French and American Revolution, 18th century in general, Enlightenment good and bad, how to achieve social change today, related problems like climate change and capitalism (having formed a new aristocracy). And yes how surprisingly similar todays world and the world before the French Revolution are.
A tyrant can exercise tyranny only insofar as the objects of his tyranny continue to allow it. Remember this.
I urge you to attend a No Kings protest where you live.
"We're underpaid, overworked, constantly exploited, and there's literally NOTHING we can do about it!" Union organizers are doing something about it
"There's no way out of this capitalist hellscape, we need a VIOLENT REVOLUTION" Well. Before plunging the country into war I have another suggestion we could try
"We need to all start acting like Luigi and start taking down these oligarchs!" Okay, it's easy to talk a big game about how you're gonna start shooting billionaires when you know you'll never be held to your words, but can you talk a big game about unions. To your coworkers.
"We need to MAKE OLIGARCHS AFRAID AGAIN!" Oligarchs are not afraid of Americans starting a mass revolution. 90% of the country is WAY too comfortable to do that. You know what they are afraid of though?
"We need to burn down the entire system! Sure, some people might die, but that's a small sacrifice for others to make so that I can get better working conditions!" What if instead of trying to talk the people around you into a violent revolution that will end in mass casualties, you tried talking the people around you into forming a union. What if we just gave that a shot before the mass violence option.
Why is no one doing anything about climate change. "Eat the Rich" is a fun slogan but no one is doing anything. Not even a general strike. I want to know what any of us can do.
Lots of people do lots of things about climate change. I've been active with Fridays for Future since 2019. We forced German politics to make laws about tackling climate change. We brought global awareness to the problem of Climate Change. We got lots of people to overthink how they consume. Renewable energies are on a global high and every year there is more, which directly cuts fossil fuel consumption. 50% of all countries worldwide already had fossil fuel peak in the electricity sector. Countries are sued by groups to do more against climate change. This year the International Court of Justice in Den Hague decided that living in an intact environment is a human right. Which directly ties to battling climate change.
All these things happen because people are fighting all around the globe against climate change and the Fossil Fuel Empire.
What can you do? Join groups or just go to protests. Buy second hand (yes fast fashion is a major contributor), and yeah recycling bins are great cause they cut fossil fuel energy for producing new stuff. Use renewable energies. Let other people know what you are doing (in a not missionary way please, just talk about it and that you like doing it). Vote for people who take climate change serious. If you invest money, invest it in sustainable projects. Maybe give some donations to groups fighting climate change. Plant a tree, give money to plant a tree.
Read the book "Blueprint for Revolution" by Srdja Popovic cause it is the best summary of strategies to get rid of dictators and achieve generally social change.
a common misconception is that a revolution is built by years of painstakingly raising class consciousness among the masses while at the same time building up a party capable of taking leadership during a revolutionary crisis. nothing could be further from the truth. a revolution is built by making social media posts calling for a general strike over and over until one day it just happens
Well usually it also involves people in power doing widely unjust things so people wake up saying "uhm why exactly let we have them all that power?"
And then, when a critical mass comes to the conclusion "we shouldn't let them have all that power"
Boom. Revolution.
(Of course that doesn't include all the ones that are painstakingly people raising awareness for certain injustices in todays society. Until a critical mass is reached who agree that this is an injustice and should be changed. Like end segregation. Letting woman vote. Stop making homosexuality illegal.)
At a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth, Senate Republicans just passed the largest redistribution of income upward in the history of this nation. It's an absolute travesty.
Honestly leftists need to internalize that having a revolution is the failure mode, revolution means chaos and a lot of people die both âdeservingâ and not and pretty much inevitably some asshole takes all the power, what you want to do is reform things before it get bad enough to need a revolution!
Less glorious, fewer statues, but a whole lot fewer people dead.
Germany got rid of their monarchy by revolution (aka lots of people going to the streets protesting) and there didn't die lots of people. (Cause government wasn't inclined to shoot at their own people)
And the GDR got basically upended by a peaceful revolution (aka lots of people going to the streets demanding stuff) and there didn't die lots of people. (Cause government wasn't inclined to shoot at their own people.)
The concept of revolution is bigger than violent revolutions. Every achievement of major social change can be called a revolution.
Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.
One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, âWho here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?â
I happen to know but Iâm trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, âLower,â and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, âYou know, donât you.â
âMy momâs a doc,â I said. He gave me a âso say itâ gesture and I said, âFour to ten percent depending on your sources.â
Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.
And the paramedic said, âWeâre gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?â
The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.
âWhat do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?â
The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, âA corpse.â
âRight,â says the paramedic. âSomeone who isnât breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what Iâm telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.â
So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.
Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where weâd be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.
What the whole world would look like.
Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time youâll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.
If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they werenât there.
(*if youâre curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)
That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:
Yes, itâs just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesnât do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.
And of course, we havenât spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they canât control.
Iâd rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isnât going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesnât immediately solve the problem, but it doesnât have to because itâs just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.
One of the worst things you can do to people in power (from their point of view) is ridicule them. It's even in Srdja Popovic's "Blueprint for Revolution" book, who used it to topple dictator Milosevic.
Because if people laugh about people in power. They aren't afraid of people in power. So they find more courage and more ways to resist.
Just think about how often (upcoming) dictators usually restrict what can be said about them. Why making fun of them gets banned. Or persecuted. Or artists doing so get imprisoned.
If they are trying so hard to get rid of something, you can just assume that it is having effect. And not so little.
The Global Nonviolent Action Database details some 40 cases of mass movements overcoming tyrants through strategic nonviolent campaigns.
"With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up:Â Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?
There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one thatâs been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database â which launched under my direction in 2011 â contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers. Â
At quick glance, the database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases â which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America â contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. Whatâs more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldnât overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle. Â
In a number of countries, the dictator had been embedded for years at the time they were pushed out. Egyptâs Hosni Mubarak, for example, had ruled for over 29 years. In the 1990s, citizens usually whispered his name for fear of reprisal. Mubarak legalized a âstate of emergency,â which meant censorship, expanded police powers and limits on the news media. Later, he âloosenedâ his rule, putting only 10 times as many police as the number of protesters at each demonstration. Â
The GNAD case study describes how Egyptians grew their democracy movement despite repression, and finally won in 2011. However, gaining a measure of freedom doesnât guarantee keeping it. As Egypt has shown in the years since, continued vigilance is needed, as is pro-active campaigning to deepen the degree of freedom won. Â
Some countries repeated the feat of nonviolently deposing a ruler: In Chile, the people nonviolently threw out a dictator in 1931 and then deposed a new dictator in 1988. South Koreans also did it twice, once in 1960 and again in 1987. (They also just stopped their current president from seizing dictatorial powers, but thatâs not yet in the database.) Â
In each case people had to act without knowing what the reprisals would be...
Itâs striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, âDonât join a dictatorâs army.â Â
Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action arenât enough. They may relieve an individualâs conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, donât assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign...
-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025. Article continues below.
East Germanyâs peaceful revolution
When East Germans began their revolt against the German Democratic Republic in 1988, they knew that their dictatorship of 43 years was backed by the Soviet Union, which might stage a deadly invasion. They nevertheless acted for freedom, which they gained and kept.
Researcher Hanna King tells us that East Germans began their successful campaign in January 1988 by taking a traditional annual memorial march and turning it into a full-scale demonstration for human rights and democracy. They followed up by taking advantage of a weekly prayer for peace at a church in Leipzig to organize rallies and protests. Lutheran pastors helped protect the organizers from retaliation and groups in other cities began to stage their own âMonday night demonstrations.â Â
The few hundred initial protesters quickly became 70,000, then 120,000, then 320,000, all participating in the weekly demonstrations. Organizers published a pamphlet outlining their vision for a unified German democracy and turned it into a petition. Prisoners of conscience began hunger strikes in solidarity.
By November 1988, a million people gathered in East Berlin, chanting, singing and waving banners calling for the dictatorshipâs end. The government, hoping to ease the pressure, announced the opening of the border to West Germany. Citizens took sledgehammers to the hated Berlin Wall and broke it down. Political officials resigned to protest the continued rigidity of the ruling party and the party itself disintegrated. By March 1990 â a bit over two years after the campaign was launched â the first multi-party, democratic elections were held.
Students lead the way in Pakistan
In Pakistan, it was university students (rather than religious clerics) who launched the 1968-69 uprising that forced Ayub Khan out of office after his decade as a dictator. Case researcher Aileen Eisenberg tells us that the campaign later required multiple sectors of society to join together to achieve critical mass, especially workers.Â
It was the students, though, who took the initiative â and the initial risks. In 1968, they declared that the governmentâs declaration of a âdecade of developmentâ was a fraud, protesting nonviolently in major cities. They sang and marched to their own song called âThe Decade of Sadness.âÂ
Police opened fire on one of the demonstrations, killing several students. In reaction the movement expanded, in numbers and demands. Boycotts grew, with masses of people refusing to pay the bus and railway fares on the government-run transportation system. Industrial workers joined the movement and practiced encirclement of factories and mills. An escalation of government repression followed, including more killings.Â
As the campaign expanded from urban to rural parts of Pakistan, the movementâs songs and political theater thrived. Khan responded with more violence, which intensified the determination among a critical mass of Pakistanis that it was time for him to go.
