in the modern world, say after 1500, we have had
several revolutions… so, we have the science revolution,
the political revolution, the industrial revolution…
I am not sure where to put the technology revolution…
is it part of the science revolution or is it its own separate
revolution? don’t know…
and we have what I might call the information revolution…
I can trace this from the rise of the printing press to the computer…
is this a technology revolution or is it is really an information revolution?
if we are generous, then we have had 5 different revolutions in
the last 500 years…
let us take them one by one… the most analyzed of the 5 has been
the scientific revolution… and we can easily see how that has played out…
that revolution has been the one that turned us away from religion…
because only one can be right…
the other revolution that has played out with the scientific revolution
is the information revolution… the printing press has allowed information
to be disseminated around the world and without mediation… which is to say,
you get your information from books without anyone coming between that information
and you…… you don’t get interpretations of what you are reading, you get it straight from
the book…
the rise of the scientific revolution and the information revolution has been
simultaneous…you cannot get one without the other…but the interesting thing
about the printing press, it is a technology revolution…the printing press itself
is a technology advance…so you have three of the 5 revolutions advancing
and driving each other…and this is what happens… you have multiple
solutions reinforcing each other…but of course, each revolution
advances at different times and different speeds…
if we correctly understand revolutions, we can see that they
cannot advance, revolutions, until the groundwork has been laid
out in advance…so to make this clear… you cannot have a revolution
until the mind is ready to accept it… so, the political revolution
cannot occur until we are ready for it…so, the French revolution could
not possible occur until the people were ready for it… we see from history
that the conditions of France were terrible for a vast majority of people…
millions were living in poverty and starvation…
a revolution is a drastic step to take but if one is living in truly
terrible conditions, then what do people have to lose?
the people of France had nothing to lose by revolution…
they were already at the bottom, they couldn’t get any lower…
and that made the French revolution possible…
behind each revolution comes a drive to make it possible…
for example, the scientific revolution had a drive to make
it possible…… and that drive comes from several factors…
you could make the argument and some have, that
the scientific revolution actually began with the
black death of the 14 and 15 century…the death brought
about a change in people’s attitude and understanding
of the world… people believed and yet, millions died from
disease that seemed like a rebuttal to the answer offered by
the church… the black death released people from the
answers offered by the church…….
the church could not offer up any answers as to why
the black death killed millions… believers and non-believers alike…
another solution was needed and thus the road was open to a new thinking
about things…the scientific revolution could not have happened if it weren’t
for the black death of the prior two centuries…of course, recall that
the exploration drive also occurred at this time… the voyages of
Columbus didn’t occur until after the black death… that matters…
and we have the various voyages of the Portuguese explorers…
also after the black death…for example, the first Portuguese explorers
started in 1419…the black death or the Bubonic plague killed
over 75 million people from 1347 to 1351… think about the dates…
we have the various explorers beginning their explorations after that
and then we have the scientific and information revolutions within
a 150 years after that… the plague changed people understanding
of what it meant to be human…it changed how people saw
the world and how they saw religion in that world……
and what else happened after 1350? what began to happen in
Italy starting around 1400? why the Renaissance began… it is no
coincidence that all these things began after the plague…
we can see that the bubonic plague changed how people saw themselves
and how they saw the world… the various revolutions that came afterwards,
also arose from a new understanding of who we are and what is possible…
the political revolution of 1776 in America and the more radical one
of 1789 in France, comes about because people changed how they understood
themselves and the world……
revolutions come about because of a change in understanding…
any change in understanding can later result in some sort of
revolution…the ties that binds is loosened in any sort of radical
change in how we understand ourselves… ties like religion
and political and social… the ism’s and ideologies of society
can be ties that tie people to society and if those ties are
loosened by events like the plague… then we can get revolutions…
so, we have had a radical event of the virus… and the ties that
bind, ideologies of capitalism and Catholicism and communism
and Buddhism and other ism’s and ideologies, those ties
are loosened…for we have now understood that
those ism’s and ideologies have failed us in our time of need…
we see that the marketplace in which we are supposed to have
so much faith in, has completely failed… we have clear cracks in
the economic system of capitalism… cracks that is leading to the
death of thousands…the path into tomorrow is a path of
revolution… we can already see the calls for change, dramatic
and clear change… in both our political and economic systems…
and that is how revolutions begin… with something as traumatic
as CV…that affects millions of lives… here in the U.S, we
have over 150 million Americans with stay at home orders…
California with 40 million alone have orders to stay at home…
we can see the revolution beginning in real time right now…
but let us return to one of the revolutions…
the industrial revolution…
Kropotkin