When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
The World Is Cold. You Must Light The World On Fire.
If we stay the course, including accepting death as a possibility at the end of the line, then you have exercised the most potent aspects of non-violence. The willingness to die for what you believe in is the best measure as to the power of the tools that you’re using to strike a blow for freedom.
Harry Belafonte on, among other things, the importance of maintaining a policy of non-violence and the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle for social change.
“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
- John F. Kennedy
The wave of disruption will wash over us all. Buckle up and brace for the future.
Although Swartz is not a sociologist, this analysis is very similar to the one that sociologist and social-media researcher Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina has come up with. As I described in an earlier post, Tufekci argues that social tools — and particularly Facebook, since it is much more widespread in Egypt and other Arab countries than Twitter is — have played a crucial role in creating what she calls an “collective action/information cascade” that helped transform groups of dissidents acting on their own into a widespread revolution.
What helped dictatorships like those in Egypt and Tunisia survive for so long, Tufekci says, is that before the Internet and the social web came along, people had no way of knowing whether their own dissatisfaction or revolutionary fervor was shared by others, apart from a small group that they might know personally. That’s enough to create small pockets of resistance, but in order for a movement to break out and become a significant force, the members of that movement have to know that others are also willing to fight — and possibly die — for that cause. Social media, Tufekci says, makes it possible to see this happening in real-time, and that helps create momentum.
In other words, as Swartz put it in his post, social tools like Facebook (and Twitter, and blogs and text messaging) allow the core group of crazy people to publicize what they are doing — and thereby connect with and inspire less crazy, but still committed people, to join them, and, at some point, this momentum tips over into outright revolution. As I’ve argued before, this is a fundamental aspect of the network effects that come from Facebook and Twitter, and it plays out not only in Arab revolutions, but in similar events in Britain during the London riots, and even in the current “Occupy Wall Street” protest movement.
Veterans have “a unique opportunity to continue serving here at home through our participation in this civic movement for change,” said Andrew Johnson, president of the New York City chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, which organized Wednesday’s march.
Veterans could take an increasingly visible presence in OWS. Some 2.3 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost half a million veterans last year went to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for health care.
Their grievances tend to be deep and personal as they face the challenges of coming home from war. The unemployment rate for veterans, at 12.4 percent, is due to climb as thousands of military personnel flood out of the ranks into an extremely competitive job market, with the Defense Department cutting back on manpower this year and in the years ahead.
Many Iraq and Afghan war veterans have come home with mental health issues, including post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. While the VA is scrambling to provide therapy, counseling and employment support, many veterans say such services are scarce and difficult to find.
Although they’ve been participating in Occupy protests throughout the country, vets say their ranks have been swelling since last week, when former Marine and Iraq War vet Scott Olsen sustained a skull fracture when he was hit by a police projectile at an Occupy Oakland protest. Although still hospitalized, Olsen, 24, is expected to make a full recovery.
“His injury has definitely galvanized veterans,” says University of Illinois senior Scott Kimball, who served in Iraq as an Army specialist. ”We’re getting calls from veterans across the country who are extremely angry and appalled that someone who served two tours in Iraq got injured as a well-behaved protester,” says Kimball, 27. “It’s rallying vets across the country. We’re just seeing the beginning of it.”
At the top of the city
in a glass-chromed room
an attorney assures the board of directors
that the corporation is the person
against which any or all action may be taken,
not against each and every director joint or several.
The multi-headed person exhales dry-iced victory
as counsel backs out the door
descending floor after floor
to wait for a cab in the cold.
Nearby, a breathing bundle of rags
sits on a grate of steam
and waits, just waits,
wondering where warmth went.
—Ruth Knight, “Persons”
As she often does, Naomi Klein cuts to the core of an essential issue. The Occupy protests comprise people of many races, religious affiliations, socioeconomic statuses, and nationalities. The protestors have a variety of grievances they would like addressed, but I believe, as does Ms. Klein, that the fundamental issue is one of values.
Most of the critical aspects of our lives have been commodified. Nothing is sacred and everything is for sale. Science, education, healthcare, war, and many other areas historically associated with either lofty ideals or primal needs have been co-opted by the ethos of big business.
At the same time, human beings have been marginalized and dehumanized, while, ironically, inhuman entities have been aggrandized and granted person-hood. The world is upside down and many are now prepared to begin addressing the issues required to restore balance to our lives.
Our values are the foundation of our society. They define the types of citizens we produce and shape the characteristics of the systems that ultimately uphold and regulate our civilization. Corruption of our values will necessarily result in the development of corrupt systems. This is the fundamental issue that lies at the heart of our discontent.
Change will require us to ask ourselves difficult questions. Who are we? What do we truly care about? What kind of world do we want to see for ourselves and our children? It’s not too late for real change to occur, but it will require patience, tolerance, open-mindedness and the will to sacrifice.
Source YouTube, Feld Thoughts
