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76 results for “Findnow”
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uhh...#help T>T
how do i stop being a #soreloser for missing a game's kickstarter by a full decade? i was really young at that age, couldn't even back #ahatintime if i wanted to, but i still feel like i missed out really hard (a :toucan: ing lossless copy of the soundtrack?! no wonder all the copies i can find now are mp3-320s)
it's kinda ironic, being the game centers around hourglasses as collectibles, now that i think of it.
as a fan as of this year, it especially stings. anyone? :sadness:
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uhh...#help T>T
how do i stop being a #soreloser for missing a game's kickstarter by a full decade? i was really young at that age, couldn't even back #ahatintime if i wanted to, but i still feel like i missed out really hard (a :toucan: ing lossless copy of the soundtrack?! no wonder all the copies i can find now are mp3-320s)
it's kinda ironic, being the game centers around hourglasses as collectibles, now that i think of it.
as a fan as of this year, it especially stings. anyone? :sadness:
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“Using a far more progressive rock build up, with a keenly distinct and differentiated soundscape, 9 o’clock Nasty tone down the overwhelming raw garage arrangements for one that’s a lot more smooth and enveloping on this piece. It’s a woozy exploration that leaves you immersed and on your own trip.” @findnoenemy
https://findnoenemy.com/9-oclock-nasty-dude-your-moms-a-squid/
Careful with that #pizza
#newindie #indie #garage #alternativerock #raccoon #rock #music #rockmusic #postpunk #ukmusic -
"Good read on the #EspionageAct , it does not merely target “traitors and spies.” Even during #Trump ’s own presidency, obscure citizens who kept classified material at their homes, and were never accused of communicating it to anyone or aiding a foreign country, were convicted and sentenced to years in prison under the very same Espionage Act provision Trump is now charged with breaking."
#MissedQuoteBoost of post I cannot find now...
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@bookstodon #ebooks #pulp #mystery
Dead Ernest: Alice Tilton was a pseudonym of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. Taylor wrote the Asey Mayo Cape Cod mysteries; Tilton did the Leonidas Witherall books.
All as soft-boiled as a poached egg, full of crazy action and humour.
Just a great fun beach read or similar, these are hard to find now. Some are appearing as amateur #epubs, like this one.
http://library.lol/fiction/1E013BF6E49E4EFA0785FECB1E9F32DE
Or you can read iffy scans at IA. -
And after this I have to start going through all my OTHER TCG stuff I don't want.
If anyone out there on fedi is into Weiß Schwarz or just into anime series that have had sets in that game, I may be able to hook you up with some old stuff that's harder to find now. Not much in terms of rares, but a lot in terms of common stuff from sets that are now rare.
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And after this I have to start going through all my OTHER TCG stuff I don't want.
If anyone out there on fedi is into Weiß Schwarz or just into anime series that have had sets in that game, I may be able to hook you up with some old stuff that's harder to find now. Not much in terms of rares, but a lot in terms of common stuff from sets that are now rare.
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And after this I have to start going through all my OTHER TCG stuff I don't want.
If anyone out there on fedi is into Weiß Schwarz or just into anime series that have had sets in that game, I may be able to hook you up with some old stuff that's harder to find now. Not much in terms of rares, but a lot in terms of common stuff from sets that are now rare.
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And after this I have to start going through all my OTHER TCG stuff I don't want.
If anyone out there on fedi is into Weiß Schwarz or just into anime series that have had sets in that game, I may be able to hook you up with some old stuff that's harder to find now. Not much in terms of rares, but a lot in terms of common stuff from sets that are now rare.
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Here's my #throwbackthursday contribution. This was my bedroom in 1988.
The large rack contained my #pdp11 34, with an RL02 drive under it. In the corner is an ATT #3b1 (aka #unixpc), with an old #mac next to it.
The thing I really miss is the #dec #gigi terminal in the middle. Very hard to find now. It was a graphics #vt100 compatible terminal.
The PDP11 ran #rsts. There's 2 more racks full of hardware for it off to the left. Was like being next to jetliner when it was running.
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Latest Writings (and some shares)
The Questions
Again, the moon comes up in the night
Again, the stars
They stir up in me some questions
Without letting me know
Where the answers might be
Nor is the sky helpful
Soon it will be dawn
And the most useless guy to ask
When it comes to such questions
Will be there, giving life to us
But not the kind of life we are seeking.
“Embrace yourself fully before you embrace anyone else or not.”
“How helpless we are to take care of even our loved ones when karma comes hard at them.”
“I know I know. But then I start getting doubts.”
“Woh female ka mere paas sirf email hai.”
“One of the advantages of being a theist is that one can leave the bloody work of revolutions to God, trusting he will bring them about in his own inimitable ways, and rest comfortably in one’s drawing room, reading The Motorcycle Diaries.”
“The cause of suffering is not desire but the gap, irrespective of whether the gap is real or imaginary, between expectation and reality. The funny thing is that in actual reality there are no gaps. So, the gap is always between expectation and imagined reality. Because expectation sets in ONLY when you falsely imagine a gap between that which you are or where you are and that which you want or where you want to be. All in all, it is such a ludicrous situation that I cannot fathom why creation exists at all? Just to annoy us to no end with no good purpose served thereby? And yet we suffer not just alone but along with the rest if mankind.”
“Life is the ultimate physician. It will not leave you alone until you are cured of the malady called ignorance.”
No Loneliness
I am never alone
Never ever alone
I who love words
And bask always
In their company.
“The only bitterness I have is toward myself that I made so many mistakes in life. And yet in the midst of that bitterness, there is an inner peace.”
