What is Enlightenment? Kant

The freedom to make public reasoning while dutifully using our private use of reason - a topic that is very relevant today.  It seems like this is what is encouraged today. Get up, go to work, work hard for eight hours, go home exhausted.  Got beef against economic injustices and environmental degradation?  Write a letter to the Premier.  Sign a petition.  Business as usual.  Obey.  The minute you disrupt business (especially international trade), force and violence may be used against you.

Will we really reach public enlightenment through the method advocated by Kant?  Removal of religious dogma and tight state control is certainly a healthy start, I agree.  If we must conduct business as usual, how will social change really occur?  Would we not merely be paying lip service to issues of social justice and environmental degradation then?  How to create true resistance?  I agree with Kant that the contradictions arising from one's use of public vs. private reasoning creates dissent and resistance but how to activate this resistance in an experiential and material way?  I feel trapped in this paradox right now and have been for a long time...

I have to agree with Kant in some ways on revolution.  I believe that the Occupy Movement, the Arab Springs all constitute a very historical slow revolution.  But while people may be resisting, they may not all be 'enlightened'.  The issue of how to change people's awareness has been deep on my mind especially since 2009.  I struggled to make people see what I see on the issue of the Olympic Games in Vancouver and all around the world.  Now, in the context of the Occupy Movement, many have joined in with the cause but some are in the cause for self-interested reasons rather than for global justice.  The movement is diverse and it cannot be expected that thousands of persons all think alike.  This causes fractures in the movement.  The revolution cannot forge ahead with so much internal dissent.  Kant's discussion is still relevant today and of great importance - how to change the public's awareness and to create mass public enlightenment?  I have many questions but no answers... but the main thing to keep in mind is solidarity and to remember where the battle lies.  Internal bickering, egos must subsist in favour of the utility of the majority.  The 'battle' is not within the 99% at the moment - it is with the 1% and its supporters.