Revolution

I was following and reading the comments on David Usher’s blog on technology and art at http://www.cloudid.com, which I frequently check out. The latest blog entry and the comment stream prompted me to post this essay I wrote a few years ago. It’s included in Feathers on Peacock: Writings on Revolution, my new book on Revolution and Burma. The post on David Usher’s blog is about racism, which the essay below isn’t about. But I think the same philosophy applies, when we’re trying to tackle such heavy societal topic, and discuss social change.

What About Revolution?

What is it about revolution? Every era, there seems to be one. It almost seems as if history is defined by the popular revolution that was occurring at each particular period. I am not interested in the why and how more than I am intrigued by the very presence of such a phenomenon. I have no answers. Rather than so, I have more questions. If there is anything I can understand from this happening, it is the non-absolute of reality.

I am no historian. A mere layperson I am. In essence, my definition of revolution is very broad. Not only the politics or arts are included, but also the general sense of ideology. My reflection is not about questioning the merit of revolution. In actuality, I support the concept of revolution. Of course, this humors me. Can I really support something I feel so ill-informed about? I am a bearer of contradictions and paradoxes. Therein lies my problem with revolution.

Staging a revolution signifies to revolt. For one to revolt, there has to be an entity or ideology to revolt against. So the Protestants revolt against the order of Catholicism. So the communist revolt against class systems and capitalism. So democrats revolt against colonialists and authoritarians. But what next? Small minority groups within democratic societies seek their own revolution against the failure of democracy to address socialist concerns. Violated groups cry for democratic reform under communist dictatorships. In the artist world, surrealism is born out of movement away from realism. Realism was an opposition of idealism. From focus on aesthetic qualities to materialistic qualities, and a return to aesthetic associations, we come in one full circle.

I am one who studies the psychic forces, and so the history of psychology I am familiar with. Similar revolving door phenomenon occurs with different schools of psychological thought. First, it was the environmental influences to human mind that were of focus, namely the spirits of the world. Then followed the biological aspects of the mind, where Hippocrates discussed the four bodily humors and how they might relate to the workings of mental illness. This school of thought denounced the environmental influences in favor of the more ’scientific evidence’. Soon enough, human race created a movement towards a more psychoanalytic understanding of the mind when Freud came along. It was seen as more humanly relevant than biological causes that dismissed the human ability to process information. Psychoanalytic theory left a lasting impression in the field, yet humans are not to be satisfied. Thus, the believers in environmental causes return with a vengeance, using scientific research as their weapon, thus creating the behavioral movement. I do not wish to tell an endless tale that is cyclical. You get the story.

As I review my observation and understanding of human’s tendency to revolt, one other dictionary definition of revolution came to mind. It is one that explains revolution as an orbital motion about a point or a single complete turn. In a circle, there is no beginning and there is no end, i.e. there is no absolute. Truth is infinite. It is inseparable. One leads to another and one follows the other. All angles, every micro-degree of them, is a component of the existence of truth. A single fragment is no one definite truth, though not a fallacy in itself. Is it then not irrelevant to argue one truth against another? Would this call for revolutions to be without merit? Can I still entitle to be a believer of revolutions? I am asking for a change and turnover of the way you think about revolutions. Does it make me a hypocrite? What if my act justifies my concepts of the non-absolute?

I have no answers, only more circular questions, just my own revolution.