Rioting seems to be on the rise whether it’s in the Middle East or the City of London. While protesting and rioting may appeal to the animalistic nature, in a civilized society democracy is supposed to take the lead. Their aggressive displays may prove a quick fix to expend their energy and display their anxieties, but they are hardly going to solve anything other than a continuing downward societal spiral.
As Martin Luther King said: “The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”
People are picking up their phones and BBM’ing or Tweeting to add their voice to growing angst and organize themselves into flash movements or flash robs. The most likely to get involved this way are youths who don’t appear to know any other outlet to their frustrations, or any better way to use their time. With youth unemployment in double digits whether it’s the United States, Europe or Canada – it’s a disturbing trend, particularly when our definition of youth is getting older and older.
Why don’t youths know how to use their energy, drive and power to push for constructive solutions? Mainly, I would contend, because they don’t know how to direct their energy. I never learnt how to organize in school, I didn’t learn how important it was to participate in political campaigns until I actually worked in a political office. In university, despite majoring in Political Science, I didn’t know what a political campaign was about. You see, the ‘Royal I’ was a policy guy with all the answers.
In fact, it took me a few years of considering myself some elevated policy-wonk elite (while just answering the phone), to experience the true power of political engagement. In political circles, especially young circles, there is a feeling that canvassing for support is the lowliest job you can get. When you work on a campaign, you want to be in the office with a closed door where staffers talk in hushed voices pointing at maps and moving pins around. Somehow there was something magical in that room, until you actually participate in some of these conversations. Until then, I was given a clipboard and pointed down the street to canvass.
It took me a little to get going, but I had some of the most energizing conversations I’ve ever had. They weren’t academic and theoretical, although don’t get me wrong – I love those, these were conversations with real people who are going through real problems. Political candidates don’t just gain support going door-to-door, they learn how and why they’re doing their job. I didn’t know what it meant to be a citizen until I canvassed my neighborhood – I was walking blindly around not seeing everything that was around me. Life gets so much more interesting when you start learning all the different ways people view it and the number of experiences out there. One life time will never be enough!
Democracy started making sense, not just from the theory of a structured power relation between those governing and those governed, but as a unitary entity. If voters are neurons, canvassing is the synapse getting our body working together. Democracy is such a higher ordered thing, it is so… civilized. Francis Fukuyama heralded “The End of History” with liberal democracy being the highest point in our sociocultural evolution.
It’s easy to see his excitement because there is something so developed and sophisticated and powerful in the idea. Perhaps we’ve lost the excitement that Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, and so many others had. My grandparents fought in the Second World War for it, but since then our focus as a society became so granular focusing more and more on what needs to be fixed. Take a step back and think about the process, not the policy, and I’m sure you’ll see something beautiful. We have to remind ourselves and teach our generations youth about it because this isn’t something natural to the human condition, this is the culmination of thousands of years of development and evolution.
The wind whittles even the strongest stone. Democracy is aware of this, that’s why we have elections to put a little more plaster on the wall. As Andrew Jackson said: “Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.” Elections are supposed to be mini-revolutions to adjust our course to the new winds.
Rioting will never produce long-term solutions. I like Gilbert Chesterton’s famous quote: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”
We need to remember how precious democracy is, and how and why we have it. Democracy is the social fix to many problems that we haven’t inherited from our ancestors because they made the fix. We must stay on guard for our protector for “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill
Everyone needs to experience what it means to be on a campaign, to learn how our system works that no academic study can ever provide. People need to know how they can affect positive change to give them an outlet for their frustrations and allow us all to believe in a better future. The establishment must work to make it easier for the population to get involved, but the mechanisms are already here, people just haven’t been taught where they are. So please, if you haven’t done so already, get out there and join a campaign – any campaign, even if it’s just to get a feel for what democracy feels like at the roots.
