Revolutions And The People

[midcan5]

I should have known better than to expect a substantive debate from a modern American conservative. Mea culpa.

Note the primary movements of the 20Th century were nationalism (fascism), liberalism, and Marxism, why no mention of conservatism? These ideas helped make America great, Germany a tragic horror, Italy a corporate nightmare, Russia a paranoid oligarchy. No need to guess which of the three worked for all the people in one nation for sixty years? Maybe it worked too well as the spoiled people who benefited most in America have lost their soul to materialism. Niccolo was right I guess. Modern American conservatism does have blends of nationalism mixed with self interest, an odd mix.

Back on topic. Looking back over some history and idea books brought to my attention a piece** Isaiah Berlin wrote about what he called the three major turning points in framing the world or at least the western world. The second and third interest me. His second point is Machiavelli's recognition that you have to look at what men do and not what they say. Politics - the state - rather than Christianity, a real change in thinking.

The third Berlin considered the most important, Romanticism, the idea that there are no solid foundational elements. It is one we still debate in various forms. Consider the battle to bring back a religious authority in modern life; Christianity in America and Islam in various other places. The modern experience has broken the tethers that religion filled till the enlightenment. Sometime freedom is unsettling.

"[In the series, Schaeffer] takes the audience through the entire history of Western culture through Roe v. Wade," says Lizza. "The beginning chapters of this movie are all about where Christianity took wrong turns. For Schaeffer, it's the Enlightenment. It's the Italian Renaissance. It's Darwinism. It's secular humanism. It's any point in history where he believes man turns away from God and turns away from putting God at the center of life."

** [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Reality-Studies-Ideas-History/dp/0374525692/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (9780374525699): Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, Patrick Gardiner: Books[/ame]

 

[midcan5]

I saw a few pieces that seemed relevant and linked them below a counter thought.

Are there revolutions in ideas? Consider the change from the world of spirit control to the modern sense of personal responsibility. The largest change would be the change from church to secular that took place over two hundred years ago and seems to still be happening. Many people still desire a central authority that remains unknown, Gawd, rather than the more obvious monarch, government, or what have you. If ideas matter more than the revolutionary act who manages ideas? If managed who decides on whether an idea is good or bad or even workable. Are we at an impasse today in America as MONEY is the chief source of ideas and its idea is only more.

Revolutions, Black Swans, and Historians | Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts

What Would Marx Say about Cairo? - By David Armitage | Foreign Policy

 

[edjax1952]

Will humanity ever advance to a state of nature, a state of peace, that only small tribal groups have ever approached or possessed.

Where does this come from? Nature is dog eat dog, the mightiest survives. Nature is not peaceful but a violent enviroment. It entails individual survival each and every day, wary of the predator that awaits you, that is going to eat you. Peace is an illusion that one who views from afar perceives, but go into the jungle and observe and you will see the true side of nature.

I think midcan longs for a return to Eden, when the lion and the lamb laid together and there was no sin.

 

[ErikViking]

As I see it:
Revolution is what it is. A revolving motion. Societies are always filled with different tensions and the more extreme the unbalance the more extreme the revolving motion. A revolution has no promise of improvement in itself and not all will benefit from it. The state after a revelotion may be stable or equally unbalanced as i was before.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I saw a few pieces that seemed relevant and linked them below a counter thought.

Are there revolutions in ideas? Consider the change from the world of spirit control to the modern sense of personal responsibility. The largest change would be the change from church to secular that took place over two hundred years ago and seems to still be happening. Many people still desire a central authority that remains unknown, Gawd, rather than the more obvious monarch, government, or what have you. If ideas matter more than the revolutionary act who manages ideas? If managed who decides on whether an idea is good or bad or even workable. Are we at an impasse today in America as MONEY is the chief source of ideas and its idea is only more.

Revolutions, Black Swans, and Historians | Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts

What Would Marx Say about Cairo? - By David Armitage | Foreign Policy

Did you sleep through the part of your history class that talked about the Magna Carta?

 

[daveman]

I should have known better than to expect a substantive debate from a modern American conservative. Mea culpa.

You don't want debate. You want immediate, unthinking acceptance and agreement.

