First off, I think generalizing Revolutions as strictly random or strictly inevitable is an impossible task as each case is different in many ways. However, a passage that has stood out to me in recent readings was in Ardent’s piece. It reads, “Almost every revolution which has change the shape of nations has been made to consolidate or destroy inequality.” The reading also says, “this reality was biological and not historical…a change whose movements are automatic, independent of our own activities, and irresistible” As for Ardent she believes that Revolutions are a matter of human nature. The idea that humans will always fight for their dignity in the face of inequality. Similar to what we read the first week in Shah of Shahs about that pebble that contently nags at our side. So it seems, as long as there are oppressed peoples, as long as inequality defines a nation, there will be revolution. Sure it will be upon the back of an extraordinary event, a moment of viability when the impossible seems possible, but the “overwhelming urgency” that Ardent speaks of will always be engrained in our human nature.

So are revolutions inevitable or random? Can they be both? Consider our study of Haiti. Sure it may have shocked the French masters when the men they once trusted as loyal turned on them and their families. However, the cogs of the uprising had be silently turning for quite a while.

A part of this week’s readings that spoke to me was on human identity realized in the action of revolting.  Camus made some interesting remarks on the process of the individual finding meaning in rebellion, noting that at the moment an individual turns to his master and says “no”, the rebel redefines himself and is loyal to certain aspects of himself that he demands to be respected. Camus notes that, “the man’s obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself.” (Camus, 15). His remarks seemed to complement Shah of Shahs, where Kapuscinski mentions that the people who participated in the Iranian Revolution felt alive and motivated, with a gleaming hope for the future and fueled by nostalgia. Camus notes, “Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.” (Camus, 105). Camus argues that in the moment of rebellion, the rebel not only finds a sense of value in his/herself, but also is able to feel more connected with his/her peers because the rebel acknowledges that their struggles are the same as his/her own. In The Rebel Camus states, “In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience.” He continues, “I rebel—therefore we exist.” (Camus, 22).

The emphasis of finding value in one’s own life and the shared identity amongst all those in the predicament of the rebel reminds me of a question brought up in the first class, “why are revolutions so sexy?” (Or something similar.) From the readings, it seems clear why people are so drawn to the concept of rebellions or revolutions. Everyone craves the moment when they can value their self-worth above anything else. Everyone looks up to someone who is living a better life than themselves, someone who they’d like to be treated as equals with. The revolution offers an opportunity to finally put yourself first and demand that you are worth the ideal life you want, which is appealing to all. A revolution can give you meaning that you’ve never seen in yourself previously, both in how you view yourself and how you view yourself in relation to others.

On a side note, in this post I used the terms “revolting” and “rebelling” interchangeably,” which is a big no-no in Camus’ and Armitage’s books. I did so because, though I agree with Camus that revolutions differ from rebellions in that they are founded on ideas and seek to bring forward a new set of principles, I believe these differences are only clear in a wider view of the uprising or further along in the uprising, whereas the early stages of revolution — on the scale of the individual — are essentially rebellions, which later bring forth the motivating principles that separate the two terms.

Another angle on identity found in revolutions (revolutions as Camus described them) is the point Camus brought up that “History of man, in one sense, is the sum total of his successive rebellions.” (Camus, 107). This means that the only lasting significance and productive change in humanity is the result of revolution. Thus, if one values their own worth on their impact on the world, then they must rebel in order to implement change and have worth at all. Thus the rebel’s life, which challenges the current flow of society, is the only life that can have meaning.

I found it interesting how over time our understanding of revolutions has changed even though the goal is ultimately still the same. We saw that before the French Revolution, revolutions were mostly thought of as a restoration and that they came about by fate. Due to this definition, those who were leading them it seems like are not given credit for consciously making their decisions and seeing something totally anew after its done seems out of reach. However as time goes on, we see that we begin to believe that actually we can start with a new slate and completely anew. This transformation to me was interesting!

