FUCK THEORY

Experiments in visceral philosophy.

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A Change Is Gonna Come? (click) This is the single best summary of the Occupy Wall Street situation I’ve found so far.  And still, the fact that anyone needs these things explained to them is absolutely incredible to me. I’ve been away from Tumblr for a week thanks to a cold I caught last weekend in Asbury Park seeing Portishead at the ATP festival.  In the 10 days or so since my last post on OWS, the event has expanded from a localized oddity with minimal press coverage to a national phenomenon with potentially immense implications.  The support of the unions and the geographic spread of the protests are both, in my opinion, very important indicators. Early this summer, a lone, stubborn woman who had been kicked out of her apartment pitched a tent on Rotschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, all by herself.  A few months later, I was in Israel in early September as 300,000 people marched in the biggest demonstration the nation had ever seen.  It was a pretty incredible thing, an entirely viral movement born from one woman’s stubborn insistence that enough was enough. The moral of the story is that a political action is only as successful as the people invested in it are tenacious.  Keep blogging and reblogging.  Attend whatever protests you can.  Do as little or as much as you are able, and as little and as much as you feel you should.  The bottom line is that a political movement is the aggregate sum of individual actions - that means that every little bit is still a little bit more than nothing.  Maybe these protests will fizzle out in a week having accomplished nothing; after all, in terms of its ability to survive all-out assault, capitalism has repeatedly proven itself to be the cockroach of social formations.  But at the risk of sliding into maudlin truisms, I can definitely say this:  if that first woman to pitch a tent in Tel Aviv this summer had responded to criticism and derision by packing up and going home, there would never have been a historic 300,000-person march a few months later.  Don’t just occupy Wall Street.  Occupy YOUR street.  99% covers a whole lot of ground.  In the next couple of weeks, there might be two posts a day from me.  I don’t want to lose sight of my other philosophical commitments.  But I also can’t help feel that this movement is too important not to give it some measured critical attention. 

A Change Is Gonna Come?

(click)

This is the single best summary of the Occupy Wall Street situation I’ve found so far.  And still, the fact that anyone needs these things explained to them is absolutely incredible to me.

I’ve been away from Tumblr for a week thanks to a cold I caught last weekend in Asbury Park seeing Portishead at the ATP festival.  In the 10 days or so since my last post on OWS, the event has expanded from a localized oddity with minimal press coverage to a national phenomenon with potentially immense implications.  The support of the unions and the geographic spread of the protests are both, in my opinion, very important indicators.

Early this summer, a lone, stubborn woman who had been kicked out of her apartment pitched a tent on Rotschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, all by herself.  A few months later, I was in Israel in early September as 300,000 people marched in the biggest demonstration the nation had ever seen.  It was a pretty incredible thing, an entirely viral movement born from one woman’s stubborn insistence that enough was enough.

The moral of the story is that a political action is only as successful as the people invested in it are tenacious.  Keep blogging and reblogging.  Attend whatever protests you can.  Do as little or as much as you are able, and as little and as much as you feel you should.  The bottom line is that a political movement is the aggregate sum of individual actions - that means that every little bit is still a little bit more than nothing.  Maybe these protests will fizzle out in a week having accomplished nothing; after all, in terms of its ability to survive all-out assault, capitalism has repeatedly proven itself to be the cockroach of social formations.  But at the risk of sliding into maudlin truisms, I can definitely say this:  if that first woman to pitch a tent in Tel Aviv this summer had responded to criticism and derision by packing up and going home, there would never have been a historic 300,000-person march a few months later. 

Don’t just occupy Wall Street.  Occupy YOUR street.  99% covers a whole lot of ground. 

In the next couple of weeks, there might be two posts a day from me.  I don’t want to lose sight of my other philosophical commitments.  But I also can’t help feel that this movement is too important not to give it some measured critical attention. 
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