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I’d argue the inverse - you’re fetishizing violence and the emotional satisfaction of a total victory. As posters above argued, revolutions present copious opp
by whearyou 7y ago
I’d argue the inverse - you’re fetishizing violence and the emotional satisfaction of a total victory.
As posters above argued, revolutions present copious opportunities for being hijacked by bad actors/ideologues, and very rarely produce anything other than more suffering than in the original conditions. There is strong quantitative evidence to back this, check out the report from the NECSI.org website.
Best I can tell, the significant upside of revolutions is they change the distribution of suffering, brining it to those who had before benefited, even if overall everyone suffers. I suspect this is the emotional allure of revolution, sticking it to those who have been sticking it to you. This is really a primate thing, studies with monkeys have shown that they’ll allow harm to themselves to get back at those they view causing or benefiting from an inequitable situation (as I recall the study had something to do with grapes).
Real change that produces progress requires consistent engagement over many years (know your representative, etc), individual responsibility and personal sacrifice (start a community group and build relationships, etc.), and compromise. Underlying it all is building and cultivating trust - trust is the foundation of healthy societies.
I think all those things are undermined by our current circumstances in society. These include the physical structure of communication media (social media), economic pressures most people experience (who has the time to start a community group when they’re trying to win at the grind), and current ideological climate. The first two are unconscionable and clearly encouraged directly or indirectly by and for the sake of the economic power holders’ interests. This last one however is insidious and in the interest of ideological power holders’ interest. Folks like you suggest that there’s a way to have your cake and eat it too - just get angry and violent enough and poof there’s your solution, no hard work needed. This kind of, forgive me for using these words but, self serving immaturity occupies the intellectual space and crowds out people coming to terms with what’s required for real change, progress, and suffering-reduction.
Edited: for language/spelling and to add the last two paragraphs.
- claudiawerner 7y ago>I suspect this is the emotional allure of revolution, sticking it to those who have been sticking it to you. I think this view is too simplistic; many ideas of a better society are simply incompatible with change "within the system", since the system itself, they argue, inherently fosters the tendencies they're against. >Real change that produces progress requires consistent engagement over many years (know your representative, etc), individual responsibility and personal sacrifice (start a community group and build relationships, etc.), and compromise. Does it? Why? What's the evidence to back this up? Consider that, for example, not a single petition made to the English government through their own petition schema has actually accomplished anything. This "know your representative" stuff doesn't even apply to non-violent changes of power. Do you think Gandhi succeeded because he got to know his representative, or he was open to compromise on Indian independence? >This kind of, forgive me for using these words but, self serving immaturity occupies the intellectual space and crowds out people coming to terms with what’s required for real change The intellectual space is currently occupied by near-pervasive liberal egalitarianism, and liberal egalitarians suggest that the way things are right now (systematically) is just fine. The truth is that your anti-revolutionary model assumes that the goals sought by would-be revolutionaries can be accommodated within whatever system they protest, but this is manifestly untrue, and the history of both violent and non-violent revolutions shows as much. It is also shockingly ignorant of revolutions from inside the system itself against the people - the industrial revolution being one (think of the violent enclosure movement in Western Europe on behalf of the State).