ACTivism: The Peaceful Revolution: Is it Possible? By Puck Arks

 
Written By: Puck Arks

ACTivism: The Peaceful Revolution: Is it Possible?

  

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”  

- John F. Kennedy

Revolution becomes necessary when the ruling classes fail in their duty to lead. Most of the major modern political revolutions occurred at moments when the world was changing rapidly — and the country’s leaders dealt with it by dropping back into denial and clinging defiantly to the old, profitable, and familiar status quo. 

New technologies, new ideas, and new economic opportunities were emerging; and there came a time when ignoring them was no longer an option. When the leaders failed to step forward boldly to lead their people through the looming and necessary transformations, the people rebelled.

We’re hard up against some huge transformative changes now. Global warming and overwhelming pollution are forcing us to reconsider the way we occupy the world, altering our relationship to food, water, air, soil, energy, and each other. 

The transition off carbon-based fuels and away from non-recyclable goods is going to re-structure our entire economy. Computers are still creating social and business transformations; biotech and nano-tech will only accelerate that. 

More and more people in the industrialized world are feeling a spiritual void, and coming to believe that moving away from consumerism and toward community may be an important step in recovering that nameless thing they’ve lost.

And, in the teeth of this restless drift toward inevitable change, America has been governed by a bunch of conservative dinosaurs who can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge that the 20th century is over. 

Some of them, in fact, are still trying to turn back the Enlightenment.

Liberal governments manage this kind of shift by training and subsidizing scientists and planners, funding research, and setting policies that help their nations navigate these transitions with some grace. Conservative ones — being conservative — will reflexively try to deny that change is occurring at all, and then brutally suppress anyone with evidence to the contrary.

Which is why, every time our current crop of so-called leaders open their mouths to propose a policy or Explain It All To Us, it’s embarrassingly obvious that they don’t have the vision, the intelligence, or the courage to face the future that everyone can clearly see bearing down on us, whether we’re ready or not. Their persistent cluelessness infuriates us — and terrifies us. 

It’s all too clear that these people are a waste of our tax money: they will never take us where we need to go. Much of the energy we’re seeing is due to the fact that a majority of Americans have figured out that our government is leaving us hung out here, completely on our own, to manage huge and inevitable changes with no support or guidance whatsoever.

Historically, this same seething fury at incompetent, unimaginative, cowardly leaders - and the dawning realization that our survival depends on seizing the lead for ourselves.