When the Aces shall rule

While I collect some thoughts to write an original post, here is some interesting information that one of my friends wrote about:

I recently came across an interesting historical fact, which speaks volumes about the impact of a revolutionary upsurge in society on all aspects of life, including art and culture.

All of us have played cards at some point in our life. Not many of us would know perhaps the history of the playing cards. Its origins date back to Chinese and Indian civilizations and later the Egyptian civilization. For at least 4 centuries, cards were played with 4 suites, the King being the highest card.

However, after the time of the French revolution, the “Ace” became the highest card as a symbol of the fact that now the lower classes had gained ascendancy and were rising in power, even above the royalty. From then onwards, “2″ became the smallest unit in the deck, and the Ace the highest card in the deck.

The term “Ace” itself comes from a dicing term in Anglo-Norman language, which is itself derived from the Latin as (the smallest unit of coinage).

During the same period, in addition to the ascendancy in the status of Aces in the card deck the traditional design of Kings, Queens, and Jacks were replaced by icons of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The revolutionaries had toppled the old regime and for them a good revolutionary would not play with Kings or Queens, but with the ideals of the revolution at hand. This was ultimately reversed in 1805 counter revolution with the rise of Napoleon.

The impact of any revolutionary upsurge can be seen on all aspects of human life; economics, politics, art, civilization and culture. In all class divided societies, the vast majority of the masses were considered devoid of aesthetic and artistic creativity. And so it is with modern bourgeois civilization, which has divorced the vast majority of the world’s population from enjoying the fruits of human civilization and culture.

Let us all unite the Aces and overthrow the Kings and Queens and the Jacks they hold in their service. We are the representative of the most revolutionary class in history; the most advanced and most consistently revolutionary class–the class of the proletariat;the Aces of the World.

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Tags: Ace, Cards, Frech Revolution

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