The Greensboro, NC sit-ins of 50 years ago, wherein an initially small group of young people protested racist segregationist policies quickly grew into a genuine movement, was provocatively contrasted with so-called Twitter and Facebook revolutions in Iran by Malcolm Gladwell in a 2010 New Yorker article.
Gladwell told the moving story of this brave group of young people working in a pre-social networking environment as a way to debunk the idea that social networking had much, if anything, to do with social revolutions around the world in the last few years. Rather, he proposed that the reason why the Greensboro action became a movement is that the people involved had “strong ties” with others who were involved. This was in contrast to the experience in Iran, wherein friendships were only a layer of electrons deep on the Facebook screen display.
Naturally, there has been a host of folks in the social networking world who have decried Gladwell’s hypothesis. On the other hand, a recent article in the New York Times Op-ed section by Oxford researcher Richard Dunbar seems to me to lend weight to Gladwell’s argument. Dunbar carried forward long-term research of his own networks of friends into the social networking, online milieu and proposed that one can maintain about 150 actual friendships, in whatever medium. Thus, it seems to me, that even though one has many, many online friends, the ability to motivate them to do something risky and dangerous, no matter how worthy, might run against this barrier of our seeming capacity for genuine friendship (“Dunbar’s number” – 150).
And then Tunisia happened.
As the New York Times said about the mass movement that toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali this last Friday, “…the protests came together largely through informal online networks…”. Was Gladwell wrong?
I don’t think so. Instead, the stunning events in Tunisia hinge on a factor that lies outside Gladwell’s analysis, or that of his critics. The Tunisian protests were galvanized by the action of one young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, who immolated himself to bring attention to the despair of many like him, who suffer from joblessness, despite high levels of education. Such an act can have great power, and can apparently move people into a “strong ties” sort of behavior, beyond the expected bounds of what friends might do for one another.
It would be a terrible mistake, though, to see the chain of events in Tunisia as posing a recommendation for similar self-sacrifice on the part of others. Moahmed Bouazizi’s death is a tragedy and a loss--his death a result of despair. If you think the underlying arc of this article is to compare such a death with that of Jesus, you’re mistaken. I do not think that my great Pioneer of Faith, Jesus, sought death to protest the Romans. Rather, it seems that Jesus set himself on a course that he well knew might have dire consequences.
It is really this, the magnetic quality of a life dedicated to love, that is I think the genuine power to create “strong ties” over a large population. We can look at the life of Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha, whose path today has over 300 million followers. The Buddha lived a life of supreme dedication to the relief of suffering in the world, over a period of 40 years, finally dying at the age of 80. Closer to our own time, the great attraction that Mother Teresa’s life has had is unrelated to any single act of self-sacrifice.
This weekend many of us in the United States remember with gratitude the life and witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. His life, modeled on the life of Jesus, exemplifies the principles I’m searching out in this article. Yes, he died a martyr’s death, a death he knew might be the consequence of the path he chose. But for me, it is the walking of his path that inspires and motivates me to try and do similarly. Again and again I go back to Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and remember his principles for considering a non-violent protest action, the second of which is “purify your motives.” A life lived by such standards has the power to attract and transform many, perhaps, as in Jesus’ case, a world.
Self-giving love can create strong ties beyond the expected boundaries of the intimate ties most of us can create and maintain. And, I would suggest that lives that take the course of bravely staying in life, holding to the course of love against all obstacles can create the strongest ties of all--genuine community that continues beyond cataclysmic protest, yet is given to social change characterized by real peace.
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