Me and You

The individual is a cult of personality, an isolated incident, a dictatorship, an event, a single point. The collective is solidarity, a culture, a democracy, a continuation, a network.

Advantage cannot be given without comparatively removing it from others. One person breaking a glass ceiling does not help everyone else; it just shatters one illusion, leaving shards for everyone who stands below. Now people believe that where there used to be a ceiling, there is none. Don't be fooled; it is still there. One illusion was replaced with another, for there was never a ceiling there in the first place, and now there still is.

Struggle for power and you will find privilege, but look inside yourself and you will find a power without struggle. The difficulty is not an external one, but an internal one, to recognise the power relations that play out every day and to learn to challenge them. It is not about rising up, but about bringing down.

Society exists. We are not just people, but people in relations, a system. We will never be outside such a system, so we must always push at is edges. The revolution is not an event. It is eternal, a fight against inheritance and assumption. It is not outside but within: there is no end state to be achieved, and no inevitability about it.

Even though the struggle is internal, it is not individual. It is a shared struggle against our society, our surroundings, which permeate us and constitute us. It is a revolt against ourselves. But to revolt against your self alone is depression and dulling of the spirit. Collectively it can be joy.

To push against the chains that shackle us all is activity as brilliantly subversive as anything else we can hope to do, and if you do not enjoy it, you're doing it wrong. So: smile at the police lines, dance! When authority seeks control, laugh in its face, for it has no power over your spirit. Rejoice in your disobedience, for it is not merely insurrection but liberation!