The culture of opposition
I want to write about something that I've observed a lot but haven't really been able to put my finger on. This may not even be a properly-formed idea yet. It's essentially the nature of modern social protest and it seems to me that we've lost an essential element of balance in the practice of protesting. Assuming we ever had it.

What we seem to have come around to is what one might call a protest of pure opposition. From anti-vivisectionists to anti-foxhunting groups to anti-nuclear campaigners to people protesting the erection of new buildings on my University's campus, to people protesting the erection of cellphone masts or the construction of airport runways.

Modern protest groups are very adept at getting out the message of what they're against, but far less vocal about what they're actually in favour of. It seems that all they want is something not to happen, with no possibility of compromise or acknowledgement that their adversary is acting out of anything other than purely evil motives.

You might say that these groups do have positive agendas, but my point is not about their position as much as about how it is expressed. When the focus of activism is more on the "anti" than on campaigning for something positive to happen, I just find it a total turn off.

I also find such a position rather intellectually dissatisfactory. Pure opposition for its own sake has no real solid ground to stand on, so you will hear such groups over-reach for incontestable hook-phrases to prepend to their argument:

- "In this day and age, surely we shouldn't be....."
- "In a democracy there is no place for....."
- "In the 21st century, why are we still....."
- "The government should not be wasting taxpayers money on....."

Which is - usually - all just so much Motherhood and Apple Pie. I say usually because there certainly are things that "there is no place for in a democracy". Armed insurrection would be a good example. However, I'm concerned more with the case where such appeals are used disingenuously.

What I want to hear from activists is not how much they hate Starbucks, or how evil wind farms are, but what their positive ideas are to make the world a better place. Even campaigns whose aims I might sympathise with turn me off when they're conducted as a two-fingers-to-the-police jamboree for anarchist students on holiday from their Media Studies course.

Let the excellence of your work be your protest. If you don't like animal testing, study Biology and invent an alternative so good that it will obsolete animal testing. If you don't like wind farms, invest in companies working on wave power. If you hate Starbucks, open a chain of Fairtrade coffee shops. If you hate Microsoft write good software for another platform.

I wish the protesters of the world would put their energies into positive ideas instead of just knocking down what other people are trying to do.