A Clockwork Orange for Radicals

Tonight I'm reading Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals by Jonathan M. Smucker. It's a fascinating book, primarily about Smucker's reflections as an organizer with the Occupy movement. In the tradition of the great organizers Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals) and Edward T. Chambers (Roots for Radicals), Smucker adds his wisdom and practical advice to the canon of peaceful revolutionary literature.

While reading, I got stuck on one particular spot because it conjured up an interesting example in the form of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.

The spot in the book was about the power of ambiguity...

Ambiguity...can open the door. As long as the meaning of something remains somewhat unclear -- or floating -- it will be intriguing. when people are intrigued, they are engaged. They have a mystery to figure out. They may even have to re-examine their own assumptions in the process.

In other words, a movement is most interesting to others (potential members, collaborators and supporters), not when it preaches final answers to all the big questions, but rather when it leaves some puzzles on the table to engage the creative imagination.

Which got me thinking about A Clockwork Orange...

The film is a disturbing tale of fetishized misanthropy as we've seen in many real-life forms before and since -- punks, incels, mass shooters. In the film's title character, Alex DeLarge, we meet civil society's worst nightmare, a teenager who has turned hurting people into hobby and fashion. When Alex is finally caught and given violence aversion therapy (pictured below), I wondered earnestly if perhaps this was the best solution -- brutal yes, but a more principled, humane, and effective cure for societal cancer than, say, eye-for-an-eye justice. But alas, the aversion therapy fails and the monster DeLarge is back at large.

So the bad guy wins. I'm left with nothing. Except, of course, the mystery of what to do...

Over the years, I've seen countless movies and promptly forgotten most of them. But A Clockwork Orange stayed with me as a nightmarish, shrieking cry for solutions. Years later, an equally unforgettable answer came to me during a talk given by former Winnipeg Police Chief, Devon Clunis. His message was that policing, though critical, is a reactive response to a long negative chain of events. His answer, was more support, much earlier in the chain, particularly community-building efforts from neighborhood watch (e.g. Bear Clan Patrol Inc) to placemaking movements (https://bit.ly/2G4lhqs).

Smucker was right. Preachy know-it-all-ism immediately turns people off and fleeing in the opposite direction. In contrast, an intriguing mystery can keep them engaged and allied for a lifetime.