Theory is Spot On!

One of the things I find less fascinating about my PhD research is the absolute necessity of reading theory. When all I want is to sit down and engage with imaginary people in more or less imaginary settings, the rigorous application that theory demands from me seems more like a chore than a pleasure. One gets used to it, of course. And the next step is to realise that theory is important, not only for its academic uses, but for its relevance to reality, to real life. 
Here is an example. Walter Benjamin wrote this in One-Way Street (See One-Way Street and Other Writings, tr. by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. London & New York: Verso, 2006 [1979], p. 56) in the 1920s:

Even the title is portentous.

"Poverty disgraces no man." Well and good. But they disgrace the poor man. They do it, and then console him with this little adage. It is one of those that may once have held good but have long since degenerated. ... When there was work that fed a man, there was also poverty that did not disgrace him, if it arose from deformity or other misfortune. But this deprivation into which million are born and hundred of thousands are dragged by impoverishment, does indeed disgrace. Filth and misery grow up around them like walls, the work of invisible hands. And just as a man can endure much in isolation, but feels justifiable shame when his wife sees him bear it or suffers it herself, so he may tolerate much as long as he is alone, and everything as long as he conceals it. But no one may ever make peace with poverty when it falls like a gigantic shadow upon his countrymen and his house. Then he must be alert to every humiliation done to him and so discipline himself that his suffering becomes no longer the downhill road to grief, but the rising path of revolt. But of this there is no hope so long as each blackest, most terrible stroke of fate, daily and even hourly discussed by the press, set forth in all its illusory causes and effects, helps no one uncover the dark powers that hold his life in thrall."

Except for the reference to 'man' as the default position of the human race and woman ('his wife') as its complement - which is not unexpected in a text written almost ninety years ago - this text could have been written just a few days ago. 
It evokes the atmosphere of bleak disappointment that fell like a heavy blanket over Scotland the day after slightly more than half of the voters gave in to fear and said No. 
It describes the BBC's ('the press') nasty role in obscuring the truth and in propagating illusions that help to hold our lives in thrall to a corrupt system. 
It points out the only way out of this: 'not the downhill road to grief, but the rising path of revolt.' 
This path of revolt doesn't need to be, and won't be, violent, but informed, broad-minded, and determined: things, on the whole, much more scary to 'the dark powers' than violence, which 'they' know and condone and nurture, as the events at George Square showed very clearly only a few hours after their 'victory.'  
Benjamin's warning about the catalytic role of the media is especially pertinent; that is where the difference must be made, for real change. Well, it seems that things might be going towards that direction.