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gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 3 days agowhy people aren’t gathering in mobs
Well, it happened about a hundred years after your time, but there’s this thing called the Gatling gun that got invented that really became a hard counter to angry mobs trying to storm things, and once that stopped being an option they just kinda stopped listening to us
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Before that they had archers and keep walls. And after that there have been many successful protests and revolutions which created freer democracies (with varying degrees of success).
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Fair enough, but, like, 100 archers against 1000 people ends poorly for the archers if the people are willing to take some casualties, and a keep wall is only good so long as nobody inside decides to unlock a door or people outside can’t get a ladder set up somewhere for a few minutes
Yes, there have been successful revolutions since the 1850s, but they’re definitely a lot harder than they used to be, and I think they now really do require some sort of defection from the ruling classes or military over to the opposition in a way that you didn’t really need for, say, the French revolution, where an angry mob of peasant women could just force their way into the kings castle and tell him how things were gonna be going forward
I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I’m definitely not saying people should give up protesting all the bullshit going on right now, but I do think meta social contract between the rulers and the ruled has changed a lot since the 18th century because of technological progress
blarghly@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I have to say, this is a very weird take and you should really consider that you might be mistaken.
Pre-1850, most governments were autocratic in some way or another. Many of these governments lasted for hundreds or thousands of years, only toppled when another, larger autocratic government conquered them. This was true in China, Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, and Europe. Post 1850, democracy began to spread much more rapidly. These days, autocrats at least try to pretend to be elected. And meanwhile, the personal freedom and standard of living for the average person have increased dramatically since that time.
In general, the sort of revolution you are talking about where the people storm the palace gates seem to have become less common because: first of all, you are imagining them as more common than they actually were in the past. In the past, most people were slaves or semi-slaves (surfs, peasants) who lived pretty miserable lives and mostly coped via Jesus and drinking. Second of all, because for the most part people don’t want to storm the palace gates anymore because their lives are pretty good. Sure, Elon has billions while you are living paycheck to paycheck - but you still have a roof over your head, food to eat, and circuses to watch on TV. The risk of losing that and going to jail or dying is not worth the slim potential reward of having a better government in some way. Storming the palace gates and overthrowing the government is a bad thing, because it implies that the government was doing such a bad job that the people became so agitated that they tried such a desperate tactic in the first place.
This has literally always been the case. The idea that a disorganized mob of peasants can storm the palace gates, depose the monarch, and create a utopian, egalitarian government from scratch is a fantasy - just like dragons, fairies, and anyone on Lemmy ever getting laid. A king derives his power from the accumulated power of his court, and each member of the court derives power from the power of their subordinates. As long as the court stays loyal to the king, mobs of people will be largely impotent. If the mob ever did manage to storm the gates and destroy the king, the very next day the court would appoint the king’s heir and send the military out to murder every person in the mob. Mobs succeed when the court is tired of the king’s bullshit and conveniently “forgets” to lock the palace gates.