The Poetic Soul
Yedo teliyani baadha
Yedo teerani daaham
Yedo vedinche tapana
Yedo leni santhrupti
Yedo satyam grahincalekapothunna anay avedana
Yedo prapanchani uddarinche korika
Ila vivarinchutu pothay inka ennenno cheppochu
“Our ontology is not exhausted by our biology and psychology.”–DSR
People Are Too Awake
Where’s a soporific when one needs one
Be it the company of Plato or Nisargadatta
That dullens the pain of this dreary day
Where the sun beats down mercilessly
Though the trees seem to love him
And those with solar rooftops
Me, I prefer the moon and the stars
When stern duty is not calling me
To prove myself worthy to a cause
Life seems all too superfluous
Though none with me agrees
They’re too busy living to think or feel.
The Wild Goose Chase of Self-improvement
Self-help books to motivational speakers to life coaches abound. From Dale Carnegie to Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins to Jordan Peterson to the Stoics.
This malady afflicts even the spiritually inclined, who keep polishing the mirror of their mind so that they may better see the reflection of the Truth in it.
This, in my opinion, is a largely mistaken enterprise, and if we foolishly undertake it, that will be nothing short of a Sisyphean burden.
Why?
Because the mind or our personality is the shadow of our real original nature, and we are too busy either trying to sharpen the shadow so that we understand the contours of “ourselves” better or getting aghast every time the shadow falls on the gutter.
This world can contain only our shadow.
Nay, this whole world is our own shadow.
Forget the shadow.
Rest blissful in your own original nature, O Sat-Chit-Ananda.
“The winds of heaven mix for ever”
Whatever heavens there be or not
Methinks it for sure is here with me
As I sit idly and let the hours pass by
So that the night’s wait is not long
Should the day decide to tarry a bit
And in this idleness, I find now here
Those who wait for retirement to find.
Neither the sound of a car passing by
Nor an emotion seeking attention
Disturbs me in my idyllic idleness
Everything seems just right, in place
Cars passing by and the needy emotions.
My Silly Heart
I keep thinking
Many years down the line
When the moon is full
And the stars are shining bright
And she in her balcony
Amidst flowers in bloom
She will remember me
And for a fleeting moment
She will wonder
If she made a mistake.
“Cha, this world is full of women. God is a big teaser.”
“Sometimes I think there is something to Islam and its theory of burqas. That way, when I meet her on the road again, I will not recognize her and no old wounds will be reopened.”
“I have started to laugh now. Enlightenment is just round the corner. Summa iru is too easy, far too easy. Everytime, I venture into the territory of thoughts and feelings, her memory will come on strong and with it loads of pain, so in no time I will be convinced summa iru is so much better. Yaaaay.”
“By the time you discover love is truth and truth is love, it may be too late, dear.”
“Blame your mother. She made you addicted to love.”
Summa Iru
Do not ask why
There may be a reason
In her mind
There may be a reason
In your mind
But the world goes on
Not as per our reasons
But as per God’s will.
Besides, dear Sam,
This very looking for reasons
Is what keeps alive
Both the mind and heart
And who can be at peace
Whose mind and heart are at play.
Nevertheless
One thinks about her
And perhaps she thinks about me
Giving scope
For some more mischief in this world.
“Roxette sang ‘It must have been love’. I sing ‘It must have been desire’. The world drama gets underway due to confusion over the blurring of the two.”
Pablo Neruda, Nah I Will Not Write Any Sad Lines Anymore
Neruda, Neruda, Neruda
How you suffered, you poor thing
And wrote many a sad line
If you were alive, I would come
To sit beside you and share in your sorrow
But in the end, I would point out
Irrespective of whether you would get it or not
That if you had known love
You would have crossed the sea of sorrow
And of course you would protest, saying
It is precisely because of that
You were now suffering
Then I would gently say
Why you went in search of love
When there was no hatred in you?
“God has to run the life histories of both the murdered and the murderer down to the minutest and last detail so that they meet at the appointed hour.”
Reinterpreting the Vedic Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice)
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad begins (1.1.1) by reinterpreting the Vedic Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice) not as a physical ritual, but as a meditation where the cosmos itself is viewed as a sacrificial horse. It symbolizes the identification of the individual with the universal, using the horse’s body to represent time, space, and the elements.
Symbolism of the Sacrificial Horse (1.1.1):
• Head: The Dawn
• Eye: The Sun
• Vital Force: The Air
• Mouth: Fire (Vaisvanara)
• Body/Time: The Year
• Back/Belly: Heaven and Sky
• Hoof/Footing: Earth
• Veins/Bones/Flesh: Rivers/Stars/Clouds
Key Philosophical Aspects:
• Meditation over Ritual: The Upanishad converts a physical act into a meditation, aiming to transform every object into the Universal Subject.
• The Cause of Duality: The horse sacrifice represents the desire for material prosperity, which arises from the ignorance of our non-dual nature with Brahman.
• Creation as Desire: The text explains that in the beginning, there was only “Death” or “Hunger” (a creative desire), which manifested as the universe.
• Identity with the Divine: The one who understands this symbolic sacrifice (as in 1.2.7) conquers further death, meaning they realize their true identity with the absolute, and death cannot overcome them.
The text implies that the material world and its rituals (the sacrifice) are transient. The true goal is to understand that the sacrificer, the sacrifice, and the deity are ultimately one (the Absolute).
On Friendship by Francis Bacon
“A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.”
Full essay here:
https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/baconf/friends.htm
“In the wickedness of another might lie a lot of good for us, though our puny brains cannot understand that often.”
“A friend puts us to sleep. The enemy awakens us.”
“A Ramana Maharshi does not need a Nisargadatta Maharaj as a friend. But you and I, we need each other for many things in life.”
