private on slow revolutions
we tend to imagine ‘revolutions’ as snap-moments, as bloodied affairs, and as things that suddenly bring about terrific change. we celebrate the bloodiest ones (the french revolution, for example), even though those are often the ones that create the least or no impact, and certainly create no lasting change.
small flakes of snow must fall for weeks and months, building up gradually, but silently, till they form a glacier too heavy for the mountain to hold. the avalanche isn’t a sudden or terrific affair ; it took weeks and months and billions-of-flakes in the making. revolutions, then, are slow in the making; they are replete with invisible actions, meaningful gestures, moments of solidarity, and small-and-consistent acts of righteousness.
extract, from a letter to a vaishnavi, encouraging her climate-activism (through her “all you need is less” initiative).
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additional notes: 202101.
while the text seems apt for the letter’s context, i have questioned my generalisations since. even so, the relative lack of dramatic impact of recent ‘revolutions’ — take the the arab spring and #metoo movement, for example, and how they only seem to be a blip in the universal impunity with which men continue to operate in our world — does make me go back to what i wrote one year earlier. it would seem: the passion instilled during these movements turns to apathy of an even greater magnitude when the revolution doesnt produce the desired result.