Efforts to extinguish the light of human progress sometimes cause the candlelight to flicker, but it always burns the brighter after

Peace for Paris. Photograph: From Subjectif Art, design by Jean Jullien (License)

The world is moving inexorably forwards. More freedoms, more rights, more equality. That progress has been tempered time and again by horrifying bouts of violence and war, psychotic acts of terror and ruthless acts of sectarian cleansing. Yet humanity has continued to stumble its way out of the darkness.

Acts of violence, counter-revolutionary reaction and suppression by those would keep the world trapped in the darkness, rear up with each step forward. They attempt use fear to control and dissuade, to put out the light. Yet each act of violence has changed humanity. It forges an ever growing, ever spreading, solidarity against violence, ignorance and selfishness. It simply makes the case, and support, for peace, liberty and tolerance stronger.

Vaclav Havel was a writer and playwright who became a political dissident against totalitarian communist rule and went on to became the first President of the Czech Republic. At the height of the constant, suppressive, threat of arrest and imprisonment, Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless. In it, Havel described how under the rule of even the most desperate and tyrannical of police states, the light of dissent and liberty can flicker into life through simple acts of disobedience and the refusal to comply with the wielders of power and fear. That in these simple acts, an individual:

"...rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth."

For many, the events in Paris, or in Beirut, have extinguished their ability to see that light - or so dimmed their sensitivity to it beneath a howling storm of pain and loss that they may never see it again. For those people, there is perhaps little comfort in knowing that despite, and maybe in spite of, atrocities, the statistics say that there are only positive trends when it comes to human health and prosperity.

To those people, it may well be cold comfort that the light continues to flicker, let alone that it will grow stronger. Even so, we cannot give up on, or ignore, that flame. By its light, people have changed the world for the better with even the smallest acts of freedom.

Whether it's the struggle for human rights, civil rights and liberties, and democracy around the world, or their particular manifestations in the rising visibility of struggles for Women's rights, LGBT rights or for recognition that Black Lives Matter, the movement towards equality and respect is irresistible.