Shunyam, Shunyam, Sarvam Shunyam
This void at the core
That infects all existence
Including mine
Which mocks all
Who think deep enough
And feel long enough
Cannot be filled
And so, we are screwed
If the void is real.
“If I could, I would. Both personally and otherwise. But I just do not know how.”
“Stop reading. Silence is speaking.”
“The word is meant for the ear. But somehow my heart keeps eavesdropping.”
The Merry-Go-Round
An ache
The never goes away
In all our lives
I wonder how they smile
Despite this
I wonder how they cry
Despite this
This merry-go-round
Who gets on, who gets off
Unconcerned
Is the merry-go-round.
Revisiting the Past
These words
That promise much
Much understanding
Both for me and her
She who read my letter
Many decades back
And thought she understood me
Little did she understand
I did not understand myself.
“Silence also seems to be of different kinds.”
“I find it strange when people say God resides in our hearts because space itself resides in God.”
“That which moves the rivers and earth, moves me also.”
The Sad Part about Marriage as a Legal Institution
That marriage exists as a legal institution is a sad commentary on human nature.
Look at it this way.
If there is love, where is the need for legal guarantees.
Now, I know some will think I am being naive because practically speaking, even if love does not change, the needs may change and people cannot live together any longer. Again, no problem, part on good terms.
Now, in both the above scenarios, the property or financial or livelihood issues can and will be taken care of easily enough because both parties are decent.
The problem comes I think when people fall out of love and it leads to acrimony.
But, even in such a case, it will be far easier to separate than if the couple were legally wedded because then it will lead to a long and messy divorce if it is not mutual.
But, what about property, or financial or livelihood issues in this scenario if the couple are not legally wedded.
I do not think just for that thing one should erect a legal institution called marriage and complicate matters for everyone concerned because one can find a creative solution to these issues.
Plus, think of the vast burden that would be reduced for those less well-to-do parents who incur huge debt to perform the wedding ceremony.
Can love ever be legalized?
“Funnily, people are more bothered about whether someone is walking-the-talk rather than about what the talk is. If you understand the full implications of what I am saying here, you would have understood a lot.”
“We should learn to look at all people as different kinds of trees, without superimposing on them some ‘I’ or personality, or a so-called ‘ghost in the machine’ as Gilbert Ryle would characterize it. Then we can see the thoughts, feelings, words, actions as the different fruits on the people-trees, exposed to and responding to the changing weather patterns. After we all are part of nature, sprung from the earth and into which we will dissolve.”
“Psychiatrists are unaware that Advaita is the correct antipsychotic.”
“My mind wants to cease existing. My heart wants to experience the rainbows.”
“Stop and smell the roses”
“Stop and smell the roses” is an idiom advising to slow down, relax, and appreciate life’s beauty, rather than rushing through it. It emphasizes mindfulness, gratitude, and finding joy in small, daily moments instead of solely chasing goals or worrying about work.
Meaning and Key Takeaways:
• Slow Down: It is a gentle reminder to take a break from a frantic, busy schedule.
• Appreciate the Moment: It encourages being present and noticing the pleasant things around you.
• Enjoy the Process: It serves as a reminder to find happiness during the journey, not just at the destination.
• Self-Care: The phrase suggests that resting and recharging prevents burnout.
Origins:
While the exact origin is unclear, the phrase is often associated with professional golfer Walter Hagen (who encouraged golfers to “stop and smell the roses” between shots) and was famously featured in the 1974 song “Stop and Smell the Roses ” by Mac Davis.
How to Practice It:
• Be Mindful: Focus your attention on your immediate surroundings.
• Practice Gratitude: Count your blessings every day.
• Reduce Stress: Actively avoid letting work-related worries dominate your life.
The Malaise
There’s a malaise deep down
In all our minds and hearts
That neither knowledge can cleanse
Nor can our all too human love
Yet we keep searching for those two
This tussle between the outer and inner
Will be our undoing one day
And when we collapse in despair
Where neither our karma can kill us
Nor our knowledge and love save us
We might at last learn to laugh heartily
Seeing how comic the condition is
Of all us humans on this earth
And at long last might start to think
We can last the night even now
Because our laughter might allow us
To bear whatever pains be our lot
Till the light might dawn at dawn.
“There is nothing wrong with you. That is what is wrong with you.”
“Svadharma, too, is ultimately Svadrama, in that it is playing out the role of a dream character who is part of this cosmic drama — and as a poet said, ‘Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die’.”
The Disconnect Between Me and the World
The world is interested in the economy, society, politics, history, religion, and sports.
I am interested in political philosophy, psychology, philosophy, poetry, literature, arts, and spirituality.
Hence the disconnect.
Hearing a Different Drummer
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
This famous quote by Henry David Thoreau (from his 1854 book Walden) encourages individual nonconformity, self-reliance, and following one’s own path rather than societal expectations.
Key Aspects of Thoreau’s “Different Drummer” Philosophy:
• Individualism & Nonconformity: The quote advocates for being true to oneself and ignoring peer pressure or conventional standards.
• Context in Walden: It is found in the “Conclusion” chapter of Walden, where Thoreau explains his decision to leave the woods and encourages others to pursue their own unique, unconventional lives.
• Self-Reliance: It emphasizes listening to one’s internal convictions (“the music which he hears”) over the opinions of others.
• Interpretation: The “different drummer” is interpreted as an inner voice, passion, or calling that differs from the mainstream “beat” of society.
The phrase is widely used today to encourage being unique, original, and independent.
“Be materialistic if you want to be, but be so in a light, cool, bindaas, zany, nonchalant, innocent, devil-may-care attitude sense, but not in a heavy, in-your-face, flaunty, gawdy, flashy, show-offish, status-seeking, richer-than-thou way.”
“Forget Buddha. Tell me what is your suffering?”
