Poetry and Revolution
A liberal society is one
whose ideals can be fulfilled by persuasion
rather than by force,
by reform than by revolution.
by the free and open encounters
of present linguistic and other practices
with suggestions for new practices.….an ideal liberal society is one
which has no other purpose
except freedom,
no goal except a willingness
to see how such encounters go
and to abide by the outcome.
It has no purpose except to make life easier
for poets and revolutionaries
while seeing to it that they make life harder
for others only by words, and not deeds.
It is a society whose hero
is the strong poet and the revolutionary
because it recognizes
that it is what it is,
has the morality it has,
speaks the language it does,
not because it approximates
the will of God, or the nature of man
but because such poets
and revolutionaries of the past
spoke as they did.
–Richard Rorty
excerpt Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity page 61
No more marches (more technology, more rationality, more surveillance, more consumption, more control), let’s play jazz.
