Poetry: Revolution by Azad Kamall

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QZNz6pwKoo[/youtube]

 

REVOLU­TION

So far this glob­al reces­sion has led to a rel­at­ively inter­est­ing era.
Whilst most gov­ern­ments are cut­ting pub­lic spend­ing, a revolu­tion has been dawn­ing ever nearer.

But will these protests actu­ally change any­thing, and if so how long will the change last?
Well in order to pre­dict where the future may take us, firstly we need to look into our past.

The last time this happened was in the 18^th cen­tury and it all kicked off back in France.
They call this the age of enlight­en­ment, and as a res­ult our freedoms were enhanced.

At this time the print­ing press had just emerged, and at first it was com­pletely unrestricted.
Such free­dom of speech led to mass revolu­tion, the scale of which no one would have predicted.

Simply from listen­ing to one anoth­er we real­ised that we all wanted a com­plete change of scene.
We were all fed up of liv­ing as peas­ants, under the oppres­sion of a king or a queen.

And that was the end of our feud­al­ist­ic soci­ety, and a cap­it­al­ist one was born in it’s place.
This gave us all the chance to earn our own money, in a com­pet­i­tion that some now call the rat race.

But today cap­it­al­ism has got­ten out of hand, with such a huge divide between the poor and the rich.
And now that the print­ing press has been com­pletely mono­pol­ized, free­dom of speech no longer exists.

But today a new media has come to our aid, and it’s still rel­at­ively unrestricted.
The inter­net has the poten­tial to bring a revolu­tion, just like the rise of the print­ing press once inflicted.

But what’s the next stage after cap­it­al­ism, that will come about as a res­ult of this new revolution?
Well through­out his­tory it seems that these con­flicts are just baby steps towards our ongo­ing evolution.

You see way back in the start we lived in small groups, back when humans used to live in small tribes.
Back then we lived togeth­er as a com­munity, and we did what was needed to survive.

Private prop­erty and class dif­fer­ence did­n’t exist, since all the tribes­men had the same role.
They all had to be hunter gather­ers, but then the best ones soon took control.

After this sev­er­al of these tribes merged, either by agree­ment or by mil­it­ary forces.
Hence a city was formed, and the king of this city, owned all of the land and resources.

But threats to the king from oth­er groups meant that for him it would make com­mon sense,
To give some of his land to any people who can provide him with sol­diers for his defense.

Doing this then in turn gave rise to, a brand new type of society.
A wealthy minor­ity would now own all the land, in this land own­ing aristocracy.

This soci­ety was known as feud­al­ism, where the land own­ers were the rul­ing élite.
They used the peas­ants to work on their land, and even sold them the food that they eat.

Gradu­ally food and goods were pro­duced in excess, which gave rise to industry and trade.
And it was from this prac­tice of trad­ing, that a new class of mer­chants were made.

These traders then got rich­er and rich­er, but that did­n’t stop them from still want­ing more.
Even­tu­ally they deman­ded polit­ic­al powers, which then led to a revolu­tion­ary war.

This war star­ted in France, but spread through­out the west, and as a res­ult of this fam­ous social clash,
All land and resources would from now on be owned by the per­son who could bid the most cash.

We refer to this stage as cap­it­al­ism, and it’s the stage that we now cur­rently live in.
It seems that this soci­ety revolves around tak­ing, but rarely con­siders the concept of giving.

In such a sys­tem that revolves around chas­ing money, it’s no sur­prise that it even­tu­ally became corrupt.
I guess the sys­tem works well when you’re born into money, but if you’re not then you’re pretty much fucked.

We now have bankers who are paid massive bonuses, when all they do is make wealthy people more rich.
Where­as doc­tors don’t get paid nearly as much, even though they’re the ones who cure us when we’re sick.

And we all know that the major­ity of our tax money, goes towards these ongo­ing mil­it­ary operations.
And yet now there does­n’t seem to be enough money to fund our human right to a free education.

Now that the reces­sions kicked in, the gov­ern­ment needs cash, yet they still spend most of our tax on their war.
Instead they cut edu­ca­tion and our nation­al health ser­vice, which is ter­rible news for us all.

Because regard­less of your class, gender, age, or your race, these ser­vices are our basic human right.
So if our gov­ern­ment takes them from us, then we must let them know that we will not give them up without a fight.

We do all of their labour and pay all their tax, so we must insist that they listen to our demands.
When we come togeth­er as one, they’ll have to give us our rights. Divided we’ve fallen, but united we will stand.

This revolu­tion will by no means be easy, but this revolu­tion will even­tu­ally transcend.
This revolu­tion will cer­tainly be a long one, but this revolu­tion will be worth it in the end.

Writ­ten by Azad Kamall