It is easy to retrospectively place causality on events when analyzing them retrospectively. Therefore, I believe that in many cases when analyzing the cause of a revolution it is easy to say factors X, Y, and Z existed and therefore the revolution had to occur. We have observed, however, that a great degree of revolutions success hinges on a series of unlikely events occurring in the proper sequence and resulting in a series of favorable outcomes that contribute to the ultimate occurrence of revolution.
Many revolutions do not even begin as such, many of the individuals involved in the movement attempting to pressure the institutions on which their society is founded to correct a failing within the system. As seen in the American and Haitian revolutions their ultimate goal was not to overthrow the current institutions. In other instances, the events seem even more unlikely, such as in Iran where this moment of viability was reached, following the culmination of various events. Before this moment of viability, however, the prospect of revolution was unthinkable, until the moment when it wasn’t. A key event in the Cuban revolution was the suicide of a leader within the opposition party after watching a dip in his poll numbers following an unsubstantiated claim about his opponent. Therefore I believe that this concept of inevitable revolution is one that seems faulty, given the seeming randomness of events that seem to occur surrounding a revolution. It does allow for the prospect of interesting counterfactuals in which one considers would the revolution have still occurred if a certain event had not happened when it did.

I do not like the concept of anything being inevitable. To an extent, revolutions (or any other past event) seem destined to occur because–well–they did occur. But even the things this class has thus far identified as making a revolution successful are so circumstantial despite appearing across multiple case studies that they should not be treated as part of a universal pattern.

While the case of Iran presents us with an unstable regime making poor long term decisions, it took the shady death of Ayatollah Khomeini’s eldest son, a long, public mourning process, and the political will of individuals to turn such protected processes into agents of political change in order to spark revolution. In Haiti, it took a unique set of social and economic circumstances that placed large amounts of slaves (many of whom were belligerents recently in Africa) alongside a free black population that was treated unequally from its white counterparts along with a revolution back in France to make change viable. Though these descriptions are simplistic and generalize the narratives, they begin to demonstrate how revolutions are products of situationally unique circumstances.

However, such a feeling is hard to reconcile with arguments like Camu’s, which appeal to a latent universal liberal humanity that part of me wants to exist. Yet Haiti proves all to quickly that belligerents on the same side of a revolutionary war can have vastly different interests and motivations. While linked by experience and race, free blacks in Haiti and the elite black class in general saw a post 1791 Haiti that was far different than the image rebelling slaves had. As Jake said in his blog post, the events that prompt revolutionary action are far too “fluid” to categorize them as binary.

I’m curious–and this is cynical–about the extent to which the language of revolution (in the moment) is clouded in universalism as a political ploy to gain support. Do we hear this language because the interests of revolution are far more selfish in nature and thus less accessible to a population large enough to make needed change happen? Is this rhetoric responsible for how we think about revolutions?

To be frank, I think fortuitous and organized action coalesce to create a revolution. Much of the reason why the Haitian Revolution was successful was because it was a mixture of meticulous planning and spontaneous fervor to revolt. Kurzman believes in the principal that revolution created the revolution while Camus argues that ideology provokes a revolution and that is an irresistible human compulsion, but the most potent revolutions finds a way to intertwine both practices.

A prime example to demonstrate how revolutions combine the element of accident and fate is how the moment of viability comes into fruition in a revolution. The moment of viability is the quintessential moment for the start of a revolution. It can be unforeseen and unpredictable, but not always. Planning implants the ideology of revolution that Camus contests for. It is done covertly and subversively and creates the causal explanation that there is a run up to the moment of viability. The run up to viability is the combination of ideology and restoring human dignity to avoid haphazard, coincidental moments of synced collective action. The Haitian Revolution and #MeToo movement became feasible because there were preceding incidents––a run-up to viability––whether with slave masters or sexual assault allegations, which began to build tension and anger among victims. These preceding events became the run up to viability where victims vehemently acted upon impulse which coincides with the causal explanation for coincidental revolutions.

Many of the thinkers we have read in this class seem to posit that, in some way or another, an inherent velocity toward a certain state of being exists among humankind. Whether this state of being is one where man’s universal desire to live as wholly human is actualized, as in Camus, or simply existing in a state free of intolerable encroaches on civil liberties or deprived economic conditions, there exists an undercurrent slowly pushing history towards this state, eventually causing revolution.

But an undercurrent cannot cause a revolution by itself, since it is, of course, a metaphysical object. Individuals have to play a role in this process, but to what extent are these undercurrents deterministic of individual action? I would argue that individuals are often consciously moved by less general forces, which lead them to commit actions that deliberately or unintentionally end up tapping into this undercurrent, which universalizes the action among a population and catalyzes participation in a revolutionary movement. An individual action, sparking like a single match, cannot by itself overcome the entrenched forces necessary to actualize a revolution. However, these individual sparks can ignite the undercurrents that they are standing over inadvertently or not, and set their whole society ablaze. These undercurrents flow underneath regimes like rivers of oil, full of hidden potential energy that requires an undetermined amount of sparks above ground before that energy is released.

