Originally posted by Liberator
you make a very good point. I'll have to look those French student riots, I'm afraid I don't know what you mean or at least never heard of them.
the 60-70s were a turbulent time for all Western nations. Student movements in America sort of culminated in the Kent state shootings and the Weather Underground, Civil rights and the anti-war movement, and at least in the history classes I took, that seemed to be what was emphasized. Other nations had just as radical student and anti-war movements. Especially the french.
And one day, the french students basically took over all of the campuses and began to make demands. This was only successful (lets not pretend, who the **** cares about what students have to say?) because something like 2/3 - 3/4 of the french labour force joined them on strike.
As the protest wore on, it became clear that the students really didn't have a plan. They were all idealism and optimism, but nobody knew what to do now that the old rule had been toppled. Hell, even when the Spanish Anarchists took over .... I want to say Madrid... they had to almost immediatly reinstate a form of government in many ways similar to what there was before to even have the factories run.
I took a sociology course on resistance and revolt, and the prof there said that the Communist political leaders, themselves part of the French political establishment and with strong connections to the labour leaders, began to feel threatened by the students, who weren't necessarily communists (they didn't follow party line at least) and had the workers end the strike, essentially taking the teeth out of any student movement.
basically, the lesson is, ideas are bankrupt. forget everything else, keep the lights on and the water running. People follow whoever does that.
Originally posted by Liberator
Your right too, focusing like an ad campaign at even the younger generations might be beneficial, after all they are the future.
younger people are almost a lost cause though. They are easy to convince, largely because they don't know any better. Not that I think the ideas are dumb, just that youth with limited life experience don't know enough to really apply the ideas to their everyday life. Socialist communism sounds awesome when you are in high school, because everything is handed to you anyways, and there is a total disconnect between economic prosperity and how much you work.
As people age, they invest time and money into the mainstream system, and become defensive of anything that threatens that lifestyle, as political insecurity would.
Converting highschool and uni students is like shooting fish in a barrel, and as soon as they achieve any sort of financial clout, the power needed to change society, they will have invested so much into it that they would rather not risk losing it for ideas they were never mature enough to understand in the first place.
See, I'll talk about england and france below, but you are too hung up on massive and apparent change. We need people to even begin to question whether rampant consumerism is the way they need to go.
Think of it like this. Christman, from a sociological point of view, is basically an orgy of mass consumption, from food, to gifts, to fuel for transport of said gifts and people to their families. Imagine if we celebrated a non-consumerist christmas.
Our economy would be crippled immediatly. Everything, bar the basic necessities of life, would only be available in metropolitan city centers, entire industries would collapse.
As bad as things are, we need slow progress, its like a house of cards ya?
Originally posted by Liberator
It just seems like it would be unnoticed. Whereas revolution, people take notice of that.
look at apple. They have a computer that (all dumb arguments aside) is half as functional as a PC (maybe more "streamlined" or however they phrase "dumbed down so you can't break it with your ignorance"
, looks a little sleek, and costs twice as much.
They design incomprehensibly akward devices that might as well be tech demos, and yet they have a following that reaches cult like status.
yet, even among users of this forum, I bet you would find people have a much more heated opinion about the new iPad than they do of the civil war in Palestine between Hamas and Fatah that happened ~3-4 years ago.
Originally posted by Liberator
I've always been under the notion that action speaks louder than words, one can idly talk about change but its only going to happen through direct action. What do you make of that?
So, you have France, and you have Britan. Both were faced with modernity in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.
France had a revolution, changed huge aspects of its society, descended into a period cheerfully known as "the reign of terror", then succumbed to Imperialism under Napoleon, then reverted back to Monarchy, then back to Napoleon, then something else, and ended up a "modern" nation at the start of WW1 in the sense that that they had been powerful when Napoleon was around.
Britain had a much differnt social situation, to be sure, but they opted for progressive change (Burke style), and ended up as a Parlimentary Monarchy that ran the world until WW1.
Sure, its not a 1 to 1 comparison, and my history is sketchy and selective at best, but there is something to this. There are other options to just burning everything and hoping to start afresh.
Actually, a friend of mine and I were sort of joking about something similar. You can easily use violence to convince people to do what you want. The only problem is, you then have to be the only and best person inflicting violence on everyone, everywhere. When you set the scene as a violent struggle, you have to be as violent as those who would blow up kindergardens, and I personally don't have the stomach for that.
Originally posted by Liberator
For some comic relief, someone sent me this rather funny few pictures. It's probably shopped, but in some instances I'm not so sure, either way it's rather amusing.
http://www.thisblogrules.com/2010/03/dog-that-hasnt-missed-a-single-riot-for-years.html/
ha, cute
