Activism from Home
I have said it many times:
all the unhappiness of people comes from the fact
that they cannot remain quietly in a room.
Blaise Pascal
Is activism from home an alternative to loudly chanting political demands on the street? Even if the affirmative answer to this question seems unusual, if not absurd, at first glance, it does seem plausible. After all, many things can be organized from the sofa, including social change.
As I believe that the classic form of protest – demonstrations in public and other forms of direct action – has long since been exhausted, I therefore argue in favor of examining a seemingly opposite form of resistance, namely that which can also be carried out from the sofa at home. Because protesting from home offers a wide range of possibilities:
The most obvious indication that resistance from the sofa makes sense is the very basic factor of time. As the sofa provides an ideal opportunity for comfort, you can spend at least twice as much time on social engagement from here as from the street. After all, we humans are creatures who tend to be comfortable, so why not make a virtue of this necessity and pursue our form of protest with a cup of tea and a soft cushion behind us?
You can build up a social network while reading and writing from your sofa. From the comfort of your sofa, you can develop a sustainable, substantive concept, a philosophical or spiritual/ideological concept into which your own social commitment is integrated and from which it is fed. A concept that gives you the necessary stamina and passion to embark on an energy-sapping and wonderfully nourishing marathon in your own personal form of protest, because being an activist today requires a lot of energy and the application of strength. Meaningful activism today no longer has anything to do with getting involved in a particular issue for a few weeks or perhaps months and then returning to the status quo. Activism has something to do with tearing down your own house and starting a new life. Activism today requires staying power and should, if possible, be a life’s work and an inner attitude or become more and more so. Activism today is a form of prayer and worship, a form of the contemporary sacred.
