The Singing Revolution: How the tiny country of Estonia overthrew their Soviet occupiers, without killing a single person
I just ordered a copy of The Singing Revolution, a documentary about how the Estonian people organized themselves in the 1980s and cleverly used the cultural power of songs to overthrow their Soviet occupiers.
An entire nation was freed from Soviet occupation, without a single person being killed. (Think about that for a moment… Why haven’t you heard about this before?)
See the trailer here. And more information about the movie (including reviews) is available from Amazon.
I originally learned about the movie from my friend Stephen Browne, when he wrote about it on his blog.
Commentary on the movie (via Amazon.com) from filmmakers James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty:
Most people don’t think about singing when they think about revolutions. But in Estonia song was the weapon of choice when, between 1987 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. During those years, hundreds of thousands gathered in fields to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence. The Singing Revolution documents how the Estonian people regained their freedom and helped topple the Soviet Union along the way.
We learned of the Singing Revolution while teaching filmmaking at an Estonian university in 1999. We not only were amazed by the story itself, we were amazed that we knew virtually nothing about it. Unarmed people facing down tanks; 300,000 people singing forbidden songs under the eyes of Soviet authorities (even the Soviets couldn’t figure out how to arrest people for simply singing); incredibly clever parliamentary and street theater maneuvers that vexed Moscow at every turn (including working within the Soviet system to officially make the hammer and sickle an illegal symbol in Estonia, implemented while still occupied by the Soviet Union!).
We called all our friends to ask if they had ever heard of the Singing Revolution. Virtually no one had. And even those who had heard the phrase knew close to nothing about what had actually happened.
We looked at each other as husband and wife (which we are as well as filmmakers) and said, “This story has to be told.” And if not us, who? If not now, when? And so we embarked on a four year journey trying to understand what was behind the miracle of this bloodless revolution.
This is not a history film. It is not even an Estonian film. It is an inspirational film. Although Estonia’s occupation began under the most murderous and oppressive means by both Soviets and Nazis, not a single person was killed during this 4-year revolution, and the strategies used to achieve this were just brilliant. David vanquished Goliath without even the use of a slingshot, and yet no one knows about it. Ironically, had people been killed during this revolution, it probably would have received press attention. We think the fact that no one was killed kept the story out of the international news.
From 1940-1946…in just six short years…Estonia lost more than 20% of its population through successive brutal occupations by Stalin, then Hitler, and then Stalin again. They suffered a persistent attempt at genocide…by direct executions at first, by population dilution second, and then by an attempt to wipe out all symbols of the nation of Estonia.
And yet, the people survived…and when their moment came, they seized it. They seized it and won a victory for all of humankind.
If this were fiction, you wouldn’t believe it. But we have the footage to prove it. The Singing Revolution took place in the late 1980s, and it was documented. There is no argument.
Creating “The Singing Revolution” changed our lives. We learned a lot about what humans are capable of enduring, and what they are capable of achieving, under the most horrible of circumstances.
We hope you consider watching “The Singing Revolution”. It might change your mind about how to change the world, and it might open your eyes to much greater and higher possibilities than you now think are possible. And as dark as some of the above history is, your faith in humankind will be uplifted and energized after viewing this film.
Transcript of my Reason.tv interview about Ayn Rand’s legacy
My thanks to a user on braincrave.com for transcribing the parts of my August 2008 interview with Reason.tv that pertain to Ayn Rand’s legacy. I’m pasting his transcription below (with a few light edits and corrections) for Mudita Journal readers interested to revisit some of the themes I explored in that interview.
I definitely think her novels provide the best introduction to her ideas. They’re easier, so they’re more accessible to many people. They’re best sellers over the last 40 to 50 years, so obviously they’ve appealed to many people. But also, they set her ideas in the context of the real world and, if you read The Fountainhead first, you’re really treated to a beautiful introduction to her thinking. It’s the way she came to her ideas.
She was originally very interested in the notion of how do people maintain their independence and integrity in the face of a world that demands compromise and The Fountainhead is about that. And you read that book and you really, you get a personal introduction to her ideas. Then you can read Atlas Shrugged and she shows how that same idea plays out in aesthetics and romantic love and politics and ethics and, by the time you get to Galt’s speech, you’ve pretty much got it all laid out in front of you.
There are few places where she really distills it down to a crystal clear formulation quite the way she did in Galt’s speech. On the one hand, it’s the intellectual climax of the novel, it’s the place where the plot tension that’s been going on through the whole novel is finally explained. You understand why the producers have gone on strike. On the other hand, it’s the opportunity for Rand to lay out her philosophy as a system for the first time in the world.
The part of the speech that bowled me over the most and continued to impress me for years as I was re-reading it was her derivation of ‘ought’ from ‘is’. And I continue to think that’s one of the most valuable things that Rand did as a philosopher, is helping people understand in a clear, lucid way how you can derive principles of what you ought to do in your life from factual information about the nature of human life. So she was identifying, you know, requirements of biological life and how those lead to the need of a system of ethics and guidelines for leading the good life. And that connection which she outlined, I think first in Galt’s speech, is — it’s brilliant. You know I’ve heard philosophers complain that it’s not rigorous or they disagree with it in one way or another, but I don’t know anybody else who has provided — for everybody — a lucid, easy-to-understand explanation of why ethics is ultimately rooted in reality and in our nature as biological beings.
As a novelist, she was doing something very radical in trying to portray an ideal human being. There are very few novelists now or, I think you have to go back pretty far in history to find novelists who were comfortable with the idea that their role as an artist was to uphold an ideal. Rand was not only trying to create that ideal but she had enough of a good vision of what that ideal consisted of that often you can tell a lot about people by how they react to it. For example, some people find it hopelessly corny that she was trying to paint a picture of the ideal person and other people find the very idea of a novel extolling selfishness to be, you know, just ridiculous beyond belief.
When people ridicule Ayn Rand, I often sense that there’s something at a deeper level, there’s something about idealism itself, that’s a little uncomfortable to them. And, in that sense, her novels can be a very useful touchstone for understanding: To what extent do people share my belief that human beings can be noble? To what extent do people share my belief that thinking for yourself is really important? I find when people are uncomfortable at a visceral level with Rand’s characters … they can still be good people, but they’re probably not people who I’m going to be able to hit it off with as easily or as deeply.
Rand’s ethical teaching that I personally found the most useful is, I think, a line from the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. She says “the basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that every man is an end in himself” — and it’s a good razor, ethically, if you’re sizing up a situation politically or in your personal life, to ask yourself the question, “Are we creating a solution here where everybody’s treated as an end in himself, where their own happiness is the most important thing for each person — or are we creating a situation where some people are expected to sacrifice to others, where some people’s interests are subordinated to others?”
Rand’s ethical vision was really one where we want to create a win-win world for everybody and that there shouldn’t be conflicts of interest among rational people if you’re using an ethical system where everyone’s treated as an end in himself.
When Rand was writing, selfishness was really a dirty word. You know, you almost couldn’t talk about it in polite company. In the years since then, we’ve had … the hippies have grown up, the 60′s culture has matured, they’re now, you know, running the world. And selfishness, it’s really different to talk about selfishness now.
In our age, in contrast to Rand’s age, it’s a much bigger problem, people who are stuck on narcissism. I think one of the dangers of Rand’s philosophy at this point is that if you are disposed towards narcissism, Rand’s going to give you all the justification that you need to keep doing that, maybe even become worse.
So, in today’s culture, I think it’s important to point out that it really is about treating people as ends in themselves. You know, when you talk about selfishness, if you take that ideal to the extreme, depending on how you interpret it, you can end up with a lot of bad behavior. But if you take an ideal like treating people as ends in themselves, it’s hard to go wrong with it.
And I think if you really want to realize the potential that Rand outlined in her philosophy and her writings, I think you need to keep an open mind, learn from a lot of different places, even in unsuspecting places like Buddhism. One thing that Buddhism, at it’s best, and Objectivism have in common is a great respect and emphasis on fidelity with reality. And in Objectivism, that fidelity with reality takes the form of logic and making sure that what you believe matches what’s really true. So it’s intellectual. And in Buddhism the emphasis on fidelity with reality takes the form more of emotional fidelity and learning to identify your own emotional resistance to the way things are. So the Buddhists have emphasized acceptance, meditation, sometimes a sort of strategic mental detachment so that you can maintain more objectivity about your emotions and your thought processes.
Sometimes I see Buddhism as a set of practices in search of a philosophy in an analogous way that Objectivism could be seen as a philosophy in search of a set of practices for doing things like raising your level of consciousness, being more productive, having a happier life, having more harmonious relationships.
So what would it look like if you combined the ideas of Objectivism with the practices of Buddhism and the kind of personality that that creates? You know what that would look like? I think it would look like Howard Roark. And I think it would look like John Galt, too. If you want to look at a face without pain or fear or guilt, look at Buddhists. Those are people who’ve learned, they’ve learned to interact with their own mind and their own emotions in ways that lead to the kind of serenity that Rand advocated in her novels.
