Albert Camus in his book-length essay, The Rebel, suggests that there is a fundamental difference between revolution and rebellion. It’s not, as some say, that a revolution is simply a rebellion you win, and a rebellion is a failed revolution. That’s far too simplistic, I think.
No, Camus said that revolution is the mechanism for ultimately replacing one system of government – or control, power brokering, or hierarchy, with another one of your choosing. One that will eventually, because of the very nature of hierarchies, become just as heinous and unjust and trifling as the regime it displaced. As such, revolution has a finite, measurable, and in that sense, limited, goal and outcome.
Rebellion, on the other hand, is much more nebulous. It is concerned with a certain level of disobedience – whether civil or otherwise – designed to disrupt the wheels of power altogether, to throw that locomotive steaming full-speed ahead toward a bigger, brighter, and more “prosperous” future, off the rails, or at least slow down its evitable inching toward selective oblivion. When you revolt, you overthrow. When you rebel, you resist. Revolution is never at its core even the least bit anarchic. Rebellion by contrast has some anarchy in it. You want to tear at the power structure, but not quite pull it down. Because leveling the current government requires installing another one in its place. As the parable goes, when you sweep clean your house of demons, you make it terribly inviting for another set to move in. And who knows how much worse that new lot will be, even if they look cherubic at first glance?
Resistance is the starting point for both activities. The only difference is the end game. Do you really want to take control? If you do, how will you determine the distribution of power? it takes a lot of level heads to map out a system of checks and balances, and as the founding “fathers” of the United States found out, a great deal of compromise. To some, of course, compromise is a dirty word. It implies if not selling your soul, then at least renting, leasing, or sharecropping it. But like the Buddha discovered in his spiritual quest, the answer lies in neither extreme. Both asceticism and excess have their limitations. Until they meet as equals, conservatives and liberals will broker no truce, find no peace, build no coalitions. The secret to successful negotiations is not winner-take-all. it’s not win-lose; it’s win-win. Because in the long run, there are no sides. There is only the whole, of which each diverse, contrasting, diametrically opposed, and seemingly absolute dissimilar is an important, integral, and essential part. it’s not a question of being dependent or independent. Those are the viewpoints of childhood and adolescence. Adulting is about recognizing, honoring, accepting, and exalting interdependence. As Thich Nhat Hanh put it, acknowledging our true state of “Inter-Being.”
So ultimately, both revolution and rebellion are against the self, right? And how, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet wondered, do we traverse that landscape, given that the Almighty canon is raised against self-slaughter? When we hurt others, we hurt ourselves. As a result, being kind and compassionate and warm and loving and giving and forgiving toward others is the ultimate in selfish action. So why is it so hard? Particularly in those nations where self-reliance, independence, and personal pride are so all-fired important? Is there really such a thing as a self-made man? No. No matter how tall we may seem, all of us are “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
So who is our rebellion, our resistance, really against? To be honest, it’s mostly against that nagging sense of personal responsibility that haunts us even as we try to shift the blame, pass the buck, or avoid recognizing our own presence and participation in every bad decision we’ve ever made. We justify our lack of courage, our selfish hoarding, the me-o-centric world view that results in the score of me, one, everyone, zero. There is no length to which we will not go to find a cause or reason larger than ourselves that explains why we are the success or failure we imagine ourselves to be. Who is to blame? Anyone but me. What needs to change? The world. When will things improve? When a savior takes the reins and leads us home.
But the truth is that we’re already home. There is no further, distant shore to which we need travel. We know this, of course. When you pack up your trunk and remove yourself to a different city, climate, country, or culture, your essential nature doesn’t change. Only the externals are different. The way most of us travel illustrates that in photo-realistic detail. As Americans, we want to stay in the English-speaking sectors. Interact with shopkeepers and locals who’ve bothered to learn our language. Eat at the McDonald’s restaurant down the well-lit, clean-swept, and germ-free boulevards of our foreign destinations.
We want to change the world, but so it looks more like us. Acts like us. Even though there really isn’t a “we” that exists in the safe, consistent, and ultimately predictable way we think it does.
Who was it that said the first step of any public revolution is the private revolution? Marx, I think, but it’s been a while.
Where does the personal revolution begin? And does it need to be a revolution, or a rebellion? And when it comes to that, like Marlon Brando’s Johnny in The Wild Ones, when asked what he was rebelling against, will you say, “What’ve you got?”
09 APR 2025