby revealing new possibilities.  This reinterpretation and subsequent changed-way-of-living Badiou calls the 'truth process.' 

In the case of love: partners find themselves happy in one another's presence in a different way than they have been in any other circumstances.  They talk and work out problems, they discover that they were capable of greater and deeper things than they'd previously thought possible.  The vision of a whole new form of life that intrinsically requires this specific, irreplaceable other person in it comes to light.

4) Sticking to the 'truth process' requires continued faith in the impossible.  One must rearrange one's prior interests to accomodate a new priority. 

In the case of love: one ignores the naysayers and follows one's inspiration, mutual compromise is a stimulating challenge of problem-solving rather than a troublesome burden, one says to oneself, "I thought I could never do this, but maybe I can - let's be open-minded and at least give it a proper try."  One feels that both the high points and the set backs have some sort of constructive, redemptive significance to them, and therefore one is committed to 'keep going.'

Compelled by the positive experiences of the relationship, one may alienate others, but one finds the new world one lives in sufficiently worthwhile for this to be an acceptable loss.  These days I forgive anyone who 'disappears' into a good relationship for just this 'the truth process is intrinsically asocial because it is opposed to common opinion' sort of reason.

5) Badiou postulates that while transformative good can come of a 'truth process,' it also makes possible three special forms of 'evil'.  Perhaps the most common form of 'evil' is 'betrayal.'  This is where the animal self decides that in order to look out for itself it can no longer coexist with the immortal. 

In the case of love: someone decides that the wealth and status associated with their job is worth sacrificing their relationship for.  Or, someone decides that since they have been abandoned eventually by every other partner, sooner or later this one will too, so better to just run away now and save one's own psychological skin.  Both of these examples are motivated by anxiety about self-preservation: the very preoccupation of the animal self. 

Another example would be cheating, which is perhaps a particularly obvious case of the 'animal' saying 'me first.'

6) The opposite form of 'evil' from 'betrayal' is 'disaster.'  Whereas betrayal is when the animal overcomes the immortal, disaster is when the opposite happens and the immortal overcomes the animal.  This is fatal to the 'truth process' because while the immortal dominates that process, it cannot drive it by itself, as if the real world does not exist. 

In the case of love: two people decide that they have to get married 'right now,' even though they do not have their shit together financially, and the resulting strain of school/work/child-juggling ruins the relationship. 

Or, two people publicize their (gay? interracial? pick some other adjective that opinion may oppose) relationship in order to make a political point, and the conservative public gets enraged and lynches them. 

In both cases, the point is: if you act as if the 'truth process' has the power to change the world unilaterally, eventually the world will slap back at you in a way that brings the 'truth process' to an end.  The second case could well have political significance, but from the perspective of the love 'event,' it is still a 'disaster.'

7) The last form of evil is 'simulacrum.'  Simulacrum occurs when someone devotes themselves to something that they think is an 'event,' i.e. an erruption of the new-and-previously-impossible into the world, when really it is brute animal interest masquerading as immortality.  This is dangerous because if you have no previously-existing conception of what the 'truth process' 'must' look like, you can be open-minded about its potential manifestations, whereas if you have a set idea of what is 'supposed' to happen, this tends to manifest in the violent negation of whatever contradicts that vision. 

In the case of love: one thinks they love the partner for who they are, but they are actually in love with the idea of the partner, or in love with their projection of their own anima/animus onto the partner, or in love with some trait of the partner.  They thus have a vision in mind that they are going to punish their partner for not living up to. 

Or, one partner is treating the relationship as a 'truth process' (as described above) while the other is treating it as an elaborate social manipulation aimed at their own sexual gratification and general entertainment, i.e. satisfaction of animal interests.  In that case, one could say that the latter partner's act of 'betrayal' is what turns the 'truth process' into a 'simulacrum.'

Perhaps the silver lining of a 'simulacrum', then, is that it may provide some insight into the structure of a 'truth process' that gives the participant good practice for when the real thing actually comes along.  Certainly this is the way I feel about my own past 'simulacrum' these days.

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Notes and clarifications:

To further illustrate the philosophical structure, I'll do a super-quick recap of all of the above using a science example:

Event: The formulation of the theory of evolution. 
Truth process entails: revising previously existing theories of biology. 
Betrayal: to back off from the theory of evolution just because the conservative religious types are protesting about it.  (Note here that protection of animal interest includes "I must champion the causes of my social group at any cost because otherwise I don't know who I am.") 
Disaster: the use of evolution to spur on "social darwinist" politics that ultimately embrace ideology instead of continued scientific inquiry. 
Simulacrum: So-called "creation science" is a simulacrum in that it dismisses real scientific evidence in order to prove its own 'truth.'

Politics example:

Event: the concept of freedom and equality for all human beings.
Truth process entails: changing laws and overcoming unequal ways of life. 
Betrayal: let's not extend this concept to women/racial minorities/whatever because that would make our lives just too inconvenient, i.e. clash with animal interests. 
Disaster: let's assume that the only way to protect freedom is to take away other peoples' freedom, i.e. self-defeating overzealousness.
Simulacrum: let's go 'free' those people in that country over there, and occupy it to make sure they stay free, and did we mention coincidentally there is a lot of oil in that country?

I'd do an art example too but I can't think of one because my recent post about the wanky bullshit aspects of art is too fresh in my mind.  You'll have to make up your own if that's what you want.

These are admittedly sloppy examples, but just struck me as fun to do.  Clear as mud?  Awesome.

One more clarification:

I grasp that while 4 can be understood positively as "don't give up on something good just because your friends don't understand," it can also be twisted negatively into "don't listen to your friends when they are giving you valid advice that your relationship sucks." 

Against this I would say, bad relationships are typically in either the 'betrayal' or 'simulacrum' categories already, in which case the 'truth process' is already dead and there is no point in being faithful to it. 

Or in normal English: if you've been cheated on or otherwise backstabbed multiple times, the person obviously doesn't love you, so pack your shit and get out already.  Y'know, not unlike what I already said pretty recently in another entry?  Sure, the 'impossibility' aspect of the love 'event' includes "maybe so-and-so will change," I'm just pretty skeptical of the possibility if so-and-so has already shown a lengthy pattern of protecting their own animal interests at the expense of their partner.

But hey, I said I wasn't going to be bitter.

So on this Valentine's Day, here's to the impossible, particularly its giving-way to new inspirations.

And seeing as how I'd previously thought encountering the impossible twice in one lifetime was unlikely, and am now starting to have pleasant doubts about that particular opinion of mine, happy Valentine's Day to Zyclobonzaron in particular.

Edit: Oh, and incidentally here is a Sinfest illustration of points 1-4 above: