Vaclav Havel, the Power of the Powerless (1978)

kamprint.com

38 points·iamnothere··9 comments

Very much related, Carney at Davos:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694482

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694947

Nice speech, but twisting Havel into a comment about international governance, at Davos of all places—while enthusiastically joining the global internet crackdown—is quite cheeky.

Havel’s essay is clearly about human-scale, bottom-up resistance against totalitarianism, not about creating new oppressive systems to defeat the old ones. The ending seems to reject traditional forms of “governance” entirely.

(For what it’s worth, I agree with some of Carney’s points—the old order was always a lie, and it is indeed dead.)

I recently read his essay, and wrote a reflection after a trip to Dominica. Review 001: THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS - https://www.metanoia-research.com/review-001-the-power-of-th...

Vaclav Havel: revolutionary, former President of the Czech Republic, and brilliant poet who (IIRC) invented visual word poetry, where the typographic arrangement is part of the poem's intended impact.

HAHAHA. Best joke ever. Sleeping agent of regime, siphoning all foreign aid for himself. Empty or random words generator is more matching term than "poet".

Before you get downvoted to oblivion, please enlighten us on what you mean by "agent of regime". Which regime do you mean, and is there evidence he (c)overtly worked with them?

How was Havel's visual poetry different from typographic experiments of the Futurists, like Zang Tumb Tumb?

Why does the website render a word or two per line on mobile

In landscape on an iPhone it is very readable. In portrait, not so much as you have pointed out.

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