“None of the cool kids like Ayn Rand anyway…” and other sneers
Jeff Perren sent me a link to two recent articles about Ayn Rand — “Ayn Rand: engineer of souls” by Anthony Daniels and “One or two thoughts about Ayn Rand” by Roger Kimball — and asked for my thoughts. My reply:
I found Daniels making some fair enough points, pro and con, but was stopped in my tracks when I got to this: “She entirely lacks the literary ability to convey anything admirable, or even minimally attractive, about her heroes, who are the kind of people one would not cross the road to meet, though one might well cross it to avoid them.” The next few paragraphs go on in a similar vein, attempting to support this point with examples.
This conclusion tells me that he misses the very point of Rand — a heroic vision of a moral code — and his lack of sympathy for (or even recognition of) her characters’ virtues is so strong that he’s handicapped in his overall assessment. After seeing this, I lost my motivation to read him. He’s descended into sneering, and it is every bit as unbecoming as that of which he accuses Rand herself.
Kimball’s sneering starts much earlier in his article, so I stopped reading for the same reason.
These are people who are fundamentally unsympathetic to Rand, scratching their head, ostensibly trying to figure out why intelligent or cultured people would like Rand at all, and not doing a very good job of it. I am no more impressed by this than by high school athletes scratching their head about why nerds have any friends in the lunch room, or vice versa. It’s just poor psychological comprehension, if you ask me.
Do corporations deserve the same legal protections as people?
This is a conversation from Facebook. My philosopher friend Stephan Pernar joined the group called “Corporations are not people.” In response I asked:
What essential difference does it make whether corporations “are” people, when they are composed of people? Seeking insight into the basis of your position. I’m probably neutral on the subject itself but wary of people “sticking it” to corporations as though that were not “sticking it” to people who own the corporation.
He replied: “My main critique is that corporations are pursuing essentially non-human goals (monetary gain) with super human ability. This leads to a dynamic that skews interactions in favor of the corporations. Also: people should not be able to own people.”
And I answered:
I have grave reservations myself about large corporations, largely around the fact that some of them act too much like governments. I haven’t really sorted out why they do so, but it may be a simple question of the accumulation of power, and what that does to the human soul — and nothing to do with corporate status, per se.
As I recall, the corporate entity as such is largely an artifact of the screwed up tax code. If it weren’t for the goofy tax advantages, most corporations would be companies of one stripe or another. You can certainly get protection from lawsuits and bankruptcy without becoming a corporation. That’s what limited liability companies (LLCs) are about.
In any case, you say that corporations are pursuing “non-human” goals, and cite monetary gain as an example. It seems to me that pursuing monetary gain is one of the most human of goals. How many humans do you know who don’t do this? It’s a small fraction. Are these the only humans deserving of personhood status?… See More
I think I realize what you are saying, of course: That by focusing on money, corporations are ignoring may of the human considerations like compassion and honor, etc. But in this respect, I don’t see a group of humans who call themselves a corporation as particularly different than any other groups of humans. Humans are always looking for the advantage, especially financially, regardless of what they call their group.
I’m not sure what you mean by “people should not be able to own people.” Are you saying that if a corporation has the rights of a person, then it’s like one person (shareholders) owning another (the corporation)? This strikes me as somewhat beside the point, which seems to be something like: Does a group of people (whether they call themselves a corporation or a co-op or a family) ~deserve~ the same political rights that a single individual deserves?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but it’s not clear to me that simply because the group calls themselves a corporation, the answer should be no, whereas for other groups it should be yes.
I don’t mean to create too much cognitive mess, here. It’s just not clear to me at all that saying “corporations aren’t people” adds much conceptual clarity to the moral questions involved. Instead, it seems to vilify people who turn their company into a corporation … which is usually done for tax benefits. And since most people would rather pay less taxes, this doesn’t seem like a good criteria for personhood, either.
I look forward to your thoughts.
And I look forward to yours as well….
Dietary research: Good calories, bad calories
My friend Thomas Ryan Stone has posted an interesting article on his site about the dietary research he and his wife conducted this past year, the low-carb lifestyle they adopted as a result, and the changes they noticed because of it.
I was particularly intrigued by this summary of the ten key conclusions in Gary Taubes’s book Good Calories, Bad Calories. Based on other information I’ve gleaned over the years, and what I’ve observed in my own dietary changes, I’m inclined to agree with these.
