I absolutely loved the perspective on the Syrian uprising as offered by this author. I think that this piece has to a great extent captured the spirit of the uprisings that are occurring in many parts of the world, and this spirit could very well succeed in bringing profound changes--I'm thinking epochal changes.
Ever since the beginning of the agrarian age (10,000 years ago?) when surplus goods were produced for the first time, societies have been plagued by class divisions and conflict. It seems that there were always people who no longer wanted to share the bounty, but to control and appropriate it for themselves and their families--you know, the kind of people Margaret Thatcher thought were normal. Often such people formed priesthoods and hoodwinked people into thinking that they had privileges because of some type of divine connections to gods. Other societies came under the control of a warrior class who insisted on appropriating most of the wealth. Later, we have seen slavery, landed aristocracies, state bureaucracies, capitalists, and combinations of all such arrangements claiming the right to take possession of most of the socially produced wealth.
But, notice that the human spirit that demands social justice never really died. There have always been rebellions against such arrangements, and many succeeded for a time until some new special ruling group took over. Are the uprisings and protests that the author describes in Syria illustrative of what is happening in so many places across the globe? Do these events herald a new universal spirit of resistance to class-based societies everywhere?
...nothing will bring back those who have participated in this noble act of freedom and have experienced the ecstasy of rebelling, to the political, moral and intellectual decay the regime has in store for them. If this regime is enslaved by and addicted to power, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have developed a more powerful addiction to freedom and collective rebellion. While the regime worked for half a century to strip Syrians of political interest and to spread apathy among them, the uprising today represents a great collective rehearsal on politics and on developing a concern for common interests. In this respect, one hopes that this rehearsal on freedom continues despite its dangers and cost. The sacrifice and selflessness that marks the participation in this uprising, the atmosphere of brotherhood and confidence among people, the broad mixture and coming together, the intense reactions and sharing of pain, all make it a sublime manifestation of life, one that is rarely possible.
