14th July 1789, 231 years ago, a crowd of Frenchmen stormed the Bastille Prison in Paris, seen as a symbol of royal power, triggering a tussle which took a macabre turn as it became increasingly gory. What seems like a trivial event to most of us today, was in fact one of the turning points of history and one of the first in a long line of events that would collectively be known as the French Revolution. However, I wish to examine why it wasn’t trivial and what would trigger the people enough to actually raise arms against the monarchy. The first observation I’d like to make is the surge in the exchange of philosophical content, mostly surrounding the Enlightenment Ideals. The Age of Enlightenment was a period wherein thinkers began to question the “natural” state of affairs. It questioned the hierarchy that existed in the age and heavily criticized the Catholic Church and its dogmas along with the role of the monarchy. It led to the advancement of ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity. But what was this natural state of affairs and hierarchy that the ideals criticized? Let’s begin with the monarchy and its absolute control over the wealth and people of the nation. The European royals and the Catholic clergy created a society where despite consisting of less than 3% of the population, owned a massive majority of the wealth. It wasn’t just about owning wealth though, it was about flaunting the wealth you own and creating an illusion so grand, so elegant that the common folk could never aspire to achieve it. So regal that they established the dominance of the monarchs and gave them an almost god-like status. This can also be reflected in the designs of most palaces of the region where gold and ivory were used in a way that would almost imitate the divinity of heaven and the aesthetics of it. In a society where wealth became the symbol of status and happiness, the monarchs reigned supreme. This show of extraordinary wealth was contrasted so starkly with the abject poverty of the lower class. It’s
necessary to notice how even natural disasters such as famines barely affected the upper class but absolutely ravaged the already impoverished populace as riots broke out over bread. In other words, the lives of the nobility mattered more than those of the common folk. The monarchy didn’t sustain its wealth by merely hoarding it though. France was in a state of economic crisis as war after war had emptied the coffers of the kingdom and left little for the monarchy to thrive off of. However, the incompetent leadership of Louis XVI with barely any sound economic policies and a lack of understanding of the plight of his populace somehow figured that the solution to the crisis would be to simply tax the public even more. The nobility,however, was exempt from taxation of course. The common public, mostly peasants were tasked for the most bizarre reasons. Moreover, they still had to pay their dues to the Catholic church. This further disempowered and led to an increase of resentment against the authority. Enlightenment thinkers aimed to challenge this state of affairs which was dangerously unjust. There was a period where people assumed that the hierarchy existing in society is natural and the monarchs deserve the power they have. However, this is because a lot of people confuse the concepts of “order” and “justice”. Just because something has existed for a long period of time, doesn’t guarantee that it is inherently just. Even today, we see people more concerned with maintaining the order of society than with actually building a just society for all. Simply put, in a society that prefers order, there exists a natural state of hierarchy of the classes and one class that benefits from the status quo. Hence, it can be assumed that the higher class existed and continues to exist at the cost of exploiting a lower class. However, the revolution wasn’t just a result of people beginning to realize the unnatural amounts of inequality in society. It was also the rich refusing to acknowledge both: their privilege and the plight of those below them. This is why it is necessary to take a look at the concept of the accumulated rage felt by the lower class. The nobility in France was hopelessly out of touch with the ground reality. The ideas floated by philosophers of the Enlightenment Era were simply books full of theory that the common
people barely read. But these ideas did act as a reflection of the common people’s feelings. It wasn’t just the “intellectuals'' who realized the injustice, it was the common people. It was the apathy of the ruling class which further sharpened their distrust of authority. The unbothered behavior of the nobility to go about their lavish lifestyles even as people clamored for bread in the streets was enough to turn ideas into concrete action. When confronted with the daunting food shortage of the country, Marie Antoinette, the queen of France (according to folklore) said "If they don't have bread, let them eat cake". This itself signified to the people, the fact that the nobility was and will remain apathetic towards their needs. Rage among the lower class wasn’t just an immediate reaction, it was a build-up of years of being wronged and the refusal of the authority to correct its wrongs It was the realization that the nobility will always work to maintain order in society because it would help them stay at the top and maintain the very hierarchy the lower class had grown to question. The French Revolution, despite its subsequent descent into tyranny, portrays accurately how a society where the rich get richer and the poor sink deeper almost always leads into chaos of the worst kind. It preached the values of Liberty, and Fraternity and empowered those without privilege to question what was deemed natural and demand justice. As I look back at the French revolution and the injustices it was borne out of, I can’t help but draw certain parallels with the modern world. 1 in 10 people live with wages under 1.9$ per day. The amount of people we can consider the “middle” class is steadily decreasing. Society’s elites and billionaires continue to amass wealth at the cost of their workers and their apathy towards those who contribute to their wealth is apparent (Jeff Bezos and Kylie Jenner being two prime examples).In fact, workers protesting against Bezos' harsh employee policies even erected a guillotine, a sour symbol of the French Revolution outside his house. The wealth gap continues to grow rapidly. And yet, most of us would still refuse to accept our economic privilege (and other forms of privilege).
Whether it is Donald Trump and his reputed gold bathrooms or the Kardashian- Jenner family's massive amounts of expenditure on rather trivial things, the rich flaunting their wealth to assert their dominance is still something we see today. Be it people like Jeffree Star who have reality shows built around the concept of living a lavish life and showcasing it or Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities who contracted COVID-19 receiving better healthcare during the current pandemic than most people despite the fact that other people face worse conditions-there seems to be an understanding that the lives of the wealthy have more importance than those of the common people. Initially, the concept of large amounts of accumulated wealth is something that strikes awe among common people. But as we begin to wonder how many mouths could be fed instead of buying one gold flake covered pizza for 2000$ or a luxury item for an exuberant price, the injustice prevailing in society becomes evident. At some point, the affinity towards wealth becomes a hatred of the wealthy who refuse to share their wealth after earning it at the cost of others. The flaunting or flexing of wealth is still a symbol of success and status and the lack of wealth is almost something we joke about casually without realizing the lives of those who are worse off. We mock those who can't pay their fees in due time and we mock those who don't have enough money to fulfill their needs. We are still apathetic towards the needs of so many simply because they don't concern us or affect us personally. It is however necessary to realize in this case, that it's our privilege that allows us to do this. We can afford to be neutral and yet sustain ourselves. We continue to prefer order over, unfortunately. .As more groups of minorities continue to speak up against centuries of injustice, it is necessary that we don’t consider them speaking up as an inconvenience to our life but instead look at it as an effort to build a truly just society. When disadvantaged groups (socially or economically) speak about their struggles, it is up to us to not mock them but to take into consideration what they have to say and how we can change ourselves to accommodate them. Their struggles are theoretical for us but it’s them who have to live through those same struggles. Most importantly, we cannot have an attitude where we disregard their struggles and trivialize them.
Simply put, we can’t keep telling the disadvantaged to eat cake when they can’t afford bread
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