1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.
2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis — the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.
3. Sugars — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically — are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.
4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization.
5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not over-eating, and not sedentary behaviour.
6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.
7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance — a disequilibrium — in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance.
8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated — either chronically or after a meal — we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel.
9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.
10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.
I rarely have time to read books lately, so I’m especially appreciative of good summaries like this. 
Marco Rubio looks like a very interesting young politician
Thanks to Andrew for the heads-up about this guy. Judging from this video, he seems to be well-spoken, classy, and promoting values I can agree with.
Suffering as a form of spiritual guidance
In response to my post on the significance of suffering, Andrew ends his insightful comments with:
So in that sense I think the issue of suffering is important: I think denials of it lie at the root of many problems.
I do wonder, though, if this gets at what you are talking about. I sense you may be referring to something more.
Good points. And yes, I am groping for something more, here.
In a nutshell, it’s this: I have come to the view that suffering, if you respond to it correctly, will open you to a sense of deep and profound connection with the world.
Responded to incorrectly, suffering will cause you to close and pull inside.
Responded to correctly, you have no choice but to open to it, feel the emotions at a deep level, and allow your conceptions of the world — your ideas of separateness, isolation, ego, and the many neuroses they carry with them, such as depression and anxiety — to fall away.
I’m describing it in conceptual terms, but it is an experiential observation. It’s not something I’ve arrived at by thinking, but by doing it over and over and observing the results.
When I feel fear or pain, and I surrender to it completely, and I feel the emotions fully, I fall out of my self and am left with a sense of openness and connection to the world that feels transcendental.
Is it possible to feel that openness and connection without suffering first? Probably. And I envy anyone who has that opportunity, however rare. (Or maybe it’s what we all feel as infants? I’m not sure.)
But mostly I look around and I see people who have suffered (and responded well to it) displaying this openness. And I see people who have suffered (and not responded well to it) displaying closure and stunted spiritual growth.
Nobody experiences life without suffering, so the question is: do you allow it fully into your experience, allow it to transform you, to teach you, to open you? Or do you close and try to withdraw from it?
And to me that’s what it means to acknowledge the significance of suffering — to open to it and allow it to transform you. Respond to it like a teacher, or a form of corrective feedback, or a therapy. If you don’t do this, then you miss the greatest spiritual lesson life has to offer.
So I guess what I’m saying is the complement to what you’re saying. You said that denials of suffering lie at the root of many problems. And I’m saying that fully embracing your suffering, when it inevitably happens, gives you the most profound opportunities for aliveness and growth.
I need to say more about what is means to embrace suffering. I don’t mean wallowing in self-destructive thinking, or moping around depressed, or developing a new identity for yourself as “someone who suffers.”
What I mean is a very specific way of being present with the emotions (learning to locate and be present with them in your body but not getting caught up in thinking about them) and then learning to feel them in a very pure and intense way, so the emotion can move through you freely rather than getting trapped inside.
This ties in with another post I hope to be able to write soon, about how best to respond to pain and fear. Coming soon….
On the significance of suffering
Peter’s reply to The Invitation reminded me of a conversation he and I had several years ago, which had prompted me to write my post on Buddhism and Suffering.
In that post, I concluded:
So to me, the case for the significance of suffering, once we look at it closely, seems overwhelming.
Does this mean we resign ourselves to suffering, or become taciturn? No, but it does suggest that there are whole areas of life that we may be blind to, and controlled by just the same, if we don’t consciously acknowledge their significance and respond to them appropriately. I find Buddhism helpful in doing the latter.
I would expect this to be a somewhat controversial or at least interesting claim, particularly for anyone with a background in Rand’s ideas. But six years later, the post still has no comments — so I’m dragging it back onto my home page, with this post.
What do you think?
UPDATE: See related previous discussion following my post Does Suffering Build Character?
The Invitation
by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals, or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness, and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Thank you, Johann.
John Mackey on Conscious Capitalism
John does an excellent job, here, of explaining the theme he’s been promoting in recent years.
I particularly like what he conveys in the first few minutes. I’m more ambivalent about the idea of businesses having “responsibilities” to the community, since it seems one-sided to me; it is not clear to me that businesses have any more obligation to the community than communities have to businesses. So why emphasize one over the other?
At the same time, I do think that if I owned a business such as Whole Foods, I would be looking for ways to use our massive influence to have a good impact not only within the direct sphere of our business (our customers, employees, owners, etc.), but also on the communities in which we operate.
What do you think?
