User:Marie Wocher/Annotation Indignez-vous/

Indignez-vous! is an essay by Stephane Hessel , who was a member of the Resistance. The essay was published in 2010 it has sold nearly 1.5 million copies in France and has been translated into numerous other languages.It is a pamphlet, a charge of the current state of the world we live in, that wants us to get involved. For Hessel appal means to get involved. Humanity has two big tasks: One is to stop the difference between rich and poor, that becomes bigger and bigger, the second is to protect human rights and to improve the condition of our planet.

At the beginning Hessel makes his position very clear: we are invoked to preserve our society in a way that we can be proud of it. He sketches the state of our society, as a society that is suspicious of immigrants, a society where the social security is endangered and the rich determine the media. The power of money is so huge and egoistic as never before. Important post of the state are occupied by lobbyists and banker, who determine the privatised money industry and are not interested in the common good. Never before has been the difference between rich and poor bigger than today. Hessel asked us to interfere, to complain. Because appeal means getting involved. And getting involved means change. Those who are responsible in economy, politics and society should not be silenced by the dictatorship of the finance markets that endangers democracy and peace. Hessel warns against the indifference.

Hessel noticed, that it becomes more difficult for us, the young, to appall because our world is more complex. It is not anymore the little upper-class, we can condemn The world is big and not that easy, we live in cross connections and feel the interdependencies. For the Resistance, resistance ment to be against the german occupation. Clear for them was also that France has to free their colonies, Alger needed become independent. and they were against stalinist totaliarism.

Hessel uses the example of the violent situation in the Gaza Strip to substantiate his point, that Future is the nonviolence and the reconciliation of cultures. He refers to the Goldstone Report of Richard Goldstone, a southafrican former judge, who charges both, Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.His hope is, that society in our time can solve conflicts by mutual understanding and patience. Even if sometimes back in the history violence has been the only possibility to end violence (here he refers to Sartre), nonviolence is always the better option, because violence doesn't work, terrorism doesn't whorl. effectiveness requires non violent hope. And Hope is the drive of revolution and protest.Violence is the opposite of hope . When suppressed and oppressor negotiate about the end of oppression, no terrorist violence would be possible anymore.

The western materialistic thought of maximising thrown our world into crisis. Now we have to overcome the crises. Our world is characterised by the »more and more« thought. Not only the financial word tried to maximise its profits, also science and technology built on a never-ending rush forwards. Now we experience the financial crises without supporting a new development policy.

The last point Hessel is making is, that we need a peaceful insurrection against mass communication, that gives the youth only the perspective of mass consumption, the contempt of the weakest, contempt of the culture, loosing cultural memory, the competition of all with all.