Cyreenik Says
(Note: Here is my contribution to The Time of Nutcases: an editorial "Regulatory Cap and Trade".)
It can get spooky how much the 2010's are evolving like the 1930's.
With the emerging of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon as a, "We're going to sit here for a long time."-phenomenon, we are seeing a replay of the benefit marches such as the Bonus Army march of 1932.
The Bonus Army marched on Washington demanding the immediate cash-payment redemption of service certificates that had been awarded veterans by Congress. These certificates were created in the boom times of 1924 as additional compensation for fighting in World War One. When issued they were not to be redeemed until 1945. The marchers were protesting to change that to "pay now".
These marchers camped out in Washington public spaces for about three months, building shanty towns. They got some sympathetic celebrity visitors and media coverage. In July there was violence and two deaths, and the powers-that-be had had enough. The marchers were driven away by a combination of police and military forces and the shantytowns burned down. There were follow-up attempts at Bonus Marches, but they were not permitted to get as big or entrenched.
Given that historical parallel to base on, here's my prediction of how this OWS event will evolve:
Since the OWS's are demonstrating with a hundred-and-one causes in mind, it's unlikely everyone is going to be satisfied. Since these people are camping out, not coming and going, not protesting while some kind of G20/IMF meeting is being held, this implies that this is going to go on for months.
In the first weeks there will be growing celebrity support -- the attention whores will make the rounds -- then that will fade.
As the camp out time lengthens into months, what is being protested for will keep changing, but remain varied and unclear. Since this is not something that has a clear end, more and more "cheap shots" (betrayals) will be taken as more people get actively discouraged.
Ultimately the locals around the scene will get tired of the inconvenience, and growing crime associated with the cheap shots, and police violence will be used to clear the areas.
Then the legends will build. Legend building is highly unpredictable. (For instance, I was surprised when "first responders" (as they are now called) became the centerpiece for the 9-11 memories.) But part of the centerpiece legend of OWS could be elements similar to "Woodstock" of the 1960's -- good times, peace, love, drugs... then all ruined by "The Man" working as agent for those "Greedy 1%ers" being protested against.
Last month I talked about the rising stress surrounding the Eurocrisis. This month another symptom of rising stress has come onto media radar: The Occupy Wall Street Movement, which now seems to be morphing into the Occupy [something] Movement, and spreading around the US and western Europe.
Fellow MIT alumnus David Ziegelheim pointed out in the Linked-In "blogathon" I started some months ago (now at 8,000 posts) that at this time the theme word for the movement seems to be "aimless" -- among the thousands of protesters there are hundreds of reasons for being on the streets.
This is the usual condition for the beginning of a wave of social unrest.
What will happen now is the evolution of the ideas. The longer the protesting continues, the more the ideas for protesting will narrow down. Over the next few weeks and monthis a much shorter list of ideas will become the standard ideas for the group. However, which ideas will become standard is hard to predict -- this unpredictability is what makes all revolutions so interesting.
This is another unfolding of The Time of Nutcases that I have talked about previously.
To review: The Time of Nutcases happens when the community starts paying more and more attention to leaders offering radical solutions. Nine out of ten of those solutions offered are just plain nuts, and can be hugely damaging, but one in ten will be gems that will prove of enduring value. Those gems will become the heart of the next generation of social evolution.
These are interesting times, and we have a lot of new and interesting technology at our disposal to make these times even more interesting. In particular, it will be interesting to see how this new technology affects the evolution of this round of Time of Nutcases.
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