This isn't a leftist echo chamber. Deal with it.

 

[Old Rocks]

The American Revolution had many factors going for it. For one thing, it was also about economic independence. For another, it was, almost by accident, a experimental lab for the ideas of the Enlightenment.

And we had some truly exceptional leaders at the time. No pedestals, they were all very human, just as contradictory as all humans. But they saw in a clearer light than most. From Jefferson's and Madison's work to keep government and religion seperate, to Franklin's civic works.

No, they would not recognize a world in which one can leave Boston at dawn, and be in Portland, Oregon for lunch. But they would recognize that the form and size of government would have to change in order to accomodate public safety and economics.

Jefferson was correct. We need a revolution every generation. Guns are not neccessary, and an impediment to a real revolution. The manner in which we are communicating is one revolution I have seen in my lifetime. Another is the shrinking of the world.

When much of Mexico City was destroyed in an earthquake, I was living in Tacoma, Washington. We drove down McChord to see the huge Russian plane carrying supplies to Mexico City, being serviced and refueled on the way there and on the way back. A Russian airplane using one of our bases to get aid to people in Mexico. Unthinkable only a decade ealier.

Even good and effective revolutions do not mean that all problems are solved. What they do, is create an atmosphere in which the problems can be addressed. People still remain people. Only 160 years ago many people were willing to die to defend slavery, in spite of the words in the Declaration of Independence.

 

[midcan5]

I think midcan longs for a return to Eden, when the lion and the lamb laid together and there was no sin.

Hm... I am too old and have seen too much to wish for utopia, that is for libertarians and ideologues of all flavors. Sin is an interesting idea though, according to our predominant religion, we are marked as sinners. Maybe we need to improve a bit, you think?

Did you sleep through the part of your history class that talked about the Magna Carta?

I am not a historian of democracy, but that would make an interesting discussion. I love ideas and was just re-reading parts of Watson's brilliant look at the ideas in history of this very period. [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (9780060935641): Peter Watson: Books[/ame]


If this commentary is accurate, it would seem the magna carta was an agreement among the haves? It is consistent (a stretch) on why we have a federal system and not a state system. Magna Carta 1215

I should have known better than to expect a substantive debate from a modern American conservative. Mea culpa.

You don't want debate. You want immediate, unthinking acceptance and agreement.

This isn't a leftist echo chamber. Deal with it.

As always I thank you for your elucidating comment and argument, that clarifies the topic for me.

 

[daveman]

I should have known better than to expect a substantive debate from a modern American conservative. Mea culpa.

You don't want debate. You want immediate, unthinking acceptance and agreement.

This isn't a leftist echo chamber. Deal with it.

As always I thank you for your elucidating comment and argument, that clarifies the topic for me.

Damn shame you don't actually get it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Did you sleep through the part of your history class that talked about the Magna Carta?

I am not a historian of democracy, but that would make an interesting discussion. I love ideas and was just re-reading parts of Watson's brilliant look at the ideas in history of this very period. [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-History-Thought-Invention-Freud/dp/0060935642/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8"]Amazon.com: Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (9780060935641): Peter Watson: Books[/ame]


If this commentary is accurate, it would seem the magna carta was an agreement among the haves? It is consistent (a stretch) on why we have a federal system and not a state system. Magna Carta 1215

I should be amazed at your lack of curiosity, but I am only saddened. Did it even occur to you to wonder why I mentioned the Magan Carta in reply to your post about changing from church to secular control of the government occurring 200 years ago? Maybe you should think specifically about that, since you admitted you know nothing about democracy itself.

 

[waltky]

Sentiment mining predicts uprisings...

Supercomputer predicts revolution
9 September 2011 - Sentiment mining showed a sharp change in tone around Egypt ahead of President Mubarak's ousting

Feeding a supercomputer with news stories could help predict major world events, according to US research. A study, based on millions of articles, charted deteriorating national sentiment ahead of the recent revolutions in Libya and Egypt. While the analysis was carried out retrospectively, scientists say the same processes could be used to anticipate upcoming conflict. The system also picked up early clues about Osama Bin Laden's location. Kalev Leetaru, from the University of Illinois' Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science, presented his findings in the journal First Monday.

