Sunday, December 27, 2015

WHEN INSANITY PULLS SOCIETY OUT OF ORBIT

There have been plenty of times when insanity has pulled earth out of its normal orbit.  It happened in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist Russia, and during the French Revolution, as a few examples.  I want to explore the French Revolution a little more.

The basic idea of the French Revolution was to change people's beliefs, identities and values.  It was also to re-educate people and to eradicate traditional ways of thinking so a new cultural normal could be introduced.  While it evoked a fondness for decimalization and metrication, it went a lot further than decimals and metrics.  It had a great deal to do with secularization, the removal of religion from society or, at least, marginalizing religion so that it had no influence on the state or national life.  And it causes us to think about some of what is happening in Post Modern America.

After the French Revolution, the traditional 7-day week was changed to a week with 10 days.  Sunday was replaced with the tenth day, called "decadi."  This disrupted worship on Sunday and it was intended to.  (Spelling was even changed, e.g., Bible became bible).

The traditional 24-hour day was changed.  The new day had 10 hours.  Each hour had 100 minutes.  Each minute contained 100 seconds.

So, the new French hour contained 144 conventional minutes (making it over twice as long).  The new minute contained 86.4 conventional seconds (44% longer).  The new second equaled only 0.864 conventional seconds (13.6% shorter).  

I assume that this was so confusing that nobody was on time because nobody knew what time it was.  Workers didn't like the system because now they got one day off every 10 days instead of 1 day off every 7 days.  (No, the national domestic product did not increase correspondingly).

If the clock situation isn't confusing enough, the French radicals messed with the calendar, too.  They kept a 12 month year but changed the names of everything.  Weeks had 10 days.  And the New Year began in the Autumn.  Here are the names of the months (all new, of 
 course):

Autumn

vendemiaire - "grape harvest"
bromaire - "midst"
frimaire - "frost"

Winter

nivose - "snowy"
pluviose - "rainy"
ventose - "windy"

Spring

germinal - from "germination"
florial - "flower"
prairial - "meadow"

Summer

messidor - "harvest"
thermidor - "summer heat"
fructidor - "fruit"

In other parts of the world, Britain in particular, they poked fun at the new months, calling them: "Wheezy, Sneezy and Breezy; Flippy, Drippy and Nippy; Showery, Flowery and Bowery; and Hoppy, Croppy and Poppy."

As I said, the goofy French extremists invented a new week that contained 10 days instead of seven.  They were very creative in naming the new days of the week, as you will see.

primidi - first day
duodi - second day
tridi - third day
quartidi - fourth day
quintidi - fifth day
sextidi - sixth day
septidi - seventh day
octidi - eighth day
nonidi - ninth day
decadi - tenth day (replacing Sunday, the traditional day of rest or worship)

Many "enlightened" secularists today will tell you that the French Revolution changed the world and ushered in the beautiful new world of human rights that followed.  But there is much they won't admit about the French Revolution:

Instability was rampant. There were eleven new constitutions since 1789.  France experimented with every form of government, including dictatorship, absolute monarchy, republican, democratic, and monarchy again.

Rights came to be seen as abstractions bestowed by a powerful, coercive state which often undercut tradition, custom, law or traditional liberties.

Wars.  The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars convulsed and changed the entire map of Europe and began the colonization process.  The Revolution also brought the rise of nationalism and with it the rise of national hatred and conflict, never more prominent than in Germany, ultimately realized under Bismark.  The French Revolution poisoned Europe for the entire century which followed and indirectly set the stage for World Wars I and II.

Violence.  Not only wars, but political violence followed.  Anticlericalism led to the repudiation of Christian values and sentiments and injected hate into the political process in France.  We would do well to remember that hate was first ushered into the political process by liberal extremists during the French Revolution.

In fact, our term "right wing" and "left wing" as used in modern times comes from the French Revolution.  It referred to the seating arrangements of the two major groups in the Constituent Assembly.  

The Revolution took traditional Christian values out of public life.  Citizenship or nationalism became the only sort of identity recognized by the French State, making it harder for France to integrate religious minorities such as Muslims, who find their identities elsewhere (certainly outside of France, as we have seen).

Defenders of the French Revolution will point out that it ended absolute monarchies in Europe.  It did that.  However, Professor Lynn Hunt of UCLA regards the Revolution as an enormous dysfunctional family haunted by patricide:  Louis as the father, Marie-Antoinette as the mother, and the revolutionaries as the unruly mob of brothers. 

So, we can see a great deal of ourselves in the French Revolution:  social unrest, revolt against authority, questioning of all traditions or customs, secularization, violence, political hatred, rampant political correctness, terror, instability, government indecisiveness, destruction of culture and tradition, increase of central state power, underpinning of moral principles, experimentation-- change just for the sake of change.  (You will continue to see "CHANGE" as a key political word in upcoming campaigns, even after you might think that Obama has ruined the word).
   


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