We Currently Have No Chance At Solving Our Problems

If the Russian Revolution tells us anything, it tells us that to get real change, we must do more than just change the places of the first and last place teams, we must change the game. When the Russian Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the Tsars in the February, 1917 Revolution and then in overthrowing the provisional government in October of the same year, tyrannical rule was kept only it was practice by a new group.
 
Thus, both revolutions failed. Why? It was because the revolutionaries sought their own power. The provisional government replaced the Tsars in the February Revoution. And though they didn't rule with the iron hand, they didn't share power.

More often than not, when revolutionaries seek to replace the current leaders by force, they are not seeking to change the game by which government operates, they only seek to take the place of those who were ruling and they are willing to use the same methods and force to maintain their power as it took to put them in power. Thus, the game never changed except for the identity of the first and last place teams did.

While talking with one high school student at church, I recommended that he watch the PBS special on the Freedom Riders (click here). Like those participating in the Russian Revolution, the Freedom Riders sought to change the great injustices they saw. But they did things differently than Russians did. The Freedom Riders abstained from violence; they abstained from both external and internal violence. And the Freedom Riders enjoyed more and longer lasting success than those participating in the Russian Revolution.

This should teach us something. Those who use physical or verbal violence to get their way are not seeking to change things for our benefit, they are only seeking power. And that is why we have no real chance to change things today. That is because  over 98% of what we see in the public square is a continual sparring between representatives of different ideological and political groups. We are seeing a continual sparring between  groups that are seeking their own interests.

So we have a choice. We can either join in or we can follow the examples those who who nonviolently participated in the Civil Rights Movement. To follow the former group is to guarantee the status quo only with new faces. To follow the latter group gives us our only chance to change from our current journey to self-destruction.