Let’s talk about patterns. I used to sew a lot of my own clothes. I found that using a pattern was a good idea. The pattern allowed me to predict my results with some degree of success. I don’t sew anymore, but my respect for patterns is deeply ingrained.
When I decided to give up on the relationship that gave me my son, I did it not because of any specific event, but because of a pattern–we were in a bad one. I am able to succeed as a self-employed designer because I have established a pattern for my days, and I stick to it. I depend on that pattern–and so do my clients. Patterns show us the shape of our lives.
They also help us understand our history–and allow us to predict our future, if we continue following a given pattern. For instance, it is possible to chart a pattern in the events preceding revolutions.
I’ve been spending some time reading about the events leading up to the major revolutions in history–the English Civil War of 1640, the American Revolution in 1776, and the French Revolution in 1789. While individual variables certainly exist, it is possible to see a certain pattern in the events leading up to open warfare.
1. Outmoded laws no longer promote social and financial security for the middle classes. The rich get richer, and the middle classes get poorer. Note that I have not said “the poor get poorer,” though that is also true. More on this later.
2. The government is in financial distress. The reasons for the distress may vary, but the distress is a constant.
3. Taxation is inequitable. The wealthiest pay little or no taxes, while the middle and lowest classes bear the heaviest tax burden. In France, for instance, the two wealthiest groups–the aristocrats and the Catholic church–lived virtually tax free just prior to the Revolution, while the reduced middle class and the peasants paid dearly.
4. Unrest begins in the middle classes, and spreads downward. One of my history professors noted that people who are struggling for bare survival just don’t seem to have the energy to challenge their circumstances. Fomenting a rebellion requires not abject poverty, but a certain level of success.
5. Revolutions don’t begin with blood in the streets–they begin with words. It takes a lot to whip a nation up to the point of revolution. It takes the kind of rhetoric that at once undermines the legitimacy of the established order, and promises a more equitable, more legitimate new order.
6. For a rebellion to become a revolution, there must also be a powerful, reactionary faction determined to maintain the old, outmoded forms, no matter what havoc they may wreak on the rest of the nation.
7. There is a profound disconnect between the ruling classes and the middle and lower classes. Violent revolutions are seldom a first choice; they generally happen with there is no other perceived path to redress inequities.
We can summarize this by saying that the financial well-being of the nation becomes both unbalanced and polarized, with the vast preponderance of wealth concentrated at the very highest strata of society–whose members also pay the least in taxes. When bad times come, the government must raise taxes. This places an unfair burden on the middle and lower classes, who are already suffering from the economic downturn. Attempts to bring the nation into a more equitable financial balance are stymied by those who have the money, power, and authority. After all, they have succeeded under the present structure; they have no incentive to change. As economic distress worsens, the middle classes become increasingly disaffected. Government rejection of change fuels the fire. And then one day there’s a flash point. It might be an assassination. It might be a bread riot. It might be a confiscated fruit cart. Whatever it is, it provides the spark necessary to convert the violent revolutionary rhetoric and the rage that has fueled it to physical violence.
The mob takes over, and after that, reasons don’t really matter anymore.
And this is important why? Take a look at that list. The pattern of revolution is forming around us. Wealth and taxation inequities, economic distress, deep divisions between those who believe the solution lies in a return to outmoded forms and those who believe it lies in restructuring our laws to meet our culture’s evolving needs, government that increasingly serves the interests of business and of the wealthiest members of society at the expense of the middle classes, and increasingly violent language among the middle classes are all present. Our government has become a byword for disconnected, stalled, irrelevance. The recent Supreme Court decision legalizing unlimited political donations by corporations has removed the last safeguard of democracy by turning elected office into a seat for sale to the deepest pockets. We have become not a democracy, but a plutocracy.
There is a great deal of talk about the financial debt we are leaving our children. I find myself wondering about the other thing we are leaving for them–a government run by officials all too often put in place to serve the interests of those who have succeeded by exploiting economic and human resources to the detriment of the rest of us.
Our nation is changing. Technology is changing. The values by which we govern our lives are changing. Our views of gender and ethnic roles are changing. Our laws need to change, too. We have a choice. We can either change our laws to create a better, more equitable life for all of us, and ease the pressure cooker that is fueling the deep anger stoking the divisions in our country, or we can legislate to benefit the tiny minority at the top, dig those divisions even deeper, and move ever closer to the inevitable flash point.
Patterns matter. And we’re in an ugly one right now. History warns us that governments who persist in believing that they can ignore the voices of their people do so at their peril. And at ours.