Mood and location

The study's information was taken from a range of sources including the US government-run Open Source Centre, and the Summary of World Broadcasts (now known as BBC Monitoring), both of which monitor local media output around the world. News outlets which published online versions were also analysed, as was the New York Times' archive, going back to 1945. In total, Mr Leetaru gathered more than 100 million articles. Reports were analysed for two main types of information: mood - whether the article represented good news or bad news, and location - where events were happening and the location of other participants in the story.

Mood detection, or "automated sentiment mining" searched for words such as "terrible", "horrific" or "nice". Location, or "geocoding" took mentions of specific places, such as "Cairo" and converted them in to coordinates that could be plotted on a map. Analysis of story elements was used to create an interconnected web of 100 trillion relationships.

Predicting trouble

Data was fed into an SGI Altix supercomputer, known as Nautilus, based at the University of Tennessee. The machine's 1024 Intel Nehalem cores have a total processing power of 8.2 teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second). Based on specific queries, Nautilus generated graphs for different countries which experienced the "Arab Spring". In each case, the aggregated results of thousands of news stories showed a notable dip in sentiment ahead of time - both inside the country, and as reported from outside.

More BBC News - Supercomputer predicts revolution

 

[midcan5]

I should be amazed at your lack of curiosity, but I am only saddened. Did it even occur to you to wonder why I mentioned the Magan Carta in reply to your post about changing from church to secular control of the government occurring 200 years ago? Maybe you should think specifically about that, since you admitted you know nothing about democracy itself.

It's kinda weird to me that you take a nuanced reply to an extreme? If I know nothing, you appear to know less as the magna carta is hardly the only thing that changed the world of religion. If it had, you'd have a hard time understanding the modern American right. You guys make yourself sound foolish with your easy slogan answers to complex topics that occurred long ago and are still the source of debate. Of the debate changes based on the present, while the past stands pretty darn still. Did you even read the info at the link?

'What was the purpose of the Magna Carta?'

"What was the purpose of the Magna Carta? The purpose of the Magna Carta was to curb the King and make him govern by the old English laws that had prevailed before the Normans came. The Magna Carta was a collection of 37 English laws - some copied, some recollected, some old and some new. The Magna Carta demonstrated that the power of the king could be limited by a written grant."

 

[yidnar]

It is rare today that I read something that sparks a large question mark in my mind, but consider this, no revolution has ever helped the people in need of change. Our own founding included slavery, and while in principle it was egalitarian, our history has shown another side. Did women even exist then. The French revolution soon deteriorated into a mass killing of the very people it was supposed to help. Jesus died before he could create a heaven on earth, while he talked a good game, his heaven had to wait, his followers were quickly busy killing each other. The Russian revolution soon deteriorated into Stalinist paranoid communism. Mao's people's revolution killed millions and hardly changed the lives of the common people. Even material or technological revolutions only create problems of alienation, slave labor conditions, and societal disruptions. The Industrial revolution destroyed farming, created cities full of lives of misery, polluted the environment, and may today finally destroy the earth. Out of our contemporary world of such vast promise, autism figures grow, one in eight women encounter breast cancer, and poverty figures increase. Free market Capitalism creates large trails of misery and regularly collapses as the Great Depression and the recent recession testify. Think also of the Katrina failure. Communism failed, Socialism is an interesting concept but like Christianity never tried. And so it goes....

Why is this, are not revolutions the means to create a society that supports the people. Wasn't the enlightenment about Reason and wasn't Reason the answer to injustice and violence? Wars of the 19th and 20th century show how far reason has gotten humanity. Look only at the wars of the moment. It is always the other side that is unreasonable. Look today at the fact most people on earth live on less than two dollars a day. A child dies every few seconds in the world from preventable causes. Revolutions in Africa become killing fields. One hundred and fifty million children in the world work in sweatshops. Even in America the poor grow poorer, this in a wealthy nation that cannot even provide healthcare for all its citizens. British youth rebel. Egyptians have had enough. Maybe revolutions of all sizes have goals of not a better world, maybe they are for some other purpose. Anyone know?

Will humanity ever advance to a state of nature, a state of peace, that only small tribal groups have ever approached or possessed.

why didn't you mention Islam in your op ?? do they not kill people ?? is there not a violent Islamic revolution sweeping the world ??

