Get ready for a long rant!

Let’s take a moment here to talk about social development. Talking much about Twain and his works, we’ve had many discussions on the subject, and I would like to go into it out of reflection from other classes I have been a part of. Today, we talk a lot about change, we even elected a president based off the assumption of change. Where is the change coming from? Not the idea of how will this change happen, but I am asking more of the ‘where’ and the ‘why.’ It seems to me that whenever there is to be this idea of great change, something else has already reflected on it, and in some cases even implemented it prior. So let’s think, where did it all start? What was the first domino in this long line of cause and effect? I don’t think this line of change has ever actually stopped. I feel I must backtrack a bit to an earlier conversation the class has had, that about the theory in which humanity is moving towards perfection. I call shenanigans upon this idea, as for every voice that tells us we are progressing you have just as many saying that we are moving backwards.



Personally, I say we are changing in a straight line, neither forward nor backwards, but to the side. Change is inevitable, and we have definitely progressed farther technologically speaking from the times before, however, I feel socially, we’ve stayed almost the exact same, just with new labels and reasoning behind them. Of course, not all change is good, but we all know that, but I am always curious to see how much of change is actually revolutionary in the truest sense.
I would like to take a moment and reflect upon this using human experience. Again, I put on my history hat and pull out two periods of our past that might give an idea or two to people on the subject. Now, both periods have something very important in common when compared to the time periods of Twains book, see if you can spot the reasons before I explain why later.
The first is that of the Renaissance. Now, most American’s will picture the English Renaissance at this, normally under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This popular conception of the time, peppered of course with art and culture from the Italian artists, is not what I am pointing too. No instead I am looking to much earlier, that of where it all began, Italy, where we find a very important result of early trade and commerce of the time. We see the growth of the middle class, those with enough money to break free of the bindings of the poor, but no birthplace to claim for a title in the upper ranks. A return to classical teachings and styles lead to a revival of the individual, as well as a strengthening of a budding practice in Europe known as democracy. Irony will have a part to play when one thinks that while Italy was the focus point of a new age of intellectual thought, the country only unified after a number of wars a couple hundred years later, ending after its defeat in the First World War, but that is a subject for another class. Now, I would like to point out that democracy was by no means new during this time. In fact, many had felt that it was a dead institution from the Greek and later the Roman people. Resurfaced knowledge brought back to Rome from the crusades sparked a new credibility to these assumed new ideas. I am almost tempted to remind the class of our talks of nostalgia and its effects on the present, but I feel it would be a little to cynical in the contexts of a democratic based republic. Regardless, the west returned to democracy, even though it was tempered by Monarchy, and later broken to different forms by revolution and war.
On the other end, let’s look to the east, and a more modern concept of Communism and its rise and even fall. I would hope people are catching onto how both these time frames reflect what we’ve been reading, but again, I am ahead of myself. Now regardless of your own feelings on the subject, please note that I do not fashion myself to be a Communist, at least not anymore, yet my own political bends are not the focus of this analysis. I would like all those who have read the Communist manifesto to help those who have not, as you will have a better understanding of what I will be talking about, at least I hope so. It is no real secret, the Communism that Marx talked about was one born out of a post industrial society, one in which a country would become strong enough to support itself and its people. However, it is interesting to note that both major Communist countries, Russia and China, turned to Communism well before becoming a true industrial country to begin with. This was not Marxism, but Leninism, the idea that Communism could propel a nation forward through development by the will and work of the people. Take a step back for a moment and look with me in hindsight as to what has happened to both places. In both, we have seen an explosion of industrialization, with the leaders of the country trying to pull their countries out of the poor status they were seen to be in and bring them right up alongside their western competition. Yet the closer each country came to that post-industrial goal, more issues within the state came to arise, and in the case of Russia, came an eventual collapse of the USSR. China, however, stayed strong, with new leadership and new ideas, and in a bit of twisted irony, capitalism. Today, we have two countries as much a part of free enterprise as any other, with only one still calling itself Communist. What happened? My answer is thus, the steel age that was championed by both Communism and the World Industrial Revolution gave way to the silicone age, and thus the global uprising of the worker as predicted by Marx was completely side stepped as man walked down an alternate path. The failure of Communism seemed to be the failure to predict human development. Yet as I stand up here on a soapbox, I wonder, we say the revival of democracy, all be it a few centuries after it was first used, could it be that man has yet to rediscover socialism? Could it be the next stage after the globalization that was born of a post silicone age? Time has been known to repeat itself in very interesting ways.
True, I have given a sort of short hand of these ideas, but then again, I could write books on the subjects, and honestly people already have. Now, to draw this long rant right back into the text, allow me to shed light as to why I picked what I did. Both of them are sort of the next stage in human development from the points in the book. We see the Renaissance as a step up from the Middle Ages, and Communism by definition is based on a post-industrial society. If nothing else, I would like to use them to completely fight against Hank and his entire ideology of change. If nothing else, I would like to jump back to the idea that of all change, there has already someone else that has done it. In the greatest of examples, Hank is showing us just that. His country, his time from which he comes from, has already done that which he is trying to do, and has been, to him, successful with it. However, he has been trying to impress all of this upon a society that has not developed in the same way, has yet to reach that point of turnaround in which the ideas of Rome become important again. In a way, Hank has skipped the creation of self awareness in the people in his attempts to create a republic. And what of after? True, it can be said that Twain was not around to really see the after effects of the Communist movements, and obviously his character had no part in this, but what about that idea? I would like to point out that in battles against Merlin, Hank has had to outdo himself every time to try and take favor away from the old conjurer, telling one something about how resistant people really are to change. It took hundreds of years for democracy to become established as deep as it has been, and decades for the ideas of socialism to take any real root. Hank is trying to do all this in one lifetime.
I will cut things short here, as I fear I’ve rambled off already, but let me ask this much. Is Hank really accomplishing anything in the long run? Is his legacy nothing more than a bullet hole in a suit of armor, or is there more too it? What are we given to believe about what happens after, and did history really change at all, even to just Hank?

(Comic provided by www.XKCD.com)