These images were gleaned in less than twenty minutes of web browsing. They depict revolutions and significant rebellions in America, France, China, Russia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and India. Five of those revolutions occurred, or are occurring, within living memory. Three of them are currently either ongoing or so recently ended that the result is yet to be seen. Does this worry anyone but me?
I wish this weren’t so clear and well thought out – cause then it wouldn’t matter that it’s also true! But it is and it does matter.
I agree–I wish it the pattern weren’t so easy to see. I saw in the news that the Wisconsin legislature just split off the anti-union part of the legislation that caused the dems to flee the state, and passed it as a stand-alone bill. Maybe I’m just political, but that seems to prove that his war on unions had nothing to do with balancing the budget–fiscal matters must be voted on by a quorum. So the question is, why is this so important that it must be rammed through, if it’s not a budget issue?
You haven’t touched on two greater issues – climate change and the resulting disruption of food supplies. The entire process you outline will be accelerated if people face the threat of starvation and the government can’t or won’t solve that problem. Then we’ll have a revolution. I think it might take starvation to shake American complacency.
You raise good points–those are two things that would definitely create the sort of fiscal and resource stress that precedes revolutions. But I wonder if we’re being eased into a state of starvation, and if it happens gradually enough maybe we’ll just continue to accept it as the status quo. The thing is that governments seem incapable of action in most circumstances; the only instance I can think of in which a country avoided a bloody revolution was when England was faced with the same sort of social unrest that characterized France before the revolution. If I’m remembering correctly, my history professor said that had England’s political leaders not acted to grant some key benefits to the middle classes, they would quite likely have been another France. I think it’s particularly stinging in America right now because for whatever reason, President Obama sounded very, very convincing when he talked about championing the middle classes when he was on the campaign trail. And while there have been some reforms enacted, many have been so diluted and compromised that they’ve ended up being little or no help–or even worsening the situation. Take TARP, for instance.
A thought-provoking blog. It’s easy to get set into patterns that we don’t even see, or if we do don’t want to change.
Pat Bean
Exactly, Pat–it’s like that old saying: if you’re deep in a rut sometimes it’s hard to see over the edges. Those patterns can provide structure, but they can also trap us. Maybe the central thing is to understand that by looking for patterns we can move beyond reacting to isolated events, and begin to make the long-term decisions that will serve us in the future.
Oil, food (and climate change), and water are the big issues right now, and we’ll see how much government can put the brakes on the downward slide. We are already sliding though, you can be sure of that. Food and gas prices will be out-of-control before too long, and personal safety will also become an issue.
I think the factors you’ve pinpointed, Dani, are big one–all of them are huge stressors for most of us, and they’re only getting worse. And it’s not just scarcity–it seems to me that greed is playing an even bigger role. Prices are going up not because stuff is necessarily more expensive to produce, transport, or market, but because hey, they can. My insurance went up on my car this year, even though I had no accidents, no new car, no new drivers–if anything, my rates should have gone down. When I called to ask about it the only answer I could get was, “Everybody’s doing it.” It was not satisfactory.
I almost left a comment yesterday, but deleted it. To awaken to a nearly 9 pt earthquake in Tokyo made me rethink posting it. (btw, Japanese companies began investing in US real estate in the 70’s/80’s because of the instability caused by earthquakes there.) It would have been this: I wonder how many more calamities can be withstood before the foundation crashes. It took a long time to recover from 9/11, if we ever fully did (don’t think so,) and we’re still dealing with the affects of Wall Street and securitized (there’s a misnomer) mortgages (and the legalized crap shoot/3-card-monty of credit default swaps). A few more national/international calamities of nature and another terrorist attack or something else manmade (never woman made) and if that doesn’t begin to wake the average person up from their slumber in denial – well I guess we’ll just have more and more of it until it does. I don’t picture a revolution in our country, don’t see it (my denial?) We’re in a different time. I think there will be enough calamities handed out by nature herself and the greed and stupidity of humans to bring the world to its knees. When is the question for me.
another 2 cents worth
You may well be right, Mary–personally, I think it’ll be a combination of us and nature that does us in, but who really knows? I watched that footage, too. I have friends in Tokyo. My sister in Hawaii was up at one a.m., loading her horses, dogs, and the dogs boarding with her and transporting them to high ground. The disasters are bad enough, but combined with the economic and political disasters from which we have yet to recover…I don’t know. The world is rocking, and there will come a point at which it tips.