Revolution

My mind is on a revolution right now. Yesterday I went to watched an excellent movie, "V for Vendetta", screenplay by the Wachowski Brothers, who produced the Matrix Trilogy. In it the masked hero V is a revolutionary terrorist set to topple the Fascist British Governement in an imaginary near future world. The character is very artistic with a love for drama and everything said by this supposingly psychotic person turned captivatingly poetic. "The blowing up of the parliament is just a symbol, but symbol give people hopes". (Incidentally in real life the leader of the Zapatista revolutionary movement in Southern Mexico, Subcommader Marcos, is also a man perpertually behind a mask and speak in poetic terms.)
The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, sometime I wonder what would be like to be in the middle of these historical moments when the mass rise to create a new order to the world. What would it be like to feel the same sense of hope that those people feel, which compell them to challenge the establish authority? Incidentally, I started reading some Karl Marx in my Development course. (Marxism branched out into an important view on International Development) I found what Marx said to be also very captivating. In Matrix the Wachoski Brothers weaved a basic fundamental philosophic question of 'What is Real?' in the plot, in V for Vendetta I found the dual did the same thing with some Marxist ideology. Some people may laugh off the Fascist world in the movie to be too remote and imaginary but Marx said the states are a product of 'constraint of violence exercise by a few against the rest'. So if we cut and slice the world we live in, we can also piece out the Fascist world enacted in the movie. The core of Marxism is the historical force which will eventually drive a social revolution, in which the suppress social class will rise against the ruling class. The battle begins at an ideological level, when the emerging ideology will dominate over the ideology of the oppressors. In the movie, all V did was spreading his revolutionary ideology and BANG! the whole country echoed and put on his mask. A symbol of sharing his hope and optimism. So what is my recommendation: watch the movie and read some Marxism.

To finish off I read that a new video game, A Force More Powerful, has just been release, in which you have to mass the crowd's support to bring about a 'Non Violence Revolution" in a dictator ruled country, by controling element such as Protest, Hunger Strike, Fund Raising etc.