Revolutions

I don't believe in revolutions. It's just that they have too much of that: they tend to make things revolve, go in cycles. Look at the French and American revolutions, past lunges at freedom and equality in countries whose governments today rule primarily for the benefit of rich corporations; look at the Cuban revolution, already stumbling and being worked against by the exiled outside and the disillusioned inside.

If you have a revolution, it's very likely that in 30, 50 or a 100 years you will have a counter-revolution (except that the counter-revolutionaries would call it a revolution, too). The part of society that you stomped on during your revolution will grow in the dark, under the grooves in your soles, and no matter how heavy your feet are, they'll eventually shoot up branches and destabilize you till you topple. Even if you killed the last one of "them", even if their views were indeed responsible for a lot of unhappiness in your society, the violence you used legitimizes any future violence against you.

This is not to say that I don't see the need for change. In the particular case of our modern global society, where the greed for profit takes advantage of such obsolete ideas as national identity and local pride to blindside people into supporting policies that devastate their neighbors and, ultimately, ruin their own future, change is imperative.

But there are alternatives to violence. There have to be. A change of regime is not enough. We need to change the mode of historical change.