Reflections 10th May

The End Of Obedience?

It’s difficult to read the label on a container from inside it. Sometimes, we need to find a way to step outside it, and find the freedom to play by different rules. Having just spent a week on the island of Malta, without my tech, it reminded me that holidays can act as catalysts to playing with disobedient thoughts. Nicholas Monserrat’s “The Kappilan of Malta” provided not just a wonderful description of the Island and its history, but a provocation, and as we enter peak holiday season, I find myself wondering what it takes to turn disobedient daydreams to rebellious action.

Given the multiple threads of uncertainty we face, not much, I suspect.

A quick gallop around some research on insurgency throws up some interesting ideas to play with. Ted Gurr’s Why Men Rebel (1970) held that political violence is driven by relative deprivation: the gap between what people expect and what they receive. The argument is that political upheaval is the result of collective discontent caused by a sen…