Ask A Genius 429 – Flavours of Revolution
October 31, 2018
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking about revolution and its different manifestations.
Rick Rosner: We were talking about revolutions in the context of rising expectations. It is often cited within the French Revolution. People do not revolt when really, really downtrodden. It is when they see the possibility of change that is not happening fast enough to suit them.
I don’t know whether this is true. Although, it would have to mathematically have to be true. In that, if change is people pushing for change, and if a revolution is people breaking from the established societal structures when the change isn’t happening fast enough, it is not like they’re going from 0 to 100.
0 is pure misery. 10-20 is gathering change and then to 100. But there would be some change before revolution breaks out. I do not know how helpful that idea is. But it is like that truism that has been disproved, like the frog in boiling water.
It turns out. Frogs will get out of boiling water, whether raised immediately or slowed raised in temperature. Frogs will get out in either case.
Jacobsen: The importance of the myth there is the reality behind the intended message, but the mythology of the actual imagery. Even though, the reality of the imagery is false.
Rosner: The frog in boiling water is helpful, even if it is not a thing that frogs do.
Jacobsen: In America, one of your more important moral voices was Martin Luther King, Jr. He had the notion of the arc of history being long and bent towards justice. In a similar way, democracies can be seen as mini revolutions happening in 4 year timespans, 5 year timespans.
But sometimes, the political system can lock up, can gum up, can have certain stoppages.
Rosner: It is two steps forward and one step backward.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
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Rick Rosner 