 

[Truthmatters]

As long as gathering power through asset hoarding is valued in human society we will never have peace.

The best human societies have valued life, knowledge and compassion.

As sad as it is there are just too many humans who insist on valueing assets over life, knowledge and compassion.

I am gald to not be one of them.

What a shallow and half lived life those people have to endure.

They are so clueless they even think THEY are better off than those that value life, knowledge and compassion.

 

[daveman]

As long as gathering power through asset hoarding is valued in human society we will never have peace.

The best human societies have valued life, knowledge and compassion.

As sad as it is there are just too many humans who insist on valueing assets over life, knowledge and compassion.

I am gald to not be one of them.

What a shallow and half lived life those people have to endure.

They are so clueless they even think THEY are better off than those that value life, knowledge and compassion.

Yes, the whole notion of people deciding for themselves what's best for them is SO outdated.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I should be amazed at your lack of curiosity, but I am only saddened. Did it even occur to you to wonder why I mentioned the Magan Carta in reply to your post about changing from church to secular control of the government occurring 200 years ago? Maybe you should think specifically about that, since you admitted you know nothing about democracy itself.

It's kinda weird to me that you take a nuanced reply to an extreme? If I know nothing, you appear to know less as the magna carta is hardly the only thing that changed the world of religion. If it had, you'd have a hard time understanding the modern American right. You guys make yourself sound foolish with your easy slogan answers to complex topics that occurred long ago and are still the source of debate. Of the debate changes based on the present, while the past stands pretty darn still. Did you even read the info at the link?

'What was the purpose of the Magna Carta?'

"What was the purpose of the Magna Carta? The purpose of the Magna Carta was to curb the King and make him govern by the old English laws that had prevailed before the Normans came. The Magna Carta was a collection of 37 English laws - some copied, some recollected, some old and some new. The Magna Carta demonstrated that the power of the king could be limited by a written grant."

You prove you prefer to use quotes rather than think.

You are the one that said that secular government is only 200 years old, yet I am the one that doesn't understand the Magna Carta. I mentioned the Magna Carta because it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I thought of the movement away from government control of religion. I could just as easily have mentioned Luther's 95 Theses and the Protestant reformation, or gone back even further.

The real roots of getting religion out of politics came from within the church, not from the state, so do not presume to lecture me on a subject you admit you know nothing about. Stop trying to turn this into a conversation about anything other than your erroneous claim that this happened 200 years ago.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

As long as gathering power through asset hoarding is valued in human society we will never have peace.

The best human societies have valued life, knowledge and compassion.

As sad as it is there are just too many humans who insist on valueing assets over life, knowledge and compassion.

I am gald to not be one of them.

What a shallow and half lived life those people have to endure.

They are so clueless they even think THEY are better off than those that value life, knowledge and compassion.

What best human societies valued life, knowledge, and compassion? Atlantis? Please name the society, or societies, from history you admire.

 

[Truthmatters]

As long as gathering power through asset hoarding is valued in human society we will never have peace.

The best human societies have valued life, knowledge and compassion.

As sad as it is there are just too many humans who insist on valueing assets over life, knowledge and compassion.

I am gald to not be one of them.

What a shallow and half lived life those people have to endure.

They are so clueless they even think THEY are better off than those that value life, knowledge and compassion.

Yes, the whole notion of people deciding for themselves what's best for them is SO outdated.

why are you against people desiding for themselves?

 

[daveman]

As long as gathering power through asset hoarding is valued in human society we will never have peace.

The best human societies have valued life, knowledge and compassion.

As sad as it is there are just too many humans who insist on valueing assets over life, knowledge and compassion.

I am gald to not be one of them.

What a shallow and half lived life those people have to endure.

They are so clueless they even think THEY are better off than those that value life, knowledge and compassion.

Yes, the whole notion of people deciding for themselves what's best for them is SO outdated.

why are you against people desiding for themselves?

I'm not. I was quoting you.

You forget there are more minorities and women that make up this country than people who share your outdated opinions about people deciding for them selves what their lives should be.

 

[Truthmatters]

I never said that.