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, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”
I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” 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, “You know, don’t you.”
“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”
Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.
And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”
The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.
“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”
The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”
“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”
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.
But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.
Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d 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 you’ll 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 weren’t there.
(*if you’re 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, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t 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 haven’t 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 can’t control.
I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.
So throw the damn pie
Speaking of the effects of pie throwing and art in opposition of oppression, and “resistance inspires resistance”:
Imagine sitting in a packed auditorium and some asshole is up front is spouting bullshit about minorites. Like saying they’re filthy and deserve a violent death etc. And there are lots of people nodding along and even cheering and applauding
But no one is saying or doing anything to disagree, so you think that you’re the only one who opposes the speaker. And you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want their ire or violence to be aimed at you
So you go through the entire speech, and possibly your entire life, thinking you’re alone
BUT if just one person has the courage to speak up, to throw a pie, to project art on the screen behind the speaker, then that single act of resistance will inspire others to do the same. It could even inspire you to stand up. Or if you’re the first, then you can inspire others
Small acts can snowball into an avalanche
Reblogging this in 2025 because of all the “Yeah the No Kings protests were cool but they didn’t doooo anything” crap I’ve been seeing lately.
The No Kings protests absolutely did do something. Just tune into your local city council meeting the next week and see public forum. Chances are there’s a public official advocating resistance of all and any federal orders, or a local housing/immigration activist saying it helped them and then pointing that energy in the direction of more.
3.75% of the entire country was in the streets on Saturday. Might not sound like a lot, but those are the kind of numbers that signal a toppling government or a revolution.
If nothing else it proves to wannabe authoritarians that they can sure fucking try, but they can’t kill us all.
wait let me just add about Vietnam:
every single outspoken anti-war protestor did do something. Muhammad Ali famously refused to join the war, which in turn inspired people to draft dodge, or help others draft dodge. Every person dodging the draft is one less person shooting at someone during a war, and one less person likely to die.
