Must protest be disruptive?

'Must protest be disruptive?'

Yes, protest needs must be disruptive. An act goes hand in hand with whatever motivates it so protest cannot be analyzed separate from its motivation. Protest is an act that calls for change from something the protestor considers unacceptable. Inertia, going with the flow, is easier and definitely doesn't require courage.

Usually, at any given time, those better served by change far outnumber those well-served by a status quo. Yet, for the most part, the vast majority of the former lumber on quietly, tolerating what comes from getting a bad deal, poverty, injustice, lack of dignity, exploitation, peril to life and limb, denial of rights or various other hardships.

In short, protest takes courage. It requires going against the grain. Courage typically the purview of only a handful, the masses ill-served by existing circumstance attach themselves to protest only in the face of simply unbearable provocation and inhumanity.

'Please, sir', said the famous little starving orphan boy of literature, 'I want some more', only after he drew the short straw in a game of chance. 'Of course, take more to your heart or rather your belly's content', replied no one ever. Why? 'Cos those with the privileges and entitlements, some endowed as part and parcel of birth, like to keep them, thank you very much, and won't give them up willingly. The have-nots are just plumb out of luck.

Societies haven't yet achieved Rosa Luxemburg's quest for a 'land of boundless possibilities' that requires active and immersive democratic participation by the majority. Instead as Walter Benjamin said,

'Every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism.'

No matter the country or culture, some type of power asymmetry is thus a fact of life. Only their degree and types differ. Plutocrats in some countries and kleptocrats in others are ubiquitous examples of extreme economic power asymmetries. Women and LGBTQ everywhere have to navigate their life around different degrees of patriarchy and chauvinism that seek to circumscribe their choices and roles. Meantime, we remain all too ready to perpetuate cultural privileges and entitlements based on caste, class, race, religion, which create and sustain other types of power asymmetries. Further, information asymmetry helps strengthen the roots of prevailing power asymmetries. Will Durant said,

'The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.'

While dividing helps conquer, looking beyond ingrained tribal impulses requires manifestly strenuous effort. To quote Kipling,

'All good people agree

And all good people say,

All nice people, like Us, are We,

And everyone else is They:

But if you cross over the sea,

Instead of over the way,

You may end by (think of it) looking on We

As only a sort of They!'

The social (cultural, legal and political) systems we have concocted over the past few centuries have attempted to impose parity on a gamut of human practices. The problem is money, power, and the perks that come with them run screaming in the other direction. The mundane rules apply to the hoi polloi. The higher up the food chain, fewer those pesky rules apply or so the consensus goes. This is a generalizable status quo. Why? As Mark Twain pointed out,

'Man will do many things to get himself loved.

He will do all things to get himself envied.'

How then could protest be other than disruptive when heeding the voices of the better angels of our nature requires going against our own base impulses?

https://www.quora.com/Must-protest-be-disruptive/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala