Thoughts to Actions

Sitting in the middle of a library, it is hard not to think about books and all of the billions of ideas encompassed by them. A small library, say maybe only 200 or 300 books, would have been an extreme rarity back before the Enlightenment. Before the enlightenment, the occupation of thinking was something reserved for the few. The people, the peasants, had to work from before dawn until sunset. A century after the fall of Rome, the contents of more than one or two books was practically unavailable in a village. I mean, transportation was terrible, so very few ideas were moving from one place to another, and the majority of the masses were illiterate. People did what they were supposed to do by force, and simply ideas weren’t passed around enough for a large scale revolt. Evidently, this wasn’t the case with the French Revolution.

The French Revolution, like all revolutions, was based on ideas and spread by ideas. For example, gossiping books on Louis XV’s personal life were what originally undermined the French government around and after 1750. Today, people still spread gossip about their leaders. Possibly most related to Louis XV’s issue was the Clinton affair, but then there are still the people that believe Obama is a Muslim, despite the Obama’s-pastor fiasco. Is this right? Is it fair? People do believe what serves their purposes. What is truly significant about a group making fun of their ruler, though, is that it a) makes them more human, b) makes them into a sort of joke, and c) suggests that they are slightly better than the ruler and thus brings the ruler’s ego down a notch. By making fun of their ruler, the people are noting their ruler is not perfect, and thus open the door for protest and change. It is a small action with big results. Think about it. Before the French Revolution, nothing had changed since the Middle Ages. The sovereign ruled by divine right. Like a grandfather clock about to need to be rewound, each minute, each minor defiance to the king, brought France closer to a Revolution. The storming of the Bastille, the capture of Louis XVI by the angry mobs of women in 1789, even books reflecting on the French Revolution helped spread the revolution. All of these things were based on ideas and stories passed around. All of these things were catalysts for more of the revulsion. Books such as Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France were written arguing European conservatism and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman enacted the first truly feminist movement. Both of these caused debate, and thus more flow of ideas. Ideas weren’t just exported with the increased transportation of ideas, but they were also imported. In the American Revolution, the colonists were far enough away from the main of Europe to be able to cultivate their own ideas. These ideas were carried back to Europe with the newly made Americans, where they were bought by French rulers of the time, and accidentally “stolen” by the masses. The swell of ideas and knowledge became so great and dangerous that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette tried to escape their own country. So the question is, how good is an increase in ideas? How much risk are new ideas worth? Are they worth a violent revolution? Personally I think that we live in a day and age where to live without new ideas is like living without bread and water. Our entire industry-based society requires the new to obsolete the old, whether or not the old should actually be obsolete. For example, our American society requires that we protest our government to help keep it swinging like a pendulum. To stop coming up with new ideas could turn into forgetting the old ideas, such as much of Europe before the Enlightenment. Ideas may just be the kinetic energy of life’s Newton’s pendulum.


* Original Artwork