Happy 4th of July! A friend in Canada asked what we in the US say on the day. My reply: folks sometimes say on The Fourth (caps required), “Have a Happy Fourth!” or for the exuberant, fake a Southern accent, say each word with a bit of a pause;

“Happy! Fourth! Of! Juuuuly!” (Saying Yeehaw is optional.)

Hey, we had a revolution. Have you heard about it? History isn’t as popular as it was in the past, and there’s a circular irony there, so if you want an entertaining reminder, I recommend watching 1776, the musical. Go for the extended cut which includes the song that a certain President asked them to take out. As for revolutions, we aren’t the only ones.

That’s a lot of tabs, as I glance up at my browser’s bookmark bar. Politics are so contentious in the United States that I think we’ve become the Untied States. So, I was going to take the day off from posting as I do most Fridays. Ah, but I made the mistake or took the insightful step to check Wikipedia for a list of revolutions. Sure, there’s America’s (actually only a slice of the Americas), but I was also curious about the French one, the Russian, the Chinese, and a few others. A few? I didn’t count them, but the Wikipedia page includes hundreds starting back more than 4,700 years ago. Gee, humans really are revolting. Here are a few revolutions, rebellions, and wars, each of which was as important to them as any modern one is to us.

Thank you, Wikipedia and wikipedians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions

• Overthrow of the Roman monarchy – 509 BC – get rid of the kings
• Athenian Revolution – 509 BC – get rid of the oligarchs
• English Civil War – circa 1650 – Parliament versus a king
• American Revolution – circa 1776 – ‘nuf said?
• French Revolution – circa 1790 – kick out the king and get rid of the oligarchs
• Decolonization of the Americas – throughout the 1800s – Spain loses its New World grip
• Mexican War of Independence – 1820-ish – kick out the monarchs et al.
• Texas Revolution – 1835 – Texas aggressively secedes from Mexico
• Russian Revolution – 1917 – No more Tsars
• Ukrainian War of Independence – 1920 – same but different
• Arab Spring – 2010s – decolonization plus
• and hundreds more
• and probably hundreds more to come.

Whoever organized the page added a simple yet important feature. They color-coded the conflicts to denote who won. They also supplied a short blurb about why.

A few things stood out:

• Humans and their conflicts are messy. Clean, simple narratives aren’t history. Clean, simple narratives are convenient fictions. Someone won. Someone lost, and it could take decades to decide which way it went.
• Many of the revolutions had prequels and sequels. Those that didn’t frequently involved countries that disappeared. Progress is chaotic, and each event is temporary. Few countries lasted hundreds of years. The countries with memorable names had a lot changing behind their name tag.
• They all probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
• Somehow, because of, or in spite of, so much chaos, we’ve gotten to here. Hopefully, we have enough momentum to get us past the rough patches.

Of course, none of them had to deal with Artificial Intelligence or artificial idiocy; they had the real stuff. While some won’t want to hear it, many of the revolutions were driven by climate change. Climate change back then wasn’t as global, but famines, droughts and floods move people; and sometimes other people don’t like having to live with new neighbors. And, of course, humans can make humans want to escape other humans simply by being human. Some will even cross an ocean on sailboats or rafts to get away from it all.

My apologies to those readers who are waiting for the flag-waving part or the screaming-at-the-sky part. For me, history makes me reflective. History makes me ponder where we’ve been and where we might be heading. 

One of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Francis Hopkinson. I guess he could be considered one of the Founding Fathers, though I get the impression he was a guy who happened to have a job, and he showed up for it. In every revolution, there are the famous names, but there are also many more people who simply did what they thought was best. He didn’t know they’d win. By signing the document, he was also identifying himself as a possible subject of treason if they lost. Tough times.

I pause because such considerations cause reflections. 

I thank past generations who built the civilization that supports me now. Construction is harder than destruction. There’s probably a Yoda quote about the Force for that because destruction is obviously more appealing to some (Boom! Bang! Crash!), but construction is what supports the future. Thanks to constructive people everywhere.