'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 agreeAnd 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 WeAs 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
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