The resolution, is REVOLUTION

By Xavier Jones

I walk around vacant downtown Toulouse, thinking about the tradition/convention known as New Year’s resolutions. I’ve never been one to make them because I admit I would have a hard time keeping them. Then I began thinking of the state of our world and how desperately things need to change. There is no more room for gradualism! We are in a global state of emergency! We have the motives and the means. We must now take the risks to reap the rewards. We are faced with a plethora of problems that require solutions. We will only achieve those solutions with a resolution, and “The resolution, is REVOLUTION!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640277250

Book preview

Preface

You really start to think about things when you’re abroad in another country working on your Masters. Why do you have so much time to think? Well, first off, because you’re not in class for very long, and honestly, even when you are in class, you soon realize that your grade for said class is only one take-home assignment which is impossible to fail. Hence, you tend to daydream during the lecture. Some people daydream about love, how they want their lives to be, how they will change the world, etc.

Secondly, because the Masters is predominantly independent work, it’s mentally grueling, and during those seven- to nine-hour days, it’s natural to push the books aside, close the laptop and notebooks, and either lay your head down on the table or crack your back and neck while dangling over the back of your chair. And in that brief reprieve, what was a focused line of thought a moment ago becomes the path of the wandering mind. A subject floats into your mind, and you say to yourself, I shall think more on that, but maybe this weekend when I take a well-deserved break from my work.

Lastly, because you are a foreigner, studying in a city where no one knows you. All that chaos in the bar where you go to write is muted because no one else exists to you and you do not exist to them.

The inspiration for these writings comes from several sources. These sources are quotes, sayings, and word play, and others are original creations. While all these entries are in English, a couple were inspired and written in French; hence, they required translation. As we know, whenever authors use ideas/information that are not their own, they are obliged to cite their sources in footnotes, endnotes, or a bibliography. During years at university, I had become accustomed to using footnotes to give credit to my sources when I had to; hence, I’ll stick to it in this book. Any other potential ambiguities requiring clarification will warrant footnotes as well. I advise the reader to read and understand the footnotes before going on to the text of the entry for the sake of a better comprehension of where an entry is coming from in terms of its source/inspiration as well as understanding what an entry endeavors to say.

In closing, I ask the reader to take a look at his or her situation after they have finished reading the words to come. I ask them to take the selfless approach, not the selfish one, as it is the latter that has brought us to this point. Those of us who have the means ought to fight for others who are not strong enough to fight all by themselves, and yet EVERY individual should give to this enterprise according to what they are physically and mentally capable of contributing. In looking out for only ourselves and our own self-preservation, even if we do not prey upon others, we abandon the common good. This abandonment is not only of those who have little to no means to protect themselves; it is an abandonment of our own security. Because those whom we refused to help will see us as the enemy when they feel they have nothing to lose, and the classic phrase by any means necessary is cut short to by any means.

The faces of our present disadvantageous situation are evident to enlightened minds. History has taught us about the means to fight this oppressor, and we owe it to ourselves to treat her lessons with reverence. Regrettably, her lessons that we tend to remember are how to attain steps of progress that are but short-term victories whose luster fades in time, having not been polished by the vigilance of citizens. It is entirely up to us to choose to run the marathon of revolution. If we run this distance in great numbers mankind, will arrive at the end together. We will lift those who fall; we will carry those too tired to go on; we will pace ourselves with the intention to never leave anyone behind.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!

Introduction

I write with a comfort, a conviction, and a quickness.

The comfort, the truth; the conviction,

the conscience; the quickness, necessity.

—Date Unknown

I hear the sounds and see the sights of woe in countries around the world. Only empathy permits me to feel this suffering, but with infinite insufficiency. Mankind had a freedom to act that was only limited by his or her own individual ability to act. Jean-Paul Sartre (or at least his character in Existential Comics) refers to this freedom as radical freedom. Sartre’s eighteenth-century predecessor, Thomas Paine, understood that this freedom inevitably had to be limited:

For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. (Of the Origin and Design of Government in General. With Concise Remarks on the English Constitution, 1776)

Paine was right: [T]he impulses of conscience [are not] clear, uniform, [or] irresistibly obeyed, and his contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recognized the one great impulse that could ruin any body politic, private interest:

For every individual as a man may have a private will contrary to, or different from, the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest may speak with a very different voice from that of the public interest; his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which would be less painful for others than the payment is onerous for him; and fancying that the artificial person which constitutes the state is a mere fictitious entity (since it is not a man), he might seek to enjoy the rights of a citizen without doing the duties of a subject. The growth of this kind of injustice would bring about the ruin of the body politic. (The Social Contract, 1762)

The institution of government, which Paine saw as a necessity to protect mankind from itself at the hands of its own radical freedom, has long been stolen by the evil denounced by Rousseau. It is not necessary that I make a list of the unfortunate consequences of this inconvenient truth for the list would be too long. We live the consequences; hence, we are part of the truth. Rather, it is necessary, as it was for the countless famous or unsung heroes of history, that I add my voice to their chorus in calling for what seems to be the only means of dispelling our current darkness. I must use this book to call for a resolution and the resolution is REVOLUTION.

Why is revolution the only resolution to our current predicament? Because every human being is born with rights, both universal as well as those promised to them by the laws of their country. For those whose birth did not come with highly favorable social circumstances, their rights were already in danger through no fault of their own, as some, not all, of those with elevated status exercise their rights to the point where they believe they are entitled to the rights of their fellow citizens. The powerful victimize the powerless, and those who would defend