The Five Senses
Every eye judges me
Well, not every eye.
Every ear misunderstands me
Well, not every ear.
Every tongue defames me
Well, not every tongue.
Every nose smells me out
Well, not every nose.
Every hand avoids the touch
Well, not every hand.
Pablo Neruda, Today I Indeed Will Write Even Sadder Lines Than You
You knew what you wanted
And it was her, whoever she was;
I, too, have wanted many a she
Whether each of those she’s
Wanted me or not, and at the end
After having forsaken love for truth
I find I have neither truth nor love
What I have are just these
These words, these lines
In which again people see in them
Not truth or love but merely mistakes.
“Very few get me. Most get to me.”
“I wonder how many are lucky to find what they look for. I wonder how many are lucky to not find what they look for.”
“What would the great DiMaggio do?”
In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago asks “what would the great DiMaggio do?” to find the strength to endure immense physical pain and isolation, using the baseball legend as a model of resilience. DiMaggio represents playing through injury—specifically bone spurs—symbolizing fighting through suffering to achieve excellence and survival.
What “The Great DiMaggio” Symbolizes to Santiago:
• Perseverance Over Pain: Santiago’s hands are cut and cramped, yet he tells himself, “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing… They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand”.
• Mental Toughness: Even when facing impossible odds (sharks eating his catch), Santiago draws inspiration from DiMaggio’s “painful condition” (bone spurs) yet still playing, reminding himself to remain a “champion” in his own field of fishing.
• Excellence and Duty: For Santiago, DiMaggio is a, “model of strength and commitment,” a hero who does his job with excellence regardless of circumstances.
In summary, DiMaggio represents the unwavering commitment to duty and the endurance of pain, prompting Santiago to say, “I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today”.
“Johns Hopkins, a businessman in Baltimore, funded the JH School of Medicine for those weak in body and the JH University for those strong in mind, as he himself put it. But, for me the least preferred spot on earth is a hospital, be it as a patient or as a doctor, and the most preferred spot is a university, be it as a student or as a professor.”
“The differences between castes, such as they may be, are not so much due to differences in ability as much as due to differences in what they love.”
“A poet’s job is not to tell the truth but to make you fall in love with the truth.”
from Robert Frost’s poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (https://allpoetry.com/Two-Tramps-In-Mud-Time)
The last stanza reads:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
Key Aspects of the Quote:
Meaning: Frost argues against separating love (avocation) from necessity (vocation/work).
Philosophy: He believes true fulfillment comes only when passion and work are united.
Context: The poem contrasts the speaker’s pleasurable, yet necessary, labor of splitting wood with the serious, paid labor needed by the tramps, ultimately aiming to align his love for the task with the necessity of doing it.
The phrase emphasizes holistic living—combining what you love with what you must do.
The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography
What I Have Lived For
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
Hopkins’ most famous dropout
Gertrude Stein’s brief tenure as a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is often treated as mere literary trivia, but her four years in Baltimore helped set the stage for an unconventional, extraordinary life.
https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2026/spring/gertrude-stein-at-jhu/
Pablo Neruda, I, Too, Write the Saddest Lines Tonight, But…
Yes, Neruda,
I, too, am writing them now
You pined for your love
Without taking a name
Well, all that is fine and good
But you never wrote
In that poem of yours
What love was
Is it merely pining
Like you would have us conclude
And if pining were it
Isn’t everyone pining
For someone or something
In what way your pining was different
That you needed to write about it?
Aren’t you also fooling us
In some way
That such pining has some merit.
Did you spend your life pining away
I hope not.
But tonight I write
About a different kind of pining
One where one’s pining
Is not one’s own pining
But one’s pining
About the pining of others.
The difficulty is not that it is difficult. The difficulty is that we are interested in things other than what he is talking about in the book or at least not sufficiently interested in those matters because our focus is on ourselves as body-mind and consequentially on this world with which we need to interact to serve the purposes of our body-mind…and by that I do not mean only our base or gross desires but also this “thirst” to gain more and more knowledge of this world, be it through natural sciences but also about our own selves in the form of our feelings, emotions, the societies we have built, the “history” that we think we have been through, the future that seems to lie ahead of us, etc., because we are psychophysical organisms or we think we are that, but as Ramana Maharshi pointed out, “Knowledge of duality is ignorance” because duality is unreal and so knowledge of unreality can only be ignorance…understanding this we should live our lives as best as we can doing our svadharma because there is a gap been intellectual understanding and the realization, and it is in that gap our lives will have to be led in such a manner that the gap closes or more correctly we will realize one day that the gap also was merely an imaginary gap…
No Jana, No Dukhi
Which ganja-smoking bloke in which Himalayan cave came up with this prayer or moral ideal (if you ask me, it is nonsense) of “Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu” I do not know, but I do know that he must have been a ganja smoker.
I mean under which possible metaphysical, religious, philosophical. political, social, psychological Weltanschauung can such a state of affairs be brought or has it ever been brought about or has anyone ever put forward a theory or model that can bring it about?
So, as long as jana exist, there will be both sukhis and dukhis, if only sometimes for the simple reason that I will be become a dukhi if I see someone else more sukhi than me.
The only way there will be no dukhi is if there are no jana.
And, if you think about it, strangely enough, spirituality is taking you to that space where you become sukhi by realizing there is no sarve jana but ONLY YOU.
“The source of suffering is NOT what is MISSING from your life, including enlightenment, but what you DO NOT WANT to be MISSING from your life, including enlightenment. Understanding this IS enlightenment.”
“Gender discrimination, caste discrimination, class discrimination, racial discrimination, and ideological discrimination, etc., are all symptoms of one and only one disease.”
