Noise but No Idea

We are not living in political times. The great revolutions are remote history, and the masses no longer fill the streets to demand a better world. True, occasionally paving stones still fly through the air, but they have no direction. The people of discontent don’t know what might satisfy them. They are just feeling a certain annoying but indefinable discomfort and throw without aiming.

Their random disobedience may cause some discomfort to their government, but the rulers never feel threatened. When the straying flock are tired of their own noise, they return home and everything is back to normal. Normality is unbearable, but insanity is also tiresome.

The dark night is a blessing, for then we sleep. What are we to do during the day? Where should we go? No one leads the way anymore. The ideologies are dead.

What were those demonstrations in Brazil about? What was that noise in Turkey? Or in Spain? It’s been two years since the huge crowds camped out in Madrid demanding something they didn’t know themselves. Their number was visible, but their content was hidden and now they are forgotten.

We want something, but we don’t know what we want, for the ideologies are dead.

Nonsense! The ideologies are not dead, and they cannot die. So long as people think, they will put their ideas into a system. (No thought can stand alone; it is always a reaction to other thoughts, one’s own or people’s thoughts.) The ideologies are there but they are blurred and most of us just feel like private citizens.

In the wild world web of ours, we are constantly bombarded with odd and conflicting impulses, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to form a consistent understanding of what it’s all about. We are confused, and that pleases the government.

A confused herd is an obedient herd. The subjects may be straying and sometimes cause some disturbance, but there is no threat of revolution. The existing order is safe.

No, we are not living in political times. We busy ourselves with other things and let those powerful forces rule the world without being interrupted by a conscious human will. It’s better to forget about politics, for we don’t know what we want.