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.