“Narayana Murthy thinks he is wise because he has learned the art of ignoring his subconscious mind, which is why he said that thing about the 72 hours. Now, when Sudha Murty got to know that Murthy is going around claiming he is wise, she suppressed her smirk and putting her tongue in her cheek, she wrote for Times of India a column titled, “Yes, he is wise”. This episode is very instructive for us lesser mortals on many things…from the intelligence level of the bourgeois capitalists and their wives, the dynamics of marriage in India, the status of women in Indian society, the standards of journalism in India, the level of public discourse in India, how impotent Arnab Goswami is in certain matters, the awful stupidity that the Infosys employees had to put up with over the years, etc. — too many to enumerate, but I think you get the picture. Nevertheless, as a true desh bhakt I cannot but point out gleefully that Narayana Murthy is now retired, and I do not think Sudha Murty can do much damage as the Chairman of Infosys Foundation. Jai Hind.”
“Fathers are our enemies. Based on their vast experience of married life, they never have a heartfelt conversation with us about what a lot of trouble a woman is, and we end up committing the same mistake they did.”
“You are mistaken. Women do not use reason. They will either cry or slap you.”
Questions to Ask Yourself to Know if You Have Nailed the Concept of Non-doership
1. Am i spontaneous in my reactions?
2. Have I stopped overthinking?
3. Do I worry less than usual?
4. Do i feel less anxious?
5. Am i less afraid?
6. I feel less fearful of the future?
7. I regret the past less?
8. I smile more often?
9. I love others more these days?
10. Others irritate me less?
11. I live these days by the philosophy of Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)?
12. I am happier these days?
If your answers are no to any one of the above such questions, then, dear non-doer who is thinking you are the doer, you have some more work to do.
But then if you ask me if I am not the doer then why are you asking me to do anything, then I will have to say that it will cost you a lot if I have to teach you that—maybe you will need to forgo your vacations for next 5 years to afford my fees.
“The noise is the loudest when she is silent.”
Urgently Hiring: Translator Needed — from English to Silence
The ideal candidate has a master’s degree in Silence — PhD is desirable but not a requirement.
He/she will have a youthful of experience, though we strongly discourage women from applying since our past experience tells us that they find the job too demanding.
Hours of work: The noisy part of the day.
Husbands are strongly encouraged to apply since they know the art of listening better than most.
Salary Expectation: Send us a selfie rather than a voice note.
Location: The World.
Hiring Company: Maya, a conglomerate of all the companies.
Apply @ [email protected]
“Definition of God: That supreme power which can convert in a jiffy emptiness into pain.”
“Does anyone have God’s email ID? I want to write him an email with subject ‘Are you mad?'”
“Definition of a Woman: The magical alchemical potion that converts mard into dard.”
“Emotions are perhaps the counterpart in the heart of the thoughts in the mind, both of which are responses to the desires that our being harbours beneath the mind and heart.”
Seize the day | Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
“Seize the day my friend” is an iconic dialogue from the 2011 film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, delivered by Laila (Katrina Kaif) to Arjun (Hrithik Roshan). The scene highlights the importance of living in the present, enjoying life’s small joys, and not waiting for the future to live, encapsulated by Laila’s line: “Pehle is din ko puri tarah jiyo, phir 40 ke bare me sochna”.
Key Context & Related Lines:
The Context: Laila tells this to Arjun when he says he will retire after 40, questioning him on how he knows he will even live that long.
Related Dialogue: “Insaan ko dibbe mein sirf tab hona chahiye jab woh mar chuka ho” (A person should remain in a box only once he is dead).
Significance: The phrase summarizes the film’s theme (YOLO – You Only Live Once), prompting a shift from work-centric stress to experiencing life.
This philosophy, heavily influenced by Laila’s character, encourages Arjun to overcome his fear of missing out on money and instead focus on finding happiness in the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvOF0qn_r_0
The Four Yogas
As Sankaracharya pointed out, action is NOT opposed to ignorance, only “knowledge” counters ignorance.
And, the problem is ONLY ignorance, ignorance that you are the bound entity called body-mind.
Hence, any amount of karma will not bestow moksha.
So, the only yoga that works ultimately is Jnana Yoga — sravana-manana-nididhyasana.
Rest of the yogas – karma, bhakti and meditation – are merely preparatory or purify and concentrate the mind so that one can then understand Jnana Yoga more easily.
So, how can one tell if other yogas still need to be practiced? They may be needed ONLY if you find that you are not getting “intellectually” what Jnana Yoga is trying to teach.
Nevertheless, one could still deploy all the yogas in one’s daily life.
But, paradoxically, only one who knows Jnana Yoga correctly can practice the other yogas better.
For instance, what is karma yoga ultimately? As Ramana Maharshi pointed out, “kartrutva-bhava rahita karma is karma yoga”, that is, action done without the sense of doership is karma yoga. But only through Jnana Yoga you come to know you are not the doer.
When it comes to Bhakti Yoga, unless you know what is God, you will fall in love with the wrong bloke, and only Jnana Yoga teaches you what exactly God is — see the two verse I will share below from Upadesa Saram of Ramana Maharshi.
And, unless one has understood from Jnana Yoga that there is no distance between you and the Truth (Tat Tvam Asi), then you will be “trying” to (at least subconsciously) some place or state called moksha, and that sets up a restlessness to get there and that disturbs the peace and stillness in meditation because any “desire” be it even “desire” for moksha generates thoughts…remember the chain — ignorance—desires–thoughts—speech and other bodily actions…
from Upadesa Saram
Verse 5
Ether, fire, air, water, earth,
Sun, moon and living beings
Worship of these,
Regarded all as forms of His,
Is perfect worship of the Lord.
Verse 8
Than contemplation with Duality,
the “He is me” (Non-dual) type
of contemplation without Duality,
is considered by Sruti to be more purifying or holy.
