Standing in a crowd of people, coming to the line that the authorities say you must not cross. To acquiesce means your shout is not as loud, your message may not be heard. To go forward-risk arrest, injury, perhaps. It is a time in which a larger import, yet one distant, more abstract, is in conflict with the personal self. I don't want to get hurt, arrested. I don't even want to be rude.
Protesting is like voting, but corporeal. Standing in a crowd one easily recognizes you could go home and no one would even notice. Your body among all those bodies is negligible. However, it is the act of letting go of the ego, the insistence that only the recognition of the individual matters, that allows for the great movements of idea, of humanitarianism... and even evil. The great power is the balance between the individual and the crowd; to both think for oneself and be willing to act, vote, protest, arm and arm with many.
1 comment:
thank you for jumping the barricade for me, even if it didn't matter in the end. or maybe it did.
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