The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
Interpretation
Revolutions happen when oppressed individuals refuse to comply with their oppressors.
The quote by Karl Hess emphasizes the power of non-cooperation in the face of oppression. When individuals who are wronged or victimized choose to stop supporting or complying with systems that exploit or harm them, it can lead to significant societal change and even revolutionary movements. This highlights the importance of individual agency and solidarity in challenging unjust systems.
In practice
In a speech advocating for social change, one might say, 'As Karl Hess stated, the revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.'
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that itβs all choice and chance.
Never put a question mark where God has put a period. When something is over and done, let it go and move on to the next chapter of your life.
The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.
It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.
The purpose of the gospel is to transform common creatures into celestial citizens, and that requires change.
Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us. Surely, they must know that their deliverance depends on letting down their ropes. Only by working together is escape possible. Over time, many reach out, but most simply watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us (Bell).
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