On The Prospects For Revolution: Part 2

What is complexity? For the purpose of this discussion let's define complexity as a condition where many layers or moving parts exist in an intricate relationship. One thing we should take away from the start as integral to complexity- please forgive me for attempting to reduce something that is, by definition, not reducible- is that complexity is antithetical to the image of the proverbial frustrated television viewer correcting a poor picture by slamming his or her fist down on a malfunctioning T.V. set. In fact, it is in the vexing nature of complexity and complex systems that demonstrations of brute force like the aforesaid rarely, if ever, deliver desired results.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with the prospects for revolution in the U.S.A.? Well, as was strongly suggested in the first installment, the United States is just too diverse (i.e. complex) a society, possessed of too many moving parts, to experience a successful revolution, at least in the quaint, time honored, Enlightenment period manner. What worked reasonably well some two and a half centuries ago simply will not yield a similarly beneficent outcome.

In fact, what would more likely ensue would be the opposite of what transpired in the late eighteenth century. Our civilization, rather than finding itself transformed for the better, would, instead, find itself fractured and exhausted, if not wholly decimated. After all, who, except ourselves, would we be revolting against this time? Recall that the one and only instance this nation found itself at severe odds with itself, roughly a century and a half ago, it barely managed- at the cost of many hundreds of thousands of lives, the destruction of entire cities, and various other sorts of appalling devastation- to avert permanent dissolution.

If progress can be measured by anything, perhaps it is best measured by a sense that, over time, sometimes in increments of a few years, at others times in periods taking many generations, the bar is raised regarding what passes for minimally acceptable conditions of existence. In that sense, inhabitants of our present civilization, in the main, have substantially higher standards with respect to quality of life, and possess greater expectations for their future, than did our revolutionary forefathers. That is simultaneously our good fortune and our dilemma when confronting the question of revolution.