A Tribute to Britain's Rebels Against The Future
It is said that John Stuart Mill once rebuked Jeremy Bentham for being interested only in the question "Is it true?" Mill believed a more significant question was "What is the meaning of it?"[1] (Recall that Mill was a British philosopher and economist who believed in individual liberties instead of unlimited state control. He was also a proponent of Utilitarianism, or "the greatest good for the greatest number.")
When British rioters flooded the streets over deferred opportunities and dreams, Prime Minister David Cameron should have asked "What is the meaning of it?" Instead, ruling elites, backed by powerful corporate entities and financial institutions, sent thousands of security forces to arrest and beat "looters" and "gang" members. Social networking was banned, houses indiscriminately raided. Youthful dissent was crushed and criminalized.
Discontent and grievances over social, economic and political conditions and disparities in Britain is not new. The contentious but enlightening exchange between Mill and Bentham occurred during the Industrial Revolution. It was an era that disrupted families by forcing them from their small farms and imposing a harsh and regimental factory system, one that favored Britain's aristocracy and monopolists and large land owners.
To survive, family members, including children and youth, were forced to labor for long hours and low pay in squalid conditions and unsafe work environments. The factory system, a kind of techno-natural selection, caused mass unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and death. Strikes, protests and riots were common. Britain's rulers combated public disturbances with penal colonies, mass hangings, work houses, and even massacres.
