As the child of history and reason, Revolution is the offspring of linear, successive, and unrepeatable time. But as the child of myth, it moves in cyclical time, like the stars and the seasons. The nature of Revolution, then, is dual. We cannot think it except by separating its two elements and discarding the mythic as a foreign body - and we cannot live it except by uniting them. We think it as a phenomenon foreseen by reason; we live it as a mystery. The fascination of revolution lies in this enigma.
-Octavio Paz in The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry
1.19.2006
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6 comments:
james I sense that you will be needing some lunch on tuesday...funny thing I will be too.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around how this "enigma" affects the disparity between the ideal outcome and the real outcome of revolutions (for example, the Communist Revolution). This enigma could be partly, or entirely, the cause for the failure to actually reach the goal.
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I'm sorry you're having trouble. You might consider spending more time with this dave... You're probably a little to heavy on the thinking and not enough living. Even still, your thinking is a bit off. If I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody used the "communism doesn't work" line, I'd have enough money to pay joe parker's tuition.
...the Bolsheviks don't have a monopoly on revolutions.
Furthermore, it is remarkable that the assertion "communism doesn't work" seems to simultaneously contain within it: "However, capitalism and neoliberal economics do work!" May we all erupt in thunderous laughter.
I just wanted to use Communism as one example since I couldn't think of any other specific ones at the time. And not Communism itself, but Communism in, say, Russia. It's not that Communism doesn't work, it's that Communism in Russia didn't work, and I think this quote might allude to a possible reason why.
It seems right that revolution must be lived as a mystery. I'm wondering if the failure of Communism in Russia (for example only) was, in part, due to an unwillingness on the part of its leaders to live in the mystery. Maybe they were too hung up on living it as a phenomenon foreseen by reason.
If you read my first comment as "...the outcome of SOME revolutions..." it will become what I was really trying to say.
Revolution is mysterious like the tooth fairy. It comes and takes away something important and gives you two new things you think you really want. Cash and a new tooth. In the end, though, you end up buying a bunch of candy with the cash which ends up rotting out the new tooth. Now that is mystery.
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