Admen wreck everything… including our language. They take words that once had significant meaning and concepts behind them, and turn them into slogans and other useless memes. The word revolution one of those words. It has been used so much that the ideas behind it have been lost.
Everything’s a revolution now, and all new products are revolutionary. For example, Burger King’s “revolution in chicken”; what the fuck is that supposed to mean? The revolution will NOT be televised, and it certainly won’t take place in Burger King’s slaughterhouses.
The word revolution has two distinct definitions:
1) a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving 2) rotation: a single complete turn (axial or orbital)
If we wanted to play with this a little, we might begin to think about the ways in which these two definitions are connected. If a revolution is to come full circle, then perhaps the drastic change comes as the new rotation begins. This is one way I like to think when I hear about the next Armageddon theory. It’s not the end of the world, but the end of this axial.
Saul Alinsky believed that before that revolution can occur… that drastic change that sets us on a new rotation… there must be a general consensus among the masses that it is time for reformation. “They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future… They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do…”
In “The Turning Point” Fritjof Capra theorizes about which occurrences will set the conditions for the reformation. “The first and perhaps most profound transition is due to the slow and reluctant but inevitable decline of patriarchy… The second transition what will have a profound impact on our lives is forced upon us by the decline of the fossil fuel age…The third transition is again connected with cultural values. It involves what is now called a “paradigm shift” – a profound change in the thoughts, perceptions, and values that form a particular vision of reality…”
But acknowledging and willingness to accept change is only the first piece of the equation.
Abbie Hoffman said… Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. He also said…”Revolution is in your head. You are the revolution” (Revolution for the Hell of It). Therefore, widespread change can only come about through individual change.
You are the revolution when drastic and far-reaching changes occur in your own ways of thinking and behaving. You are the revolution when you are a conscious consumer… You are the revolution when you consider how your actions affect the existence of others… You are the revolution when you participate in your community. You are the revolution when your actions correspond with your beliefs… You are the revolution when you stop to think about why you even have those beliefs.
You see, the masses have a great deal of influence over the big machine. We may not be its manufacturer, but we are its maintenance worker.
Anthony Giddens states that the individual and the structure is not separate, rather they are the two ingredients of social action and existence. Social life is not controlled by institutional forces… or ‘the man’… unless the individuals within that society are directing it that way; social structures – the traditions, institutions, moral codes, and established ways of doing things that create our lives – can be changed when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently. This process is referred to as reflexivity: “direct feedback from action to knowledge”
Look, individually and in groups, we are consciously creating society and the nature of our own existence. We are all reflexive beings, whether we understand what that means or not. But, if we can begin to grasp the importance and the potential of what that means… reflexivity can be where the two definitions of revolution merge.
Considered reflexivity has the potential to create the change necessary to start rotating on a new axis… We may still be going around in circles… but we are feeding the machine with a new energy source, we are reconfiguring its specifications to create different outputs… if the actions change, then the context changes.
We are the revolution…the revolution is us.
