http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040920&s=zinn
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The Optimism of Uncertainty
by HOWARD ZINN
[posted online on September 2, 2004]
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to
what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly
happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give
up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is
a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to
create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We
forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by
extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion
against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter
unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish
of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took
Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have
predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing
photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling
through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back
at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of
Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his
Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The
Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then
another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and
institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise,
perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly
after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly
independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the
madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a
veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish
Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a
parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists,
everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of
influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to
control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective
spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan,
its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most
striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee
domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality.
It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a
tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines
every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the
presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the
poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice
should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have
the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to
it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities
less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity,
organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in
Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers
and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation
of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just
my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of
terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom
the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of
activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas.
But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they
do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the
mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who
are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the
potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!)
but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society.
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of
change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been
involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our
time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the
fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion,
sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will
determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do
something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people
have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the
possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if
we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian
future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think
human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a
marvelous victory.
***
COMMON SENSE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, by Blase Bonpane
"Blase Bonpane is a true guerilla for peace, an exception to the rulers.
From the occupation of Iraq to the war at home; from the coup in Haiti to the
prisons of the US,
Bonpane cuts through the lies to tell it like it is.
For years, his commentaries have been broadcast over the airwaves of Pacifica
station KPFK in
Los Angeles. Today, in a world dominated by occupation, war and a crackdown
on civil liberties
and human rights, these commentaries become an essential counter-balance to
the lies.
"Common Sense" is evidence that the voices of the silenced majority can and
must be heard."
-- Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now!
"Tom Paine was a pamphleteer who proclaimed the need for revolution in 1776.
Common
Sense for the Twenty-first Century is based on the need for a moral
revolution in our own time.
This was the call made by Dr. Martin Luther King.
This is the call today made by Blase Bonpane who rejects the ancient tools
of clubs, spears, guns and
bombs while promoting the non-violent tools of dialogue together with
militant grass roots action. Blase
believes firmly that we can have a future of international participatory
democracy directed toward
distributive justice.
Blase is a news commentator for KPFK in Los Angeles and host of the weekly
radio program WORLD
FOCUS which is directed toward ending the war system and building a global
peace system. This new
book also includes Blase's interviews with Chalmers Johnson, Jonathan
Schell and the Reverend
James Lawson.
Blase and Theresa are the founders of the Office of the Americas on whose
board I
have had the privilege of serving since its inception in 1983."
--Martin Sheen, Actor, Activist
BLASE WILL BE SIGNING HIS WORK ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH, 2 TO 5 PM
AT THE DEBUT OF ARLINGTON WEST, BELOW:
----
COALITION AGAINST MILITARISM IN OUR SCHOOLS
PRESENTS
THE DEBUT OF
ARLINGTON WEST
A film by Peter Dudar & Sally Marr
Interviews w/ soldiers, military families & veterans at Santa Monica Pier
Sundays where over 1000 crosses honor the U.S. military fallen in Iraq.
With special guest,
author/poet/activist
LUIS RODRIGUEZ
Teachers, veterans, students, and families discuss how to stop
recruiting in our schools.
and
OPERATION OPT OUT
How to avoid being contacted by military recruiters (but hurry,
LAUSD deadline to file is October 22!)
Sunday Sept.26, 2-5 pm
Highland Bldg., 104 North Ave 56 at Figueroa in Highland Park
(www.highlandhall.com)
MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT - REFRESHMENTS
Admission: $5 - Students free
CONTACT: (323) 664-0985 or (323) 650-8166
www.militaryfreeschools.org www.arlingtonwestfilm.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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