Literature a tool for Change

"Literature becomes important in arousing emotions and invoking and stressing some morality or even inculcating some attitude in the reader."

It can be an effective tool for change.

"Why is literature so powerful as a tool for change? It is because literature is in a very reflective nature, brings about social-political awareness and guides morality of the society by repudiating societal wrongs and upholding what is right. ...

Aristotle asserts that more philosophical than history in that whereas history deals with the past, literature deals with what might happen; the general probable – useful to sociologists, historians and philosophers. It is universally accepted that cognitive value in drama and novels is psychological – the human element makes it thus. Other utilities include preservation and creating continuity in the ways of life of societies."

From: http://thecitizen.co.tz/magazines/-/28441-try-reading-for-a-change



SpyWriter Jack King, Author of:
WikiJustice www.amzn.to/t3zd8Z
The Black Vault www.amzn.to/Na7QRO
The Fifth Internationale www.amzn.to/snl4w1
And announcing:

www.SpyWriter.com

Writers for Change

"present critical situation has pushed the society in a state of uncertainty ... in such a situation, the writers could play a key-role to encourage the society through their pen."

"Writers should endeavour to change the society and resist the temptation to be sucked into the melee of literary mediocrity."

"literature is the mirror of society. It reflects the ever changing society. Consequently, literature evolves in tandem with the dynamics of society. ... Therefore, if society has sunk into the abyss of mediocrity, literature will just capture that."

SOURCES:

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=181592

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Letters/Writers+must+not+only+reflect+society/-/440806/1615264/-/4bu6umz/-/index.html

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Letters/If+Kenyan+literature+is+mediocre+blame+it+on+our+banal+society/-/440806/1612480/-/6yhuamz/-/index.html

Books of Change by Jack King: www.SpyWriter.com

WikiJustice: WikiLeaks meets The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

A friend of mine once asked, "What would Jack London do with his thriller, The Assassination Bureau. Ltd., had he lived in the beginning of the 21st century?"

Jack London wrote a thriller? I was stumped. So I rushed to my local library to read it. "The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.", is an unfinished novel by Jack London, later completed by Robert L. Fish. The idea of an agency devoted to "extirpating" socially detrimental characters was fascinating, alas, the novel left an unsatisfactory feeling in my reading taste.

My friend's question has haunted me for over a year, when at last world events set a spark in my writerly imagination. What, indeed, if a novelist set out to write a thriller in a similar vein, in the age of WikiLeaks, the Occupy Movement, and the general discontent with the World Order, that we witness today?

In the age of crowdsourcing - a collaboration of countless minds from across boundaries - the idea of a single person (Ivan Dragomiloff in London's novel) deciding arbitrarily who ought to be assassinated ("extirpated"), seemed incompatible. A collaborative effort, on the other hand, was much more alluring.

It was, thus, natural that in the time of social networking the people should decide who is detrimental for the wellbeing of society.

WikiJustice was born.

Voting, Elections, and REAL Change

In a few days we will be voting in municipal elections. Elsewhere people will be voting for Change, again. Is Change possible at all, what with the plutocracy that runs for office and decides the outcomes of elections?

Novelist Stanislaw Lem (Author of Solaris) had an idea:

"At midnight all people of our country make a switch, someone who yesterday was a gardener, today becomes an engineer, yesterday’s building contractor becomes a judge, sovereign becomes a teacher, and so on. What remains unchanged is the society as a whole.

In every society of the old type most citizens perform their occupational functions poorly, and still the society does not seize to go on. Someone who is a poor gardener will ruin the garden, and a poor sovereign will ruin the entire country because both have the time to cause damage, time they do not have in our type of society. Furthermore in the old type of society, apart from poor skills, there is additional negative, even destructive effect of individuals’ private wants. Jealousy, egoism, conceit, vanity, want of power, all have a negative effect on the life of the society. This negative influence does not exist in our society. In our world one cannot do things to enrich oneself, or to make longer egoistic plans, hoping to enrich oneself in the long run, because tomorrow one becomes someone else, without knowing today what it will be." Stanislaw Lem

Now, imagine that citizens are drawn at random to advise governments on issues such as the environment, the economy, domestic and international policy, etc, much as jurors are called in to decide the outcomes of judicial cases… What if the midnight switch applies to the highest offices in the Government? Now, that's change.

A better world, on the feet of doves

"two principles were locked in combat for the world: might and right, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge, the law of obduracy and the law of ferment, change and progress.

There was no doubt which of these two forces would gain the victory -- that of enlightenment, or reasoned advancement toward perfection. Because human progress was always gathering up new nations in the course of its brilliant advance. Yet there was much to be done before total victory, and great and noble efforts would have to be made by those to whom the light had been passed on, if that day were ever to come when monarchies and religions would at last collapse.

That day would come, if not on the feet of doves, then on the pinions of eagles, and would burst as the dawn of universal brotherhood under the emblem of reason, science, and justice."

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Resurrecting a good novel

Reading Resurrection. This is Leo Tolstoy's last great novel. In the author's lifetime it was more popular than Anna Karenina or War and Peace. It remains Tolstoy's strongest condemnation of social, judicial and religious conditions that were at the root of the misery suffered by the masses. Resurrection is as valid today, as it was at the time of publication, not long before the Revolution that sought to change the world and the condition of the people. Perhaps the novel should be resurrected...

Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief
cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves
knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone
could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.

And how evident it was that the children and the aged died
because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was
no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was
quite evident that all the misery of the people or, at least by
far the greater part of it, was caused by the fact that the land
which should feed them was not in their hands, but in the hands
of those who, profiting by their rights to the land, live by the
work of these people. The land so much needed by men was tilled
by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the
corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy
themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He
understood this as clearly as he understood that horses when they
have eaten all the grass in the inclosure where they are kept
will have to grow thin and starve unless they are put where they
can get food off other land.

This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to
alter it, or at least not to take part in it. "And I will find
them," he thought, as he walked up and down the path under the
birch trees.

In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers
we talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the
means of ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the
only sure means which would certainly lighten their condition,
i.e., giving back to them the land they need so much.

Henry George's fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind
and how he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised
that he could have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one's
property; it cannot be bought or sold any more than water, air,
or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives
to men.

Philip Agee video interview

3 part interview with Philip Agee:

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3