The only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the living together of people. Only where men live so close together that the potentialities of action are always present can power remain with them, and the foundation of cities, which as city-states have remained paradigmatic for all Western political organization, is therefore indeed the most important material prerequisite for power. What keeps people together after the fleeting moment of action has passed (what we today call "organization") and what, at the same time, they keep alive through remaining together is power. And whoever, for whatever reasons, isolates himself and does not partake in such being together, forfeits power and becomes impotent, no matter how great his strength and how valid his reasons.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1958Cities as empowerment plants
Collections that include this source
Keep exploring
- You can tell the genesis of the Arab Spring in other alternative ways ... the comic book about Martin Luther King and civil disobedience that was translated into Arabic and widely distributed in Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring. You can tell of Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience tactics be …
Inspirations travel … and so do revolutions
You can tell the genesis of the Arab Spring in other alternative ways ... the comic book about Martin Luther King and civil disobedience that was translated into Arabic and widely distributed in Egypt shortly before the Arab Spring. You can tell of Martin Luther King’s civil disobedience tactics being inspired by Gandhi’s tactics, and Gandhi’s being inspired by Tolstoy and the radical acts of non-cooperation and sabotage of British women suffragists. So the threads of ideas weave around the world and through decades and centuries. There’s another lineage for the Arab Spring in hip hop, ... Tunisian hip-hop artist El General was, along with Bouazizi, an instigator of the uprising, and other musicians played a role in articulating the outrage.
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2015Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
Collections that include this source
of our Imagination
