The Activist: A Daoist Protest Manual

Protests are worthless, and “nonaction” is the only effective form of resistance, according to this provocative treatise from University of Alberta East Asian Studies professor Fried (The First Print Era). His approach is rooted in Daoism, a philosophy defined by its exhortation to nonaction, or “moving through... the world so that one’s actions never meet with resistance.” Fried asserts that, amid today’s performative culture that demands “heroic” action, “doing nothing at all is the very most you can do.” For instance, he denigrates recent pro-Palestinian college encampments as hogging attention from the issue they were protesting, contrasting them with the 2019 Hong Kong protests where protestors got closer to the Daoist ideal of “flowing like water” and “melting” away from conflict. Noting the Hong Kong protestors’ eventual turn to violence, however, Fried sticks with his assertion that any protest is useless; he argues that activism should focus instead on non-heroic, ego-less attempts to fix small things before they become large—once a conflict has resulted in mass death, protest can’t stop it, he maintains. Fried explores these ideas in meandering, koan-esque passages seeking to drain the “hope” out of protesting, since, in his view, “hope distorts and misleads,” and effective social change requires “seeing the world as it is,” with neither hope nor despair. Not all of Fried’s arguments land, but his challenging point of view will stretch readers’ imaginations. (Mar.)