Oh great heavens! Jubilation! They’ve done it! The Egyptian Revolution has succeeded, and peacefully. He’s gone. Mubarak has resigned!
First Tunisia, now Egypt. Who else in the world is protesting against repressive regimes? Well in the Middle East and North Africa, it’s only those two. For now. But the word is spreading. And not just the word. The consciousness. People who have lived under repression all their lives may have once just accepted it because they didn’t think they had any options. Now they’re beginning to realize they do. Thanks to the courageous ones who have finally said the magic word. No. And who have been willing to pay a price for their freedom. Have been willing to stand their ground in the face of threat and even violence.
But this revolution that is really a consciousness that we all have rights which nobody can take from us, is also being facilitated, lubricated, by social media, mostly Twitter. And that’s only possible because everybody in the world has a cell phone! People always talk about the age of connectivity, and this is one example of it really working in mankind’s favor.
So all around the world, something wonderful is happening, in the midst of all the war, rape and violence and abuse against children; the crime, political oppression, commercial tyranny. In the midst of that cesspool which is the worst side of humanity is emerging this incredibly beautiful aspect of the human spirit. A consciousness of human rights, and an ability to claim them, such as we’ve never seen before. Out of the mud grows the lotus flower.
We’ve had the Russian, the French, the American Revolutions. They’ve been harsh and bloody and violent. Now we’ve had the Egyptian Revolution. And it’s been a peaceful revolution. They haven’t been violent. They’ve been very angry, and justifiably so, but they haven’t acted it out. They’ve been democratic and honorable. They haven’t wanted to fight, because that’s not what they’re about. They wanted peace, and they wanted to be treated with respect. That isn’t a lot to ask. They’ve shown us there’s a different way to create change.
I’m still getting my head around it. How do we thank them for their courage, their will, their non-violence? They’ve proved to us that in the face of tyranny, abuse of power, unreasonable force, we can stand up for ourselves without physically hurting those who want to keep us down. I don’t really pray in the traditional sense, but yesterday and today I prayed with all my heart. I prayed that these beautiful peaceable people and the power of their honorable would win over tyranny, resistance to decency and the propensity to do violence.
And it did. The eighteen day Egyptian Peaceful Revolution. What a great time to be alive.
Stepping out of History 