This print is of Robespierre (1758-1794), the French Revolutionary, being executed at the tender age of 36. Less than two years beforehand, the Committee of Public Safety (the base from which Robespierre ascended to power) had issued decrees against vestiges of the former monarchy and waged war against internal and external enemies (i.e. the Austrian monarchy). The leaders of the movement to reorder society, however, turned on each other, and France began to slide into anarchy prior to the rise of Napoleon..
While assembling for a National Convention on 21 September 1792 to abolish the monarchy, the revolutionaries did something quite unique. They proclaimed the next day, 22 September, as the first day of Year One. In their view, the time preceding the French Revolution, particularly man's subservience to the Church and the monarchical State, was an era of ignorance and needed to be erased. It was the dawn of a new age of 'liberty, equality and fraternity'. Rather than in kings, nobles and clergymen, power would lie with the people.
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Starting life over, whether on an national scale or individual one, is a common psychological phenomenon found across time and culture.
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Although Columbus discovered America in 1492 and Europeans made a permanent colony at Jamestown (Virginia) in 1607, the starting point of American history is universally placed on 4 July 1776 - where a group of revolutionaries proclaimed a new era in human relations and inspired the French to overthrow their oppressive monarchy thirteen years later (1789). Hence, American Independence Day similarly functions as a declaration of a