Verse 5 and 8, which are part of Bhakti Yoga section In Upadesa Saram, can be done only if one understands why what they are saying is true, and only Jnana Yoga lets you know why they are true.
“Although I am not caught in the rat race, I seem to be caught in some other race, though I know not what race.”
“The ego stays alive as long as you do not fall in love either with a woman or with the idea of liberation or with both.”
Purushulandu punya purushulu veraya ani Vemana rasaadu.
But, I feel he missed a trick by not adding another line to his uppu kappurambu poem:
Kaani, purushulandu ye purushulu veru kaadayya
Maybe he understood that truth, though I cannot be sure, but somehow, he failed to point that out.
Thereby I feel he did a great disservice because now Brahmins are going around deluded, thinking memu Dalitula nunchi veraya.
“That there are no words to name somethings is perhaps a good thing.”
Life Is a Meaningless Farce???
“I had a day to go and I went with it. There was no plan. There was an outline, one which I could follow, floating, gently. There was no goal, no prey to be caught. I was not a circling raptor, a vulture, a shark, a big cat poised to spring. I was not on my guard. This was something else. I was on a journey. On my way home, I thought. I was traveling on an open ticket, with no itinerary. I journeyed through the minutiae of the streets in a universe replete with minor incidents, a host of objects and occurrences and sensations all crowded together in my memory.”
Gosh, to hit upon that! I just couldn’t believe how much these passages expressed this way of living that had something to do with experiencing time — this term “being present” — but it took no effort. How amazing it was! It was a beautiful way to live in the world. And I knew it would go away, too. I have to try to remember it. I have to try to live this way. The degree of freshness to the world around me and the amazement and the beauty of it was something I got to be in!
Read full interview with Bob Odenkirk here:
A friend shared:
“The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world.
It is only if you belong entirely to the DIVINE that you can become free”
Sri Aurobindo 🪷
I replied:
So, how do you plan to “belong entirely to the DIVINE”?
Now, I am not asking that in any skeptical way.
My opinion is that to “belong entirely to the DIVINE” one has to basically be silent.
I am not sure how being “silent” can be pulled off by people who are still working.
At the same time, I am not sure how even people like me who work only 1 hr/day can also pull off being silent.
I think one has to really be wanting liberation desperately that one will go after it almost single-mindedly — I will give a few quotes of Nisargadatta below, which sort of speak to this, but before that let me share my own insights into this.
I basically realized that it is not that difficult to keep just the body alive. And, what is this world and all its feverish activity but the various ways to keep the mind and heart not only alive but also somehow happy and joyous. So, I sort of said at one point, “Just keep the body alive, and forget the mind and heart.” In my case, where I am hardly working and even that work, I do from home, and I am single and I almost never visit anyone nor anyone visits me that much, I perhaps could somehow pull it off. But, here, too, a person like J. Krishnamurti will create some doubt in your mind because he keeps saying, “to be is to be related”, and moreover Nididhyasana is best done in the midst of all the relationships in this world and while “living” in the world.
But I find myself somehow pulled into online interactions, though these days since I have deleted almost all my social media accounts, only WhatsApp keeps me engaged, and the occasional phone call.
So, it is a bit unclear how to spend one’s day. Hence, I have decided that perhaps Maharshi’s advice to spend 1-2 hrs a day in meditation and spend the rest of the day anyway might be the middle path I am looking for because in that case, I can follow my svadharma, though not in the field work involving livelihood but other “work” whereby I pursue literature, arts and philosophy, which not only satisfy my svadharma of the intellectual life but also would contribute directly or indirectly to purifying the obstacles (which you, too, are somehow focused on with you turn to Abhidharma), and in the process somewhere down the road maybe a more radical inward turn could take place.
Maybe we can also use the advice given by WB Yeats in his poem “Down By the Salley Gardens”, though that advice was given in the context of romantic love between two humans, but I do not see why the same advice cannot be followed when it comes to the relation between our individual soul and the divine because love, even of the romantic kind is to “belong entirely to one’s beloved”, and all that Aurobindo seems to be saying is let your beloved be the DIVINE, so love has to be there but in what proportion one loves the various objects one’s love could vary.
She bid me take love easy,
as the leaves grow on the tree;
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs;
from I Am That: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself.
The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.
Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is ‘try’. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success.
“When love comes calling, be prepared to lose everything. Because to hold on to love, you have to let go of your hold on everything else.”
“I have been kicked around since I was born by words.”
“Love is a pleasure that conceals the pain.”
“Love’s only task is to make you aware how far you are from it.”
“Something strange is going on in this world of love. Our parents loved us. Our siblings loved us. Our teachers loved us. Our friends loved us. Our colleagues loved us. Sometimes the boss loved us. Sometimes the wife loved us. Our children loved us. Even the janitor loved us. At the end of it all, we are still searching. Wanting perfect love? But, did the others, the parents, the siblings, the teachers, the friends, the colleagues, the boss, the wife, the children, the janitor get that perfect love from us? Are we here on earth only to leave one other forever dissatisfied?’-
What’s This Reaching Out?
What’s this reaching out
That is happening all the time
In all climes, reaching out for what
To possess a smile, to set free a pain
To win the Nobel or become Noble
To bring about World Peace
To dress the neighbour’s wound
Most often we do not know
What wounds a neighbour has.
The Ignorance
Sometimes I wonder
If I have in me
That which love wants.
And I also wonder
If love has
That which I want.
“What gives philosophers sleepless nights is emotion because try as they might they just cannot account for it in their neat overarching theories.”
“When it comes to us humans, probably there is something like optimal distance even in love, but when it comes to God, one has to go all the way, otherwise one can never reach him.”
