Welcome to The Rebellion.
Gray tobacco smoke swirls across my makeshift multi-purpose
computer screen. Craving nicotine addiction appeased for a time. The tempting smell of freshly brewed coffee foretells
of a small, selfish pleasure soon to come. Strong, black coffee is on its way.
The last of the gurgling emits from the four cup drip coffee machine. In my orange
hoodie and blue sweats I sit in front of the screen with vaguely formed ideas
swirling through my head. My roommates still slumber in unconsciousness,
willfully heedless of the effort which churns around them. It is the last day
of March. It is a chilly 40 degrees. It is a Saturday morning. Welcome to The Rebellion.
The United States of America is in deep shit. The reasons
have been documented in science journals dating back to the late 1940s. The Chicago Study proved uncategorically that
race (be it Croatian, Polish, Italian, Irish, Hispanic, or Black) has nothing
whatsoever to do with crime. Merton’s work on Social Strain documents how individuals
and society pass from lawfulness to lawlessness. Maslow teaches us what
motivates human beings on individual levels. And these studies are but the tip
of the iceberg when it comes to why functional societies fall apart, regroup,
and redevelop. We are in the latter phase of such a process. I’ll let you do
the research for yourself.
Even before September 17, 2011 when 200 people took over
Zuccotti Park, renamed it Liberty Park, and brought the worlds focus on the issue
of income inequity, I’ve made suggestions on what The Rebellion needed to read. It is a given that I am partial towards
these writings. It is also a given that I am not very good at writing book
reports. I think we might have done one in college twenty-two years ago. Before
that, it was in High School some eleven years prior (we’ll talk about age
later). What I am left with is simply mentioning the name of the work, the
author, and a link to Wikipedia or Amazon for you to research. However, I am
going to attempt to crack open my thoughts on the works and fill in a few
details.
All of these works are from Robert A. Heinlein. He was a
science fiction writer from the 1939 to 1987 (he passed away in 1988). Many of
the issues you and I are grappling with today were covered in his stories. The
fact that he could make a comfortable living writing short stories, and
novellas, where so many writers are destitute now, proves just how much we have
degraded as a society over the years.
The first work is The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It is the story of the penal colony in the moon
throwing off the ruling Earth authority under the guidance of a self-aware AI (artificial
intelligence) program. The important parts in this work are twofold. One is the
political theory behind a rebellion in a closed society that is losing
resources to the rulers. The second is the unique cell structure created to
keep the rebellion alive as the authorities strike back. Based on what we have
seen with the Oligarchy strikes against Anonymous.
Both discussions may be very useful right now.
My favorite quite from The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress:
"I
am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate
them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that
I alone am morally responsible for everything I do"
"You
would not abide by a law that the majority felt was necessary?"
"Tell
me what law, dear lady, and I will tell you whether I will obey it."[1]
The second work I suggest is a Novella contained in Revolt in 2100. I first read this story
in The Past Through Tomorrow, but
that anthology of Heinlein’s work is no longer in print. The short story is
called If This Goes on…. To put it succinctly
the work covers, as one reviewer put it, “the business of Revolution.” There
are many ideas in this one that I wish the Occupation, or whatever springs from
the Occupation Movement, would internalize.
If This Goes On… talks
about the use of words, and word choices to convey the message. It discusses
organization skills, and how to run a
minority opposition. It also talks of human freedom, and true liberty. There is
so much in that one short story that it is hard to summarize the work which was
written in 1940, before World War II. This one quote will give you the breadth
and scope of the work:
“When
any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its
subjects, This you may not read,
this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression,
no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man
whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free
man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, - not
anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”[2]
There are other works I would suggest, but there two are the
place to start. It is the place where I started many years ago, and inspiration
for all that has followed. If you are free inside yourself, then you are free
indeed. I’ll add more to the ideas on The
Rebellion in the next installment.
[1] Valia,
T. (2007, July 28). Quotes: Robert Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh
Mistress" (novel). In Variety SF. Retrieved March 31, 2012, from http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2007/07/quotes-robert-heinleins-moon-is-harsh.html
[2] Heinlein,
R. A. (1940). If This Goes On..
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