Psychology of The Revolts

Mohammed Yahia raised an important point on twitter a while ago:

I can't get over the feeling that for many people Tahrir has become an evening outing. I wonder how many here are revolutionaries?

Well, you should be expecting me now to say that Yahia is a counter-revolutionist and he knows nothing about Tahrir nor those people who scarifies their lives for the country. Right? On contrary, I totally agree with Yahia yet totally disagree with him on the same time.

First of all, I am not a psychologist, sociologist, or any other -ist, however I believe that we as humans have way more things in common than we can imagine, and that's why most of the time you can tell how people think by seeing how you yourself think in the first place. Hence, I asked myself, why do I go to Tahrir?

For sure I go there for a cause, I demonstrated in the 28th of January and the days that followed for a cause, and to make my voice heard. Yet, I cannot say this is the only reason. It might be one of many reasons, it might be the main reason, but still it is not the only one. In fact, I think we go to Tahrir and revolt for the exact same reasons we blog, tweet, or do any social activities online.

We blog for a cause, but also we blog for the ego-factor. Don't we like it when people share, comment or Facebook-like our blog posts? Why do people in demonstrations hold creative banners, shouldn't non-creative yet descriptive banners do the same job? Why do those people with creative banners smile when cameras follows them and their banners? I am not sure if the sense of pride is a part of this ego-factor or not, but it is common both in blogging and revolting too. It's not like I'm saying that people demonstrate to show off, but there is that sense of pride you have when seeing yourself participating in making a difference.

We tweet for a cause, but also we tweet to network. And so it is the case with going to Tahrir. We socialize there too. We meet people, we are social human beings and this is how we work, we love to meet and communicate with people. Throughout our lives we love networking.

Anyway, the question here, do those reasons make us less honourable? Do they make our revolution less ideal? Here comes the part where I disagree with Yahia. For me those reasons make us and our revolution more human. We are humans, and we shouldn't be ashamed of our human nature. On contrary, we can make use of them to defend our causes even better. It's totally human that the same people who sacrifice their lives in Tahrir square are those who sing, camp, play video games, socialize and love to be seen there. And sometimes love to be featured on CNN while they are there.

Update:
Mohammed Yahia added a comment below, it'd be nice if you can read it too.