E31: The Helm of the Mutineers - On Sociopolitical Revolutions

The Dawdler's Philosophy

There’s a poem by Portia Nelson called “There’s a hole in my sidewalk”. In it, she keeps going down the street, falls in the hole in the sidewalk, and struggles to get out. The poem is about repeating patterns that ultimately hurt you. The punchline? Walk down another street.

In this episode, we Dawds discuss sociopolitical revolutions and the effectiveness of protests and movements that hope to precede them. We meander through various texts and ideas that have come about from the study of such historically significant (and insignificant) events.

But in the end there are more questions than answers.

-Dawdlers

00:02:56 – Ryan starts it off with some anecdotal shlock about protests he’s seen // A proportional analogy // Power, etc.

00:25:05 - The Arab Spring and Occupy movements // The effectiveness of protest

00:37:53 – Understanding revolution // A unified theory of revolution // New approaches to protest // Memes as the leaders

01:14:17 – Structuralism // Median age theory of revolution // Resource enrichment episodic synchrony (again and again!!) // Early 20th Century high school movement

01:36:56 – Socrates on democracy

01:48:58 – The Sunflower Revolution // vTaiwan // Consensus making

02:02:53 – Breaking the cycle // What do we want?