After months of growing direct action met by repressive violence, the army decided its own reputation was being degraded by their orders from the president, and they demanded his resignation. He complied and an election was scheduled for 1970 â the first since Pakistanâs independence in 1947.
Why use nonviolent struggle?
The campaigns in East Germany and Pakistan are typical of all 40 cases in their lack of a pacifist ideology, although some individuals active in the movements had that foundation. What the cases do seem to have in common is that the organizers saw the strategic value of nonviolent action, since they were up against an opponent likely to use violent repression. Their commitment to nonviolence would then rally the masses to their side.Â
That encourages me. Thereâs hardly time in the U.S. during Trumpâs regime to convert enough people to an ideological commitment to nonviolence, but there is time to persuade people of the strategic value of a nonviolent discipline.Â
Itâs striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, âDonât join a dictatorâs army.â Â
Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action arenât enough. They may relieve an individualâs conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, donât assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign â the importance of which is also outlined in my book âHow We Win.â Â
As research seminar students at Swarthmore continue to wade through history finding new cases, they are digging up details on struggles that go beyond democracy. The 1,400 already-published cases include campaigns for furthering environmental justice, racial and economic justice, and more. They are a resource for tactical ideas and strategy considerations, encouraging us to remember that even long-established dictators have been stopped by the power of nonviolent campaigns.
I genuinely believe that some people could encounter a button that says âif you push this button everyone in the world has the opportunity to live a better life and your life remains exactly the sameâ and they would not push it.
Theyâd be like âwell that buttonâs not fair to me, though,â even though thereâs literally no other buttons around and nothing newly bad would happen to them if the button was pushed.
Adding prev's tags because I agree with them, even though, as they say, it's not the point of the post, but yeah. Improving everyone's life would also improve your own.
original post and the response are related tho because it's about the perspective you have on improving other people's lives. non-button presser sees it as a competition (improving other's lives gives them an unfair advantage over you) while response sees it as collaborative (if their lives improve, they take me with them)
there are studies asking people if they'd approve of a program that helps Marginalized Group do X and they literally say in the text "this will have no effect on everyone else" and people will say they don't approve because it will harm them. so many people have such habitual Zero Sum brain that they can't imagine non-conflictual situations existing.
There are surely more statements that summarize this thought that all people are in the end equal in worth. That they are humans and should be treated as humans. All the same. With some undeniable human rights.Â
It has been more than 200 years some of these ideas have been put to paper. Some of them are only as young as the end of WWII. But they show that this idea has manifested in peoples minds and hearts.
And yes in it you can also find the true spirit of some christian teachings of viewing your fellow humans as your neighbors, someone you have an undeniable connection and a responsibility to treat as you want to be treated yourself.
It is if you want as old as humanity itself. Stuck in our minds and hearts from a time when indeed we were all neighbors in our little or further communities.
Because we are at our core in biology and evolution a communal species. That thrives and suffers together.Â
Yet over thousands of years there has been the competing ideology that âSome people are better than others.â
I do not want to delve into the question why or where its origin lies. But the fact remains that todays world is shaped by the competing ideas of âEveryone same in worthâ and âSome people better than others.â
So the idea of everyone being equal found its way into peoples hearts and minds again and took root anew and bore fruit, and so these declarations were written.
It does not need to reflect the true state of things.
Except that it does.
Ever since.
It is the purest of ideals as ideals should be, not as something that is, but as something that is meant to be achieved. The blueprint reality has to be held up to, compared to and evaluated to.
Are we already in a world where this ideal has been achieved? No? Then keep working.
And this, this single ideal, idea, concept has shaped our world the past 200 years. The past 200 years this idea has battled against the prevailing concept of âSome people are better than othersâ. The past 200 years fights have been won. Fights have been lost. But bit by bit, decade by decade we have inched closer and closer to fit our world to the ideal.
More people have freedom. More people have rights. Less people killed. More people saved. More humane punishments. More diplomatic agreements. A mindset that is more peaceful than it has been in the past.
For 200 years there has been social change to fit our world to that ideal of âAll humans are equal in worth.â Slowly, step by step but always progressing.
200 years is just a blip in human evolution. Even social evolution. There are ups and downs, steps forwards and steps back, but itâs undeniable progress. Progress away from putting humans into categories of âbetter and worseâ and towards filling just one category âhumanâ.Â
And such the feather, the word, has indeed become mightier than any sword. You can not kill ideas.
