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• griffin tucker
• Canberra
• Australia

TEDCRED 10+

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why protests don't work in the long run

starting a following is easy to do if you know how, for instance an opposing ideal. what usually happens next is a formulation of people organised to start a protest against the ideal by means of (ideally) peaceful marches to grab attention

so why doesn't it work?

once the protest is over, people who joined the protest but were sitting on the fence, so to speak, will do nothing further and think their work has been done.

i'm not entirely sure, but i think the majority of the protestors in a lot of cases of protests would have an almost 'sitting on the fence' frame of mind where they wouldn't do anything further than attend the protest.

i've noticed that protestors sometimes seem to think that the people in power over an ideal are almost completely wrong on all of their ideals, and victimize them by bending the truth about them, or even spreading completely false information about them.

this is not the way to change things positively for the future. in fact what usually happens is the people in power will smother the flame of the protest, and nothing gets accomplished.

solution?

work THROUGH the system to get things changed. if people don't take you seriously when you offer an opposing ideal, get signatures proving that there are more people who agree with your opposing ideal, and take it to those in power to help them realise there is a problem with their original ideal.

only then, will the formulation of think-tanks to find solutions to problems that they were unaware of in the first place begin to form. perhaps with signatures AND original ideas from the people who sign about the opposing ideal, would it be possible to solve a problem.

simply put: a protest grabs attention, but only for a short while.