Argh, wrote a long post that got deleted. Anyway, E. and I were talking about this last night, as I didn't really get it, and she and her political science friends thought it was really cool. One of the things we came up with was that many people (outside of certain academic communities) don't have a conceptual box to fit OWS into, and that makes it hard to understand/be comfortable with. If one thinks of it not as a protest (because it's a pretty lame protest) but as a group of people making space for democratic discussion and action, it makes a lot more sense. It was suggested to me that the real "point" of the whole thing was as a way to give people a voice, not necessarily in the media but just in the world. They want to do things differently, and they are being the change in the world that they want to see, if you will forgive the cliche. There's also an argument that it is just good old-fashioned consciousness-raising, trying to make people think. And on a certain level, it doesn't have to be for more than the people that are there. I heard some compelling arguments for why it is rational, and why it is a reasonable way of achieving what their actual goals may be, but I must admit I am still left a bit cold by it, just in the sense that I am uninterested in joining. It makes me think of people whining and complaining without "doing something" (in a more conventionally political way, anyway), which annoys me. So those are some of the things running through my head, anyway, and perhaps some (or all of none) of it will mean something to you.
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timeasmymeasure
Some thoughts
Date: 2011-10-05 07:17 pm (UTC)It was suggested to me that the real "point" of the whole thing was as a way to give people a voice, not necessarily in the media but just in the world. They want to do things differently, and they are being the change in the world that they want to see, if you will forgive the cliche. There's also an argument that it is just good old-fashioned consciousness-raising, trying to make people think. And on a certain level, it doesn't have to be for more than the people that are there.
I heard some compelling arguments for why it is rational, and why it is a reasonable way of achieving what their actual goals may be, but I must admit I am still left a bit cold by it, just in the sense that I am uninterested in joining. It makes me think of people whining and complaining without "doing something" (in a more conventionally political way, anyway), which annoys me.
So those are some of the things running through my head, anyway, and perhaps some (or all of none) of it will mean something to you.