To get radical, my call for global revolution and Foucault’s puzzling request for abstention from getting globally radical are a clash of times and heads. (I would like to clash with Foucault.) Foucault’s philosophy comes from altogether different time that we live now, but it is intriguing to think through how radicalism should be executed, because I personally think it is something we must be and do. Radicalism is global already with help of internet and other devises which make spreading information and activism happen quickly and efficiently. To be radical does not mean physical and mental violence self-evidently. It means putting oneself in service of mankind. To give my all to a cause. It is a sacrifice and a gift and it is not a dead-end or suicide though it have felt like so. It is not to lose life but find it and find myself on that path. By sacrificing one part of me, I possibly find something new in return, a new me. Radicalism is a new beginning and it is living as full as one can in a wise and unwise way. To experiment is not always wise but it can be necessary. It does not mean there would not be mistakes.  There has to be errors, learning, giving up something and never giving up, pain and emotions one cannot endure.

Foucault writes in his text What is Enlightenment about dangers of radicalism. He writes: all projects that claim to be global and radical must be turned away from. Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow, 1984. This strange sentence caught my eye and I understand it springs out from deeds of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Cold War, atom bombs, the time after World War 2, Vietnam War, horrors in Kampuchea and Pol Pot et cetera et cetera. It is a terrible list of hellish terrors within short period in human history. I also come from images of that list. Those atrocities that happened are also history of mine as they are in my mind. Foucault continues thinking about concept of Humanism and usage of the idea in many contexts which have been as broad as Humanism is, vast, complicated and wide. National Socialists called themselves Humanists as well as Stalinists. Humanism is a set of themes and too diverse to be set to serve one ideology,to serve ideas of one belief system. But Humanism must not be rejected because it has been used to glorify needs to rule humans, to put them, us in a tight tether. Humanism, which sounds good, is good, embracing and smiling used by political and religious ideologies to make narrow perspective to humanity reigning social system is of course against the idea of Humanism. Idea of Humanism is an ideal, Humanism is for one philosophical and empathetic way to do good, pass good, put decent, good and desirable deeds and thoughts into the world. It is also a utopia of a perfect being and part of Humanism is evidently the ill people do which must nor should be denied nor forgotten personally nor generally. Therefore to say someone is a Humanist and mean only the good of it, taking only the good of being human, to hold human good on idea level like a possession is odd. To have Humanism as a concept in use for one’s own good is hypocritical, selfish and denying the facts of our nature. It has similarities with an idea of polishing the silver and gazing at one’s reflection on that bright surface.