Where to Find Egalitarian Revolutionaries--Lots of Them!
The trick isn't knowing where to look, but HOW to look. Here's why.
When you've finished reading this article, I guarantee that you'll be able to find lots and lots of egalitarian revolutionaries more easily than you ever dreamed possible. The trick isn't knowing where to look, but HOW to look. Here's why.
The working class woman who won the Boston Marathon in 2018 got $150,000 for coming in first place. Knowing this was the prize if she came in first, she nonetheless stopped running for a while to stay with her friend and fellow runner who had to take a bathroom break! Read the details from the Boston Globe article in this footnote.1
Her morality of solidarity instead of self-interest was made strikingly visible for all the world to see. But the same morality of solidarity instead of self-interest is exhibited in zillions of little invisible ways by ordinary working class people in their everyday lives. Every time a younger person gets up to give their seat to an older person on the subway, or when a driver stops on a residential street when it's raining to let a person weighed down with bags of groceries cross the street in front of him/her, or when school children spend hours on the phone or texting to help each other navigate the obstacles of their lives, or when people donate money to a charity they believe is helping people less fortunate than themselves, or when people at work express their anger at the one person in their midst who is a selfish asshole, not to mention when people devote their lives to caring for their children or other loved ones--in these zillions of ways ordinary people act on the basis of this Golden Rule morality that is the opposite of the morality of self-interested greed and domination by which the people at the top of our society live.
The millions of ordinary people who act on their morality that is the opposite of the capitalist me-first-and-screw-you almost never are aware of the revolutionary significance of what they are doing--that they are resisting capitalist values as best they can. They don't think about what they're doing as being "political," but the fact is they are trying to shape the little corner of the world over which they have any real control with anti-capitalist values. They are typically not aware of the fact that the aim of an egalitarian revolution is to shape ALL of society by the same values they are already trying to shape it by, just on a much larger scale. These people--the vast majority--are, in other words, implicitly egalitarian revolutionaries even though they generally have never heard that phrase before.
ATTENTION REVOLUTIONARIES!
Please realize that the values people try to shape their personal everyday little piece of the world by, the way they relate to other people (respectfully and as an equal for mutual aid, versus disrespectfully as an arrogant domineering selfish asshole), is the MOST IMPORTANT indicator of whether they are a force for egalitarian revolution or not; and most people are.
The most UNIMPORTANT aspects of a person in this regard are things such as who they vote for, or how much they understand exactly how the politicians are lying, or what their position is on "hot button" social issue controversies of public discourse that the ruling class deliberately and skillfully frames so that the viewpoints that are reasonable and that would be shared by the great majority of people are suppressed and censored and instead people are only offered a choice between two opposing camps that are designed to make the people believe that those in the opposite camp are either stupid or immoral or bigoted or disgusting.
If you understand this, then you will understand how it could be possible that when I went to a pro-Trump rally (all white people, mostly wearing Trump MAGA hats and NRA insignia clothing or waving an American flag--get the picture?) and asked 50 random people if they thought my button's message ("Let's remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy, with no rich and no poor") was a good idea or a bad idea, 43 of them (86%) said it was a good (or great!) idea and happily took the button I offered them and many pinned it on themselves right on the spot. Four of them (8%), however, were verbally very hostile. These are the assholes. (And three said they didn't know what they thought.)
MORAL OF THE STORY
Talk to people about what kind of values they think should shape all of society, and you will discover that you are literally surrounded by egalitarian revolutionaries. You will discover that your neighbors and the ordinary people you encounter in your routine everyday life are mostly people who would LOVE an egalitarian revolution (once they hear from you what that means.) When you do this you will start thinking about how to help these egalitarian revolutionaries (they're everywhere!) learn that they are actually the vast majority and hence have the power to make an egalitarian revolution as described here, and here (this links to an article on my old website but it’s still good.) This is how to remove the rich from power, with a movement that is hundreds of millions strong and hence large enough to do it.
But if you focus exclusively on the unimportant aspects of people mentioned above, you will very likely get into fruitless and perpetual arguments with people and become eventually hopeless about the possibility of removing the rich from power.
It's better to win than to lose. Let's win!
The weather wasn’t the only strange story from this year’s Marathon
By John Hilliard Globe Correspondent,April 17, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
The runners facing down driving rain, blowing wind, and generally miserable, weird weather weren’t the only odd story out of the 122nd Boston Marathon.
From the drama of the bathroom break heard ’round-the-world, the story of a runner hitting the race after an all-night drive and 30 minutes of sleep, to a life-changing event one man faced on the course, here are some of the strangest moments from Monday’s Marathon.
Sarah Sellers placed second. So who the heck is she?
As Desiree Linden soaked up glory as the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in decades, many spectators had a burning question: Who the heck is Sarah Sellers, the American who finished second in the race, about four minutes behind Linden?
Related
Even in miserable conditions, more than 95 percent of runners finished the Marathon
Sellers is a 26-year-old full-time nurse working in anesthesiology at Banner Health Center in Arizona, her husband, Blake Sellers, told the Globe in an interview on Monday.
In an interview with the Globe, Sarah Sellers said the whole thing felt “surreal,” and that she at first didn’t think she actually came in second overall. And no, she doesn’t yet have plans for the $75,000 prize money she won, but it sounds like it will be helpful.
“My husband and I both just finished graduate school, so hopefully we’ll be able to put a dent in our student loans.”
The biggest show of sportsmanship may have come from a bathroom break
Shalane Flanagan took a surprising detour during the Marathon.
Over an hour into the race, Flanagan stopped to use what television announcers referred to as a “portable facility.”
Perhaps what was more surprising, however, was fellow American Desiree Linden’s decision to wait for Flanagan to catch up — a move that demonstrated unity and respect.
The delay cost Linden approximately 10 to 15 seconds. She won by more than four minutes.
An inspirational post John. Again. The “first past the post” system that engages the worst aspects of human nature destroys egalitarian sensibilities. However I agree that most people would happily adopt more fair and equitable principles that benefited everyone if shown the way.