There is an old Russian proverb that goes, “Один в поле не воин.” In English I’ve seen that translated as, “there is safety in numbers” and as “it takes two to tango.” Neither of them is really all that close to the original which means in essence that one person in a field doesn’t make a warrior.
So when you see news reports on occasion of a single person standing up against this or that injustice – well at least as perceived by them – while you might admire them, more often than not they are dismissed from serious consideration because they don’t have a contingent backing them. That isn’t always because they’re in the wrong. More often than not it’s probably that people are either too afraid or apathetic to join their ranks.
Yet on the reverse side, we have also seen in recent years many popular uprisings. Throngs and throngs of people seemingly united in legitimate causes to oust oppression in all of its various forms. Nevertheless, when these movements are not crushed in their totality, they often fail under their own weight because even upon success they don’t have an end game. Whether that be a singular leader (which sadly inevitably always seems to lead everyone back to where they started in the first place) or any other equally compatible system for putting the puzzle back together.
So it’s hard to say what the perfect storm is. Admittedly if you see a sea of disenchanted people that dissipates into the horizon well beyond your field of vision chances are better than average that you aren’t going to be on the winning side at the end of the day. Yet we have seen on rare but history altering occasions throughout time that even one voice can change the world. Perhaps it isn’t so much about whether the glass is half empty or half full, but what is in it to begin with.
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