“When you can love the girl in mini-skirt who has a cute smile but do not exclude the guy in the unemployment line from the ambit of your love, then consider that you are beginning to understand life.”
“Every generation talks of love in its own way, writes songs in its own way, makes movies in its own way, writes novels in its own way, writes poetry in its own way, creates art and music in its own way, and yet every generation keeps missing the mark by and large. O, the pity of it, it makes me cry.”
Being Gen Z
My Brahmin friend
Yes, I gotta mention his caste
Since Gen Z, too,
Has not forgotten caste,
Thinks I am not as cool as Gen Z
I know he has read history
He has read DD Kosambi
And keeps mentioning
Some Brahmin king Pushyamitra
I am surprised then
He has not heard of Romeo and Juliet
O lover of Che Guevara
And to an extent Marx
Know that love is as old as the hills
Nay older than the hills
If some Greek philosopher
Is to be believed, who said
Eros and Eris are the two forces
That give rise to this world
So, don’t give me this Gen Z bullshit.
“Keeping Quiet”
Now, people will start wondering why is the guy who is saying “Just keep quiet” is not keeping quiet.
Without confusing all you people by saying things like, “It depends on what you mean by ‘quiet'”, let me put things more simply.
You cannot get to quietude by “trying” to be quiet, because that very attempt and trying is the unquietude.
Instead, just keep saying, writing and doing things that will allow you to get to quietude.
Because after all, one will soon get tired of shouting and fall silent.
Maybe that is why the Bhagavad Gita says, “Action is better than inaction.”
So, keep shouting instead of keeping quiet when the urge to shout is there inside.
“The world is the fashion parade of Brahman.”
Quote of the day by Christina Rossetti:
‘Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun’ ;
lessons on productivity from British poet –
The Economic Times https://share.google/sTSRqKdlMyTJnJh2C
Why Should We Imagine Sisyphus Happy?
Explaining Camus’ Famous Quote | TheCollector
https://share.google/ZcxfGM9HXVIqDjvpt
From The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling — https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_eastwest.htm
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
Kipling’s justly famous ‘Ballad of East and West’, in which an English officer and an Afghan horse-thief Kamal discover friendship by respecting one another’s courage and chivalry. The ballad tells how, when Kamal the border thief steals a prize bay mare, the Colonel’s son (not named) follows them into enemy territory.
When his own horse collapses from exhaustion the Colonel’s son, having lost a pistol to Kamal and being threatened with the prospect of making a meal for the jackals and crows, ‘lightly’ responds by promising vengeance:
…Do good to bird and beast’
But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast’ .
His jesting defiance wins the tribute: ‘May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath’ from Kamal, and the Colonel’s son responds in kind:
Take up the mare and keep her – by God she has carried a man.
Kamal instead gives back the mare with the ‘lifter’s dower’ of his own jewelled accoutrements, and when the Colonel’s son in return offers him the gift of his remaining pistol Kamal, not to be outdone in generosity, whistles up his ’only son’ to be the companion and fellow-soldier of the Englishman. The two young men return to ‘Fort Bukloh’ and: ‘the boy who last night was ‘a Border-thief’ is now ‘a man of the Guides.’
One Way of Looking at Some Things
“To love truth and see the truth in love — these are the only two worthwhile goals in life.”
“Love is in the air but the problem is we have stopped breathing.”
“No two pairs of eyes can see the same world.”
“All worlds are relative to the one who sees.”
“To know and yet not know is the anguish.”
“The very need for love is the lie, and yet we cannot seem to go beyond the need for love.”
“God keeps appearing in our life as the sunrise, the smile, the love, and sometimes as the sunset, the smirk, the separation, and we keep thinking they are just sunrises, smiles, loves, sunsets, smirks, and separations.”
“Sometimes he who knows too much, understands very little.”
“Knowledge keeps adding to the doubt.”
“All fear prevents the flowering.”
“Everybody fears everyone in this world. Hence so many contracts, including the wedding vows.”
“When love itself needs to be reaffirmed from time to time, what fulfillment can we expect in this world.”
“Aristotle said ‘Man is a social animal’. But as long as we remain a social animal, the animal in us also will live on.”
“He who is afraid of hatred cannot understand what love is.”
The Dream Analogy and Castes
Remember the dream analogy.
The waking world is also a dream.
The dream characters of Brahmins and Reddys are NOT real…they are just dream characters.
Only the dreamer is real.
And the dreamer can dream up even 10 castes, why only 4 castes.
“Is one ever NOT in love? Only the object(s) of one’s love keeps changing. Find out what you love truly and deeply.”
“In the depths, and at the very foundations, of every body of knowledge, every romantic love, every one-night stand, every relationship, every extra-marital affair, every mode of thinking, every emotion, every sadness, every failure, every success, every joy, every betrayal, every criticism, every praise, every blame, every shame, every envy, every guilt, every remorse, every destruction, every hate, every deceit, every judgement, every forgiving, every kindness, every sympathy, every empathy, every compassion, every doubt, Truth and Love await to receive you with open arms.”
Apollonian and Dionysian Dichotomoy
Apollonian and Dionysian are philosophical concepts from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) representing the duality between order/reason (Apollo) and chaos/emotion (Dionysus). Apollonian represents structure, logic, and individualism, while Dionysian represents ecstasy, intoxication, and unity. Nietzsche argued that great art arises from the synthesis of these opposing forces.
Key Aspects of the Apollonian and Dionysian Dichotomy:
Apollonian (Order and Form): Associated with Apollo, the god of light, music, and reason. It embodies principles of moderation, clarity, beauty, and individuality. It relates to structured arts like sculpture and epic poetry, creating a “beautiful illusion” that makes existence bearable.
