Activity

From ‘The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel: “At a certain stage in its development, the independent life of society and the “dissident” movements cannot avoid a certain amount of organization and institutionalization. This is a natural development, and unless this independent life of society is somehow radically suppressed and eliminated, the tendency will grow. Along with it, a parallel political life will also necessarily evolve, and to a certain extent it exists already in Czechoslovakia. Various groupings of a more or less political nature will continue to define themselves politically, to act and confront each other.

“These parallel structures, it may be said, represent the most articulated expressions so far of living within the truth. One of the most important tasks the “dissident” movements have set themselves is to support and develop them. Once again, it confirms the fact that all attempts by society to resist the pressure of the system have their essential beginnings in the “pre-political” area. For what else are parallel structures than an area where a different life can be lived, a life that is in harmony with its own aims and which in turn structures itself in harmony with those aims? What else are those initial attempts at social self organization than the efforts of a certain part of society to live—as a society—within the truth, to rid itself of the self-sustaining aspects of totalitarianism and, thus, to extricate itself radically from its involvement in the posttotalitarian system? What else is it but a nonviolent attempt by people to negate the system within themselves and to establish their lives on a new basis, that of their own proper identity? And does this tendency not confirm once more the principle of returning the focus to actual individuals? After all, the parallel structures do not grow a priori out of a theoretical vision of systemic changes (there are no political sects involved), but from the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people. In fact, all eventual changes in the system, . changes we may observe here in their rudimentary forms, have come about as it were de facto, from “below,” because life compelled them to, not because they came before life, somehow directing it or forcing some change on it.”

a link to a blog (but not an endorsement of the blog): https://aatayyab.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/the-power-of-the-powerless-1978-vaclav-havel/