Interesting quote (from /. – #15084625)
There’ve been 2 key reasons for “revolutions”. Mostly one: Despair. The other one is idealism, but that one is rarely used and pretty much died out by today.
Despair has been a good fuel for every revolution ever. French revolution, Russian revolution, when people ain’t got nothing to lose but their life, and especially if said life is close to being gone anyway, that’s when they take up anyone as a leader.
Of course, governments learned since. What we got now in the US (and most of the “civilised” countries) dates back to the Roman Empire and panem et circenses: Bread and games. And of either there is no shortage in any “western” country. You have access to cheap food and cheap entertainment. Everything else is expensive, regulated and culled. Freedom isn’t amongst the first things people want. What they want is food and entertainment.
And they got that. Plenty of that.
So you won’t see a revolution anytime soon. People simply don’t care. They don’t care about freedom. They don’t care about junk mail. They don’t care about anything as long as their bellies are filled and their nerves are tickled.
If there was a God, he’d have replaced humanity with a sentient lifeform by now.