Education, is everything, sharing knowledge enables the people to resist control and more effectively utilize their lives for their own benefit, instead of merely as either paid or unpaid slaves.
A question often asked throughout history by the ruling classes: what would the peasantry do when not gainfully employed. It was the custom in the 1800s to employ children between the ages of five and ten for up to thirteen hours per day in the textile mills of northern counties in England, a source of great wealth for the upper echelon of the British Empire at the time.
The labour reformer, Robert Owen, was asked, during a parliamentary inquiry in 1816, why he did not continue to employ such young children in his mills, and why instead he chose to educate them: “Would not there be a danger of their acquiring, by that time, vicious habits, for want of regular occupation?” His reply: “My own experiences leads me to say, that I found quite the reverse, that their habits have been good in proportion to the extent of their instruction.”, was quite unpopular at the time and led to him having to buy out his partners so he could run his business along more liberal lines. He stood in stark contrast against the prevailing group-think of his times. A pioneer.
All of us tend to take for granted the current freedoms, education, future prospects, lifestyle choices, which we (it is hoped) enjoy, but each freedom has been hard-won, and is always in danger of being lost by inaction. The WNBR stands for our rights to push boundaries, to cast aside social convention, to protest in the manner of our own choosing, to declare ourselves both unique and individual, and surely in control of our own destinies.
Extract from the World Naked Bike Ride book.
