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10 - Between the Guillotine and the Velvet Revolution

What Is at Stake?

from Part II - Evolution and Involution in Social Transformations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2018

Brady Wagoner
Affiliation:
Aalborg University, Denmark
Fathali M. Moghaddam
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Jaan Valsiner
Affiliation:
Aalborg University, Denmark
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Summary

At stake are human lives. Revolutions—like wars—are acts of devastation. Such devastation is enthusiastic- for the actors who take the side of the revolution. They hope to build something new—a Paradise, a “new society”, communism, or “democracy”. They feel they have all the right to topple the old regimes for the sake of the future. And then—once they find out that they have been moved from an old regime to a new one—they are justifiably disappointed (Moghaddam, 2017). Dreams are crushed. The new regime may look similar to the old one- or be even worse. For the others—opponents of revolutions, or neutral bystanders, and anybody else—that enthusiasm is inherently disruptive. It is a form of violence for no reason, a kind of rape. At the least they are brought out of their previous social roles within a society and forced to alter their conduct—with, or without, altering their belief systems. They face variable fates. They may be executed, imprisoned, or expelled as “enemies of the revolution” or they somehow survive. In this context the values of human beings are reduced to their presumed social roles and ideological commitments. Humanity ends where ideologies rage, and the axes of revolutions begin to hit. The behavioristic credo (Campbell and Moghaddam, 2017) of the revolutionary justice systems leaves only few options for survival—accept, or go—to exile, into underground, or to the gallows. Revolutions polarize the relations between human beings.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Psychology of Radical Social Change
From Rage to Revolution
, pp. 169 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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