An interesting point Kapuscinski makes in Shah of Shahs is on the aftermath of revolutions. He notes that revolutions are invigorating and meaningful while they’re happening, then shortly after, those same passionate participants are left with a hollow loss of meaning which longs for the excitement and hope the revolution once offered.

This phenomenon entices the question of how to reproduce the meaning and identity in a revolution and maintain this meaning. How, even, does a nation frame this (preserving the meaning found in revolutions) as their national objective and maintain this energy while also maintaining a stable government?

It’s interesting to note that the energy found in a revolution, at least in the case of Iran, seems to be strongly tied to a sense of euphoria and re-enchantment found in hope for attaining a better state of being (perhaps in similar idealized versions of the past). In many cases, as the world continues to progress and faces irreversible changes of modernity (i.e. technology, changes in culture, socialization, etc.), we face a time where our revolutions are motivated by ideals and euphoria of a time we can never return to. This can be attributed to part of the emptiness following revolutions—although participants may have “won” and achieved their political ambitions, they will never be able to regain the national state of being that fueled them while revolting since the nation has progressed irreversibly and that state is no longer attainable.

Thus, leaders of nations following revolutions must carefully channel the energy and idealism of citizens which was found during the revolution, into a vision for the future which incorporates some of the values of identity that motivated the revolution. For example, Khomeini carefully channeled the Iranian Revolution’s resistance to the rushed “modernization” and Westernization of Iran by the Shah and the Revolution’s euphoria for maintaining a more traditional, Persian lifestyle into an Islamic religious movement in Iran, with the clever move of working to associate Islam with the Persian ideals that Iranian revolutionaries fought to preserve. He also made sure not to reject modernity and the progression of society as a whole, in order to keep Iran relevant as a modern nation while moving forward with his vision of Iran as an Islamic nation.

Thus, although it’s an inevitable consequence of time and culture that nations progress irreversibly, which prompts a loss of identity when a nation places meaning in aspects of its own history, leaders of the aftermaths of revolutions have an opportunity to progress the nation along a new vision, while maintaining some of the energy of the revolution, if they incorporate the euphoria of what was worth fighting for into their new vision for the nation.