Dionysian (Chaos and Unity): Associated with Dionysus, the god of wine, ritual, and madness. It embodies irrationality, intense emotion, unbridled passion, and the dissolution of the individual into a collective, chaotic whole. It relates to art forms like music, which break down individual barriers.
Nietzsche’s Perspective: Nietzsche believed Greek culture reached its peak by balancing these two forces, notably in Athenian tragedy, which combined structured dialogue (Apollonian) with musical chorus (Dionysian). He argued that a, overemphasis on the Apollonian (rationality) since Socrates led to the decline of art and cultural vitality, calling for a return to a healthy tension between the two.
Application: These terms are used to analyze art, psychology, and personality, describing a person’s tendency toward control (Apollonian) or passion and spontaneity (Dionysian).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGQzyb5fgrQ
“No Brahmin could have taught the Bhagavad Gita.”
Why
Because the Brahmin (and by this I do not mean merely Brahmin by birth but in the sense in which Krishna himself describes in Gita that one’s caste is determined by one’s guna and karma, and not by birth, which point even Buddhism talks about in a whole chapter in Dhammapada as to who is a Brahmana) is one characterized by Sattva Guna, which in turn is characterized by Happiness and knowledge.
The field of karma and action is the domain of Rajas.
Hence, the Brahmin will struggle to understand the metaphysics of action, which only a Kshatriya like Krishna could fathom. The Brahmin, with his knowledge, might be able to invent better bows and arrows, and the art of archery, etc. The Brahmin might even be able to say why Kurukshetra is necessary, etc., given his political understanding. But he will be struggling to connect action and duty and karma drama happening in the physical world to the metaphysical world of soul and moksha.
That is why Vedas make a sharp distinction between action (Karma Kanda of yajnas, sacrifices, etc.) and knowledge (Jnana Kanda of Upanishads), the two clear demarcations in Vedas, the so-called apara vidya and para vidya, which has led to the Varnashrama Dharma.
Krishna comes and blurs the distinction between apara vidya and para vidya, saying that both can take you to moksha.
Karma Yoga road also takes you to the same destination as the road of Jnana Yoga, is what Krishna pointed out.
The Brahmin is dwelling in the world of knowledge and wisdom, and the kshatriya like Krishna is dwelling in the thick of action or you could say applied knowledge. So, only Krishna is in the best position to understand the mysteries of action and karma.
In the modern world, these Brahmins would be people like professors, researchers, consultants, etc.
“It is not the path that is important but the traveller. Because every path takes you to the truth, but the traveller may like to take rest, or fear the hardships on the path, or want to switch paths, etc.”
“Ultimately, our love for others helps us much more than it helps others.”
“Marx says it’s the bourgeois. Maharshi says it’s you.”
The Secret Few Know
You can try
But you ain’t gonna succeed
Better give up
Why, you ask
Surely, you can fail
Only when you try to succeed.
“Only when you are at ease to be sitting with even a murderer and allowing him to tell his side of the story can you be said to be enlightened to a large extent.”
“Among all the castes it is the Brahmin who is the coward. Why? He lives in constant fear that even the shadow of the Dalit will eclipse the light of knowledge in his being.”
“Always assign at least a tiny corner to doubt in the impressive edifice of your knowledge and wisdom.”
“Hell is your underemployed and unmarried friend with access to WhatsApp.”
“Ghar waapsi karna chahta hoon. Lekin kitna bi sonchoo ya dhoondoon pata hi nahi lag raa ghar ka pataa.”
“Gandhi is supposed to have said, ‘My life is my message.’ I, not being so profound, can only say, ‘My life is my joke’.”
“One kind of bad karma, there are many kinds mind you, is when people start laughing more at you than at your jokes.”
“It is so sad that till now I have recognized instantly every friend I have met no matter how long it was since we last met.”
“In friendship there is a giving without any expectation and a receiving without any obligation.”
‘Sometimes freedom throws itself around your arms as unrequited love.’
‘She was wearing the rose in her hair, and I was brushing off the snow from my jacket.’
“The longing for the home is the cause for all the strife in this world. To feel at home anywhere and everywhere is freedom.”
“When you set aside the mind and heart, you reach that state of aloneness that is also oneness in which there can be no loneliness.”
“This is the mistake we keep making that we seek the truth with our mind and love with our heart, without realizing that only when we set aside the mind and heart will we find the truth and love that we seek.”
Sambhavami Yuge Yuge: Thoughts While Reading Some Diaries
Sometimes a boy from Argentina
Is the antidote
If you ask “For what?”
Then you are part of the problem.
“Every day the sun arrives and with it some smiles, and those make us dance and dance till our feet ache.”
#faith #Family #Life #Love #Poem #Poetry #Quotations #Quotes #Truth #Writing -
3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time—to the point where in a country like the US we can go so far as to say inevitable.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and how long would that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
-
3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. [Note: given revised data—see footnote 1 below—it would be more accurate to say ‘very rarely failed to bring about change.]
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in active and sustained nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would very likely either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and for how long should that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. And a great deal of very unglamourous behind the scenes organisation. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. Those who want to follow the evolution of Chenoweth’s thinking might want to download this PDF. (Thanks Jennifer!) ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
-
3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. [Note: given revised data—see footnote 1 below—it would be more accurate to say ‘very rarely failed to bring about change.]
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in active and sustained nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would very likely either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and for how long should that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. And a great deal of very unglamourous behind the scenes organisation. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. Those who want to follow the evolution of Chenoweth’s thinking might want to download this PDF. (Thanks Jennifer!) ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
-
3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time—to the point where in a country like the US we can go so far as to say inevitable.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and how long would that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
-
3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time—to the point where in a country like the US we can go so far as to say inevitable.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and how long would that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