Aung San Suu Kyi, is General Secretary, National League for Democracy (NLD), leader of the democratic opposition to Burma's military government.  She was the 1991 winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, held under house arrest from 1989 to 1995.  The following text is from an unpublished essay among several items posted on the Internet by her late husband that were (doubtless) smuggled out of Burma. Burma Image courtesy FreeBurma

CORRUPTED BY FEAR
By Aung San Suu Kyi

The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development.  A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success.  Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.  It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights.  There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill-will, ignorance, and fear.

Such spiritual transformation comes only in the midst of crisis, confrontation, and revolution, when the seeds of decay reveal old values breaking down in the search for a more appropriate state of human existence. Clare W. Graves, "Levels of Existence: An Open System Theory of Values," in Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Fall 1970, Vol. 10, No. 2: p. 142; Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals xix-xxii (1971). Stated differently,

Surprise and shock bring about the destruction of certain habits of thought in a manner very much like the sudden changes in environment which produced, according to some scientists, the rapid adaptation of species, say at the beginning of the glacial period. Something brute takes place which upsets established patterns. Either those patterns are given up or extinction ensues. Only those things develop which remain plastic enough in their habits to change them in the face of experience. Vincent G. Potter, S.J., Charles S. Peirce, On Norms & Ideals 177-184 (1997).