200 years is just a blip in human time. So do not expect the world to match the ideal yet. It wonât. It will disappoint you. It will make you miss the progress that has been achieved.Â
We are still battling the idea of âsome people betterâ, maybe we always will. But we are making progress. We are succeeding. We are winning step by step. Even when the world looks dark and progress seems to revert, it is just a slowing and not a halt.
For the ideal of âeveryone being the same in worthâ is humanity itself. It is rooted in the very core of our biology and evolution. It is planted in our hearts and our minds. And even if it withers down and falls dormant for a time. It will sprout again and again like the most loathsome, most awesome weed.
That is the true meaning and true legacy of the words
Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.
It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.
Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.
Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.
Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)
Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!
You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!
If you want it in a simple phrase:
You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.
đnote that the reason that shaming/guilt trips are common is not because the person âdoing themâ to others necessarily expects them to be effective. People posting guilt trip activism arenât going âoh gosh I really hope this methodology will help people the most.â (Because it doesnât.) but laying shame on others does give some feelings of power and control. And many times that isnât bad. For people who are powerless and have little control, it is understandable! Shame is a shortcut button you can press to try to get people to stop doing stuff. Often the stuff theyâre doing is horrible. Itâs natural to reach for it.
HoweverâŠ
Thatâs not to say itâs bad or done by bad people. Often it IS venting. Saying âshame on youâ is cathartic. Many people posting guilt trip activism are beaten down or burned out. They might feel like shame is the only tool left in their box, or they might just need to vent. Calling out shameful behaviour is not an inherently bad thing.
But itâs important to remember that the impulse to shame others - especially if they listen, especially if they change - is a nasty rewarding little bastard. Itâs rewarding, it feels good, it gives that person power and control. Itâs a shortcut button! Itâs an addictive one!
we can picture a parent/educator/leader who uses shaming too much as a tool, and we can understand how ineffective they are (and sometimes, how effective they are!) and the negative impact that they have on people. Leaning on the shortcut button is bad for your own character, too - it means you donât develop your skills beyond shaming.
The trick is to disengage from that cycle of shame and reward; donât let it become the only tool in your box! Itâs bad for you as well.
Zooming out, shame is a dominance behaviour that relates to the rules of the society the person operates in. Itâs tremendously ineffective to shame me for (for example) being bisexual, because according to my rules , itâs highly embarrassing and sad to be anything else. There are cultures with a framework that makes it extremely shameful to be bisexual, and people who are abused to make them fit into the framework; all of society is expected to participate in regular shaming and censure and guilting to ensure that nobody expresses bisexuality. Effective shaming requires there to be agreed-upon rules of whatâs unacceptable; using shaming as a tool shows the framework of whatâs considered unacceptable, and REQUIRES the framework to be in place.
Itâs damn hard to kinkshame or bully furries on tumblr. Everyone has agreed that they arenât doing anything shameful. But it is easy to shame them in an American megachurch.
But historically shame has worked, hasnât it? How come you can easily picture a Victorian female activist shaming the powerful men of Parliament for their treatment of orphaned children? How come you can picture it working? Because they all operated in a Christian framework that stated children should be cared for, and women appealed to the religious authority as being above the authority of the state. Religious appeals have been effective in the past, offering a separate set of rules to control behaviour, hence the rise of right-wing attempts to consolidate religious power as well.
From this flow a couple of things:
1. a culture that relies on shame (and disgust and fear) to control people is going to be more oppressive than one that doesnât. Itâs also going to have very controlling, very detailed, very specific frameworks in place. To shame Gays, it has to be agreed-upon that it is Wrong to be Gay, so theyâll install a framework of Being Illegal to be Gay. You have to install the buttons in order to press them.
2. At any point, people can simply decide not to be ashamed. Despite tremendous social pressure in times and places, queer people have been proud. Despite knowing exactly what the public think of them, people practice hobbies, kinks, fashion, beliefs, and behaviours that other people donât like. They always do and they always have. Shame stops being a weapon when people donât care; they can simply decline to hold the button for you to press any more. Shame requires that everyone consent to the framework! Hence the anxiety about ânormalisingâ queer liberation, or the existence of trans people - the fear is that if trans people stop being afraid and guilty, the buttons will break, and there will not only be more trans people, but theyâll be hard to control.
