People Power: Societal Myths and Secrets
Earlier we noted that among the main blocks to noncooperation are people's feelings of moral obligation toward those who in fact oppress or exploit them. For an exploitative system to function effectively over the long term, it must be kept secret that people's obedience and/or cooperation is responsible for creating unjust or life-denying conditions for some or many. To keep those secrets or to prevent their unmasking these secrets, as sociologist Max Weber has pointed out, social systems develop a public set of beliefs, values and ideologies called societal myths which we are socialized to believe or to want to believe. Examples might range from belief in the "natural superiority of men" to the United States guaranteeing "liberty and justice for all" despite its long and continuing history of racial injustice and exploitation, to the use of the expression "free world" to stand for nations such as Chile, South Africa, Guatemala, El Salvador, Pakistan, and the Philippines, some of the harshest anti-democratic regimes in the world, to building still more nuclear weapons in the belief that they actually constitute a "defense against nuclear attack".
It is useful to the nonviolent activist to know that a planned tactical approach toward the exposing of societal myths as being only myths can play a crucial role in arousing people to action. Twentieth century thinkers and historians such as Hannah Arendt have repeatedly pointed out that people are often more upset and more likely to be drive to action by the unveiling of hypocrisy than by the prevailing conditions of injustice which hypocrisy seeks to hide. Given an already well-thought-out action strategy, the conscious isolation and exposure of societal myths can act as a very powerful catalyst in moving people toward nonviolent social struggle.
One graphic illustration should suffice. In Boulder, Colorado in 1982, civil defense authorities unveiled their plans for crisis relocation in case of nuclear attack. Anti-nuclear activists seized this opportunity to expose the social secret that there is no defense against nuclear attack. Public hearings discredited the plan as utterly unworkable, destroying the myth that government officials could be entrusted with matters of safety in case of grave national emergency. With this myth destroyed, increasingly large numbers of citizens in Boulder have turned to questioning basic U.S. military "defense" posture, and the nuclear terrorism which it requires. While many may have eventually come to question what they were being told anyway, activists in the area have no doubt that revealing the myth of "crisis relocation" for what it was greatly accelerated that process.
Under Creative Commons license (by-nc-sa). See my first People Power post for background on the book, and the foreword.
It is useful to the nonviolent activist to know that a planned tactical approach toward the exposing of societal myths as being only myths can play a crucial role in arousing people to action. Twentieth century thinkers and historians such as Hannah Arendt have repeatedly pointed out that people are often more upset and more likely to be drive to action by the unveiling of hypocrisy than by the prevailing conditions of injustice which hypocrisy seeks to hide. Given an already well-thought-out action strategy, the conscious isolation and exposure of societal myths can act as a very powerful catalyst in moving people toward nonviolent social struggle.
One graphic illustration should suffice. In Boulder, Colorado in 1982, civil defense authorities unveiled their plans for crisis relocation in case of nuclear attack. Anti-nuclear activists seized this opportunity to expose the social secret that there is no defense against nuclear attack. Public hearings discredited the plan as utterly unworkable, destroying the myth that government officials could be entrusted with matters of safety in case of grave national emergency. With this myth destroyed, increasingly large numbers of citizens in Boulder have turned to questioning basic U.S. military "defense" posture, and the nuclear terrorism which it requires. While many may have eventually come to question what they were being told anyway, activists in the area have no doubt that revealing the myth of "crisis relocation" for what it was greatly accelerated that process.
Under Creative Commons license (by-nc-sa). See my first People Power post for background on the book, and the foreword.