Namik's Manifesto

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible.I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this: Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. 

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this:Try.

Might have to give Andor a go

"Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere and even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort: it breaks, it leaks."

"Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that."

Unpunishable

For reasons I don't understand, I am unpunishable.

When I was in the seventh grade, the same as Vivian is now, I was sent to a hyper religious fundamental private school. One afternoon after being forced to spend my recess cleaning the blackboard because I hadn't done my homework, I took the chalk and wrote The Declaration of Independence from Homework on the pristine board. The next day I was in the headmaster's office for my crime . He pulled out a paddle and told me to drop my jeans. I was appalled and said "you're an adult. And you're going to hit a child. With a board. For writing." "Yes" he replied. I complied and he hit me. I waited, silently, because Holy Mary that stung like sitting on a red anthill, something I had done back when I was six and wow. It took my breath away. Just as I figured he was waiting on me, he did it again. This time it didn't sting so much as it just *hurt*, and I was confused. While I was trying to figure out what the difference was, he did it again, and I wondered how long this would go on. I turned and looked at him, the sunlight slanting across his face and the paddle as he stood at the ready, behind me. "How long will this go on?" I asked. He sighed as if he were tired.

He was a quiet man, tall and thin and usually unseen in the halls of the small school. When he did make an appearance he often seemed uncomfortable at addressing the student body or parents, and usually had few words, quickly retreating off the stage. He looked like he wanted to do that now. "Until you cry," he said wearily. Oh. I took a deep sigh, and faced front again, squaring my bony hips up against the desk, spreading my fingers and planting my palms on the cold unfeeling surface. I looked out the window and said, not really to him, "this is going to take a while."

Rebellion, Solidarity, and Justice

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

The Way of democracy is the Utilitarian outcome of justice as public policy.

Democracy is Camus' rebellion made manifest for the good of all (utility) because from behind the veil of ignorance (Rawls), we would want a rebellion on the behalf of the marginalized because we might ourselves be members of the marginalized. And Camus'notion that we must imagine Sisyphus happy becomes the antithesis of the Stoic call to "keep calm and carry on" while hoping for a more just society.

We owe each other solidarity if we truly want freedom, which shows up in public policy as democracy, even if that solidarity cuts across the lines of privilege and causes us to sacrifice some of our personal present comfort

In so doing, we are freer, even though it might feel at first that we are more constrained.

Lost and Found in Translation

 A brief note, and hopefully a good one (N.B.):
The title The Republic comes from Cicero's (50 b.c.) translation of Plato's (357 b.c.) Politeía from the Greek into the Latin; he gave his work the title res publica, Latin for "things of the people." The Latin edition stood for Western scholars until Taylor put out an English translation in early 1800s, notably titled The Republic (and a lesser known translation was put out by Stens in the mid-1700s, also titled The Republic), and we in the academic West have mushed forth with the title since.

So it's not the translation of the work that is distracting me per se, but the notion going back to the city as a body, self governed and focused in its own ends, the original (500 b.c.) structure [no need to put "state" at the end, since that would be obvious to contemporaries]. 

In all my research and analysis over the years, I continually find that distance is problematic, moreso even than swelling population itself. One simply cannot govern justly those who are far away; this leads to a lot of my sociopolitical assessments about Town Hall governance from the mid90s, in which I theorized that a sense of remoteness of government leads to violent rebellion through terrorism and that the United States was then overdue for internal terrorism from any one of the many groups of people who felt voiceless, unheard and unseen by a remote and disinterested ruling body. The United States, I argued, has never really considered home-grown terrorism a credible possibility, despite carrying forth the legacy empirical structures that seemed to Foster and possibly demand such action by the disgruntled.

It bears pointing out that I wrote this a couple months before the Oklahoma City bombing. 
 
And now here I am, back where I started, and thank you, @DarK_RaideR because honestly my enthusiasm had begun to wear thin. This was just the right observation-question to turn the lens a bit.
 
I don't have my 1995 essay anymore (it was literally typed), but there are a gajillion points that, looking back, serve as guideposts for the way ahead. The philosophy of rebellion has always been here, and now it's this glimmering thread in the twilight.
Who wants to hang out in the Philosopher's Salon and dig around in the notion of rebellion, governance, and power?

The Artist and The World

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." ---Albert Camus