In that sense, I would put the cause of revolutions as somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I find Camus writing especially convincing as it seems the easiest to apply generally because it deals with metaphysical objects innate in all humans that also grow larger in repressive states or environments that tend to become the stages of revolutions.  Furthermore, his description of this undercurrent so to speak makes sense in the context of a force being triggered by individual, potentially arbitrary action, as watching someone else finally say “enough” and reclaim their humanity undoubtedly serves as an inspiration for others to do the same, causing the revolutionary chain reaction.

The concept of destiny or determinism is one that has confounded even the greatest philosophers. Instead of becoming entangled in the philosophical concerns surrounding the aforementioned notions of destiny and determinism, perhaps a more appropriate question to ask is whether revolutions are “accidental affairs” or inevitable.

I do not believe revolutions are inevitable, because inevitability is somewhat of a binary condition. If a revolution is “inevitable”, it implies that a revolution is going to occur no matter what, and that a revolution is unavoidable. The issue with the rigid nature of inevitability is that it struggles to account for the possibility of circumstantial change. For example, if a regime exercises reforms that satisfy its citizens, is a revolution still inevitable? Instead, I believe that it is more helpful to think of revolution in terms of probability, a far more fluid abstraction. The notion of probability is aptly able to account for every type of situation, from the more stable of societies like the United States, to the more volatile of countries, like Venezuela.

Another advantage of understanding revolutions in terms of probability, is that probability can actually conceptualize the notion of “accidental affairs”.  In societies where revolutions are highly probable (almost inevitable), a seemingly isolated incident can have a much higher chance to accidentally spark a revolution. Meanwhile, in societies where citizens are generally satisfied with their government, a similar accidental incident would most likely not provide the same incendiary spark that could lead to a full scale revolution.

Revolutions are often tied to flashy causes. There is a certain human appeal to this narrative: we like to pin the cause of a large-scale event, such as the arab spring, with the self-immolation of an otherwise unnoteworthy fruit vender. There narratives have a particular irresistible human appeal, and, in a sense, it is true that the arab spring can be traced back to one fruit vendor. But if that fruit vender had set himself on fire in the middle of times square, would that have caused a revolution to sweep America? That seems unlikely. So was there some preexisting conditions in Tunisia that lead into a revolution, but the fruit vender was needed to spark the fire?

This might look like another instance of the classical ‘great man’ vs ‘trends and forces’ historical argument. However, this is a distinct case, for the simple reason that the men involved are usually not great in any ordinary sense of the word. The fruit vender had, presumably, neither any special talents nor any special political power which would allow him to affect the events of history under normal circumstances. He was, however, great in another sense of the word: that is, he was extraordinary. Very few people choose to light themselves on fire. Is that not a form of greatness?

And yet that greatness through mental pathology, while it might have significant impact, is not nearly as rare as the conditions which lead to revolution. Once the situation in a country has progressed to the point where a suicidal fruit vender can spark a revolution, the country will rarely be pulled back from the brink before some spark comes along.

Revolutions, while often believed to be anchored in some aspect of spontaneity, are actually much more intertwined with destiny in my opinion. Arendt describes the actual word “revolution” as being “originally an astronomical term” referring to the “revolving motion of the stars” (Arendt, 35). It is this description of revolutions that I find most intriguing. The idea that they are rooted in something much deeper—something much harder to control—than just an innate human desire for liberation not only renders revolutions more powerful, but it renders them nearly inevitable.

To have something controlled (or at least linked with) the cosmos is extremely influential. Whether you subscribe to the idea of this unlimited power of the universe is irrelevant because the fact of the matter is that many others in the world do. They have done so for centuries (for explaining earthly phenomena and godlike beings) and still do to this day (with the daily use of horoscopes). While it does seem a bit heretical to claim that all revolutions are imminent due to some sort of all-controlling force, I do believe there is immense power in belief. If those who are planning to start a revolution believe there is some larger power on their side—something that practically guarantees them success—they are inherently willing to fight much harder and give up way more in order to ensure victory.

Now, while revolutionaries do not base their plan in the cosmos’ backup, they do base it in something just as uncontrollable: the undying human aspiration for freedom. This drive is strong enough for people to put their lives at risk, oftentimes the argument being that death would bring about more freedom than their current, real-world situation (this reminds me of the example of the Haitian woman who killed over seventy unborn children in order to free them from their future shackles and burdens). Although this human characteristic seems to be very man-controlled, who is to say that the universe does not play at least a small part in this drive for liberation?