NationStates Jolt Archive

Every year, there is a concert or some other event which is supposed to change the world. Students subscribe to the cause by the thousand. And it changes nothing.

Every generation can remember a few. The fuss over Vietnam. Live Aid. Its recent sequel. The IMF protests. The marches against Gulf War II.

But this is the point of the exercise. The individual can rarely make a difference, and even a crowd is often nothing but a speedbump under the advance of the juggernaut of history. It is important for young people, especially at that school-leaving/university age, to realise this, and move on. To understand that they bought the hype, believed, and were left behind by the currents of time.

So I do not sneer needlessly at my peers, whom I see, year after year, emerge from their classes and adopt some pointless cause. They have something they need to get out of their system, and it is the perfect time to do it.

The German 68ers managed to establish the Green party in the Bundestag...

*applauds*

There is the occasional time a difference can be made (Martin Luther King, Ghandi) but on the whole it rarely works. Politicians rarely change their mind to please the Great Unwashed, except on election year.

I don't like that logic. I don't like to think that desiring to make the world a better place is something we need to get out of our system.

If one "learns" that one has no effect or power in the world, regardless of the truth of that statement it becomes true for that person.

Besides, I also don't agree with your statement that protest changes nothing. I think that's just incorrect. Just because every single campus protest doesn't accomplish something doesn't mean the totality of protests is meaningless. From Woman's sufferage to Civil Rights to Vietnam, protestors have changed the nation time and time again - and many of those protestors were youths.

There is good reason why a right to protest in guarenteed by the Constitution, and I'm damn sure it's not because the Founding Fathers figured college kids need to "get it out of there system."

The May 68 insurrection in France resulted in a major defeat for the Left in the elections only 2 months later.

Well, in the time I have been around, I have not seen protest achieve much.

And note I say 'democracies' in the thread title. Sure, protest can occasionally change the nature of an authoritarian regime, but here in the West, what have any of my friends ever achieved? Nothing that I can see.

If you get the unions on your side, protests can be quite effective...