We didn't raise our voice, we didn't make a fuss

...it's funny there was no-one left to notice

There's this movie. In it, a factory is closed down - replaced with another one. The factory has over 1000 employees - the manager has announced that he will keep about 300 for the new one.

As a result of that, most employees did not protest the factory closure. Although there was only about 30% chance that they would be the ones that are kept, most of them went by the logic that if they play nice they will be kept.

This is the logic based on which great masses of people are kept under control. They promise you a chance to not be affected by a bad change, if you don't protest. Based on this logic, in Nazi Germany people who were not antisemitic did not protest to persecution the regime was promoting - because they hoped that in that way they will not end up suffering a similar fate.

The problem with adopting such an attitude is that it allows manipulative people to make changes that are against your best interest and then say "but you were OK with it, you didn't say anything". By the time you realize how much that change is actually affecting you, it's too late. The manipulative guys are protected by laws you tolerated and by rules they themselves made without you ever protesting, and the only way to get rid of them is through mass protests which almost always end up violent.

Let's give a more concrete example. In comes a law that says that the state can take your house, if interest dictates it, and you can't do anything about it. At that particular point, the people issuing the law say that it's because it will help them build highways faster - therefore it's in your best interest. Since you don't live anywhere near a highway location, you say "aaah, OK, it's fine". And since most of us are not law experts, we don't read every paragraph - we believe them that that's what it's for and we get on with our lives.

You hear about people who protest about it, because incidentally their houses are affected by this law. You don't take to defending them because although you believe it's wrong to take someone's house, it's not your house that will be taken. The government says "oh, it's just a couple of people, the law is fine, they're the ones who are bad. We will handle them."

The problem with this is that it leaves an opening for someone to legally take your house. Of course, that may never happen, but your right to own a house you worked and paid for is now threatened. The solution is not to sit there and hope that it will never be your house that's under threat. The solution is to say the law is bad from the start - even if it's not targeted directly at you.

Why? Because just like at the start you don't jump into the defense of the people who are directly affected, when the law will come to affect you no-one will come to jump into your defense. And then you will be the lonely dude protesting while everyone else is shutting up, hoping that all will be well for them.

What most people don't realize is this: