Ep 359 Cynicism Or Informed Hope

Episode 359 of RevolutionZ considers the possibility that the biggest barrier to change isn’t raw power, but a story that many people have swallowed about what’s possible? The idea that there is no alternative. That victory is a pipe dream. The associated chapter of the The Wind Cries Freedom considers how cynicism is manufactured, why it passes for “realism,” and how organizers in the oral history's revolutionary process flipped the script by pairing a credible vision with messengers who modeled rigor, empathy, and staying power.

Andre Goldman answers Miguel Guevara's questions in this chapter by describing how schools, media, and workplace hierarchies train us to expect little and accept less. From there, Goldman considers the limits of purely defensive mobilizations. To push back against a figurehead can matter, but it could also leave intact the belief that the underlying order is inevitable. Goldman tells how a pivotal turning point arrived for the movement for a revolutionary participatory society when evidencing the logic of hope became a central priority and activists learned to couple a vision of a principled and feasible future with an associated strategy and priorities until dissent began to signal seriousness rather than naivety and wisdom rather than delusion.

Miguel asks Andre about RPS's militarism boycott as a kind of case study. Andre tells how campus divestment was forced by student activism and felt like a major win until research quietly migrated into private spin-offs. Andre then tells how the RPS approach: transformed to address not just colleges but also corporations and how it learned to protect jobs while reassigning funds from weapons to green transit, schools, clinics, and renewable energy. He describes how the movement discovered and becoming adept at explaining why elites often prefer military budgets over social investment—not for defense or even for offense, but mostly because public goods empower workers and reduce elite leverage, whereas military production does the opposite.

At the same time, in context of the on-going campus organizing about guns and militarism Goldman describes arguing with students about open carry and coming to realize how the open carry debate was more a clash of premises than of values. When a student or townsperson assumes permanent danger, everyone having guns on display can look “rational” as a deterrent against mass shooters who will then know they will get quickly picked off. One side believes a far far less violent society is possible so no open carry, indeed, no to guns more widely. The other side believes that violence is inevitable so that having a gun is one's only defense. The lesson that premises divide dissenters and defenders of oppressive ways changes the argument from moral differences and judgments to differences over the facts of the matter. This then tended to get generalized to fossil fuels, borders, and foreign policy. RPS learned to address vlues, of course, but also the upstream fictitious beliefs that make harmful conclusions feel inevitable to system defenders.

Miguel next draws out Andre about the human side of durable movements, about the need to build confidence, to design for joy and care, and to create visible wins that prove agency. If you’ve ever felt that critique is endless but change feels out of reach, Andre Goldman's stories in this chapter of the roal history show a path for turning analysis into action, and for turning despair into informed hope.

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