There have been rumblings for a long while of the desire for revolution in America. My friends have talked about it. Right wing, liberal, religious, atheistic: everyone wants change. I only caught wind of the protests on Wall Street a few days ago, but after investigating the cause I’m only annoyed. 

Someone from the protest group has registered occupywallst.org and there posted a list of demands. The most succinct summary comes from this article by Ryan Young

It just sounds like he wants all the trappings of a modern first-world lifestyle without paying for them. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey would say: no, dear.

Revolutionaries don’t ask to be pampered. If the demands posted on that website are any reflection of the aims of the Wall Street Protesters, then this is the world’s most pitiful revolution. These demands do not lead to a state of higher independence, but deeper co-dependence on government. It’s a protest against being inconvenienced by people who have grown up with microwaves and fast-food restaurants, who now find out that most people have to work, and work a lot, to keep up in a first world economy. If you want a real revolution in government, follow the example of Henry David Thoreau. Before you go about trying to throw off the government from the nation, throw off its holds on your own self. Make yourself independent from the provisions of the government. Don’t ask for handouts: turn handouts down because you have no dependence on what they provide. Fashion your life such that the government has nothing to offer you.

To a large degree the government exists to protect the right of the individual to personal property. Many people devote much of their time, money, and energy to accumulating and maintaining their personal property.That is anything that you call, “mine.” The accumulation of personal property and money are the common standard of wealth and this is especially true in the first world. Make your wants few and in doing so you make yourself rich. One of the government’s greatest powers over a citizen is to stand between him and his possessions; to confiscate them or deny access by imprisonment. The one who denies the importance of possessions and comforts would not find imprisonment to be great punishment. Thoreau writes of his imprisonment, “I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was still a more difficult one for them to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar…they thought that my chief desire was to stand [on] the other side of that wall” (1). 

If you want a revolution on a national scale, you have to make your life a revolution in and of itself. Personal revolutions may not get the same press as a public protest, but they make a lot more sense and are much more effective at length. Emerson writes, “every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era” (2). Every reform begins as one man’s private opinion and when it has become every man’s private opinion, it has changed the world. Opinions should not simply be held: they should be let loose into the way we live out our lives. As a much greater songwriter than I once said, “people talk about trying to change society. All I know is that so long as people stay so concerned about protecting their status and protecting what they have, ain’t nothing going to be done” (3).

I want to see a revolution. I want to see true unity. I want to live in a country full of people looking out for the good of their neighbors. I want the powerless and the helpless to be helped and empowered. That revolution, that country, that love does not start on Wall Street: it starts at home.

References:

1. “Civil Disobedience”, essay by Henry David Thoreau
2. “History”, essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. Bob Dylan in “The Crackin’, Shakin’, Breakin’, Sounds” by Nat Hentoff, The New Yorker. October 24, 1964

photo courtesy of REUTERS/Mike Segar

maybe what i really want is what i thought i forgot.

like a drawing that reappears everytime water condenses on the glass.

that place has changed; those people are gone;

What makes a good songwriter? Metered verse? Literary technique? Commercial appeal?