What flows from that are that people can resist shame effectively if they have a community that supports them. You can find this sympathetic (queer people support each other and resist shame) or distressing (a loved one falls down a conservative social media rabbit hole that turns them into a horrible person.) but it shows that shame wears off as a tool the instant that people decide to stop caring, especially if they have help. âWho cares if I lose YOUR good opinion, when that gives me THEIR good opinion?â
But finally - the reason shaming hasnât fixed the world yet (by anyoneâs definition) is because truly powerful people just donât feel much shame. They donât consent to the framework where other peopleâs opinion have any weight. They believe theyâre in charge of society and therefore free of consequences or needing to care. Their first step when installing frameworks and buttons is to make a rule saying âI donât have any buttons and nobody is allowed to press them.â This is what exactly why they sought the power to begin with. Shame requires that everyone agree that we are all social animals and our opinions of each other are worth something - powerful people do not think we are worth anything.
Conclusions: online activism using shame is ineffective for many reasons, including the fact that itâs a stopping behaviour and that people donât really make positive actions based on it. itâs understandable why people do it, though. Itâs one of the only real ârebalancingâ tools for powerless people - if their society has frameworks that allow for the rebalancing of social power. Next, shaming feels good, especially when it works. Itâs understandable to reach for it as a shortcut, but good leaders shouldnât rely on it. Shame stops working when people stop caring about it. People can resist shaming with support, if they donât care about other peopleâs opinions, or if they have enough power to insulate themselves. Powerful people have already decided that they do not care about being shamed.
Well yes⊠with the little addition that psychologically most of all people want to be âgood peopleâ and shaming in that sense is based on negotiating all the time what makes a person âa good personâ. In that sense stopping bad behavior can also lead to good behavior.
Owning slaves? Shame on you! No, no, very bad person, we do not do that.
Segregating white and black people? No, bad, bad shame one you! Stop doing that!
Excluding women from education, positions of power other stuff? No, bad, shame on you. (Well, we are still in the process of changing what the norm of that is and how bad we find that as society. Same with Queer and Trans rights.)
Burning fossil fuel and ruining the world for everyone? No! Bad stop ruining the planet. Stop burning fossil fuels! (Guess if you stop doing that you have to look for better options, thatâs what we want.)
I think that is why the universal declaration of human rights but also just the declaration of independence or other constitutional writings are really important. We have outlined agreements (that a very big portion of population) agree upon is Right and Good. So you can shame people when their action does not agree with this idea of how good people should be.
And yeah if you are like âFuck human rightsâ then you wonât be shamed. But it gives other people the right to say âYou are not a good humanâ and then everyone gets angry because they want to view themselves as good people. And some might actually think about their action and decide behaving differently might be actually the proper thing to do.
And well it all boils down to:
We have the widespread agreement that: âAll people are created equal in worth.â
And then we have the competing idea of: âSome people are created better than other people.â
And *waves to human rights and constitutions* yes we have societal frameworks to shame people in treating people more equal. Most of social change (guess in the western world) the past 200 years has worked exactly because of that.
And yes⊠even the powerful and mighty usually want to think of themselves as good people. Thatâs why they frame their horrible politics and actions in terms that seem to make them good people. Even the villains want to be the heroes of their own story.
When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, âWhat is your objective?â
He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelliâs magnum opus. Of course heâd already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)
I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.
What is your objective?
Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the menâs right whiners are on about now. You wonât find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.
I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friendâs parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctlyâthe teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.
I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They donât have an objective. They donât know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.
Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashiâs Five Rings. Read The Art of War. Theyâre classics for a reason. They canât cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything youâre getting in middle school and high school curricula.
Donât vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I donât care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They donât care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.
How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?
Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.
Donât be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?
Also, like, do ask to shadow people in politics? They can be surprisingly receptive to it! I was like "hey, lobbyist, can I shadow you?" and she was like "Sure! Come meet me at our state capitol building" and I learned a SHIT TON about how politics works in two days, and also fell a little bit in love with her, even though many lobbyists are lobbying for very evil things. (She was lobbying for our state medical association, which can absolutely be evil but in general is advocating for pretty decent things, like increasing funding for rural healthcare and trying to stop abortion bans.)
If what you want is specifically to learn how to make a political difference, there are so many people and organizations out there who want to help you! It can feel daunting, but just being up front with people can be effective. She came to give a talk at my medical school and I was like "hey can I shadow you?" and it was easy peasy lemon squeezy. Ask a teacher! Ask a parent's friend! Hell, ask a librarian! Say to anyone who will listen, "Hey, I wanna do this thing, just putting it out there" and you may find out you have links to someone who's into politics who can help you. Not all personal journeys have to be back-breaking. Sometimes they're fun and you get a latte and a state rep takes off her high heels and complains about them while you're in her office and you get to think about cool it is that all three of you in the room are women.
Also politics is not right for me because I'm incapable of sitting through boring meetings and I yell my thoughts at all times. Play to your strengths.
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
discoholicmusic
annaxmalina
vaporwave
