"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas JeffersonWhen I watch video of protestors in Iran chanting Mousavi, I wonder. My gut level impression is that it is foolish to put one's hopes in an individual. A person is changeable. He can sell himself as one thing and deliver another. A person is evanescent. He can be assassinated.
My guess is that the struggle of the West from the Renaissance to Modernity was not a struggle to support "leading personalities" but a fight for ideas. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is a distortion caused by looking backwards in history. But I think you get more solid social change when you place your hope in ideas and not individuals.
Even ideas can fail us because they can get "packaged" and spin Meisters can "sell" them as something that they really aren't. But at least with ideas they have a permanence and they are a "thing" that we can collectively think over and explore, nurture, and develop. In the end, ideas can grow to be worthy of our initial ideals. I do not see that anything like this can be accomplished by putting one's hopes in an individual.
Here's a video clips of people chanting of "Mousavi" that sparked the above meditation:
Here is a meditation on Iran from the local art school. It is pretty superficial, but still interesting because it is a local voice...
IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.
Speaking of local events, here is a video of a local demonstration in support of Iran:
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