Free Radical

Found this interesting post on the word "radical". It turns out he's against it.

A radical attitude is totally close-minded. It usually believes that its position is the correct one, that it has the Truth inside its pocket and that it has a "right" or a "duty" of combating against the opposite, contrary positions because they are "wrong". A radical attitude sometimes doesn´t care if its struggle becomes violent (terrorism and dirty wars against terrorism are radical attitudes). Even a "soft" radical attitude is maybe very passionate, and, by being like this, it loses a good part of rationality, a lot of clarity in its ideas and objectives, and a lot of aiming in its struggle...

Here's the obligatory attack against radical chic.

And I am getting very tired of seeing people self-labeled as "radical" and "left-wing minded" comfortably seated in a pub, wearing a Che Guevara´s shirt and drinking expensive artisanal beer and talking about "saving the world" while my colleagues and me are putting our lifes under risk, right here and right now, working inside favelas.
Maybe this is a very Latin American problem: we´re tired of words, because we´ve listened them (promises + good ideas + promises + good ideas...) for centuries, but we are still in the bottom of a big hole full of shit. Nothing has changed.

He ends with a call to ACTION.

Because we are being defeated and we´re getting really tired.

Note to self: must dig out my old copy of Raymond Williams's Keywords.

(Via:Reasons to be Impossible via Rullsenberg)