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Daily edits December 2, 2011
Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus
When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.
Aristotle
Image of the day December 2, 2011
when things were in need of change before...
A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, “a turn around”) is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described two types of political revolution:
- Complete change from one constitution to another
- Modification of an existing constitution.[1]
Revolutions have occurred through human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio–political institutions.
Scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center around several issues. Early studies of revolutions primarily analyzed events in European history from a psychological perspective, but more modern examinations include global events and incorporate perspectives from several social sciences, including sociology and political science. Several generations of scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories and contributed much to the current understanding of this complex phenomenon.
Perhaps most often, the word ‘revolution’ is employed to denote a change in socio–political institutions.[11][12][13] Jeff Goodwin gives two definitions of a revolution. A broad one, where revolution is
| “ | “any and all instances in which a state or a political regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular movement in an irregular, extraconstitutional and/or violent fashion” | ” |
and a narrow one, in which
| “ | “revolutions entail not only mass mobilization and regime change, but also more or less rapid and fundamental social, economic and/or cultural change, during or soon after the struggle for state power.”[14] | ” |
Jack Goldstone defines them as
| “ | “an effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine authorities.”[15] | ” |
The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 during the French Revolution.
George Washington, leader of the American Revolution.
Vladimir Lenin, leader of theBolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese Xinhai Revolution in 1911.
Political and socioeconomic revolutions have been studied in many social sciences, particularly sociology, political sciences and history. Among the leading scholars in that area have been or are Crane Brinton, Charles Brockett, Farideh Farhi, John Foran, John Mason Hart, Samuel Huntington, Jack Goldstone, Jeff Goodwin, Ted Roberts Gurr, Fred Halliday, Chalmers Johnson, Tim McDaniel, Barrington Moore, Jeffery Paige, Vilfredo Pareto, Terence Ranger, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Theda Skocpol, James Scott, Eric Selbin, Charles Tilly, Ellen Kay Trimbringer, Carlos Vistas, John Walton, Timothy Wickham-Crowley and Eric Wolf.[16]
Scholars of revolutions, like Jack Goldstone, differentiate four current ‘generations’ of scholarly research dealing with revolutions.[15] The scholars of the first generation such as Gustave Le Bon, Charles A. Ellwood orPitirim Sorokin, were mainly descriptive in their approach, and their explanations of the phenomena of revolutions was usually related to social psychology, such as Le Bon’s crowd psychology theory.[11]
Second generation theorists sought to develop detailed theories of why and when revolutions arise, grounded in more complex social behavior theories. They can be divided into three major approaches: psychological, sociological and political.[11]
The works of Ted Robert Gurr, Ivo K. Feierbrand, Rosalind L. Feierbrand, James A. Geschwender, David C. Schwartz and Denton E. Morrison fall into the first category. They followed theories of cognitive psychology andfrustration-aggression theory and saw the cause of revolution in the state of mind of the masses, and while they varied in their approach as to what exactly caused the people to revolt (e.g. modernization, recession ordiscrimination), they agreed that the primary cause for revolution was the widespread frustration with socio-political situation.[11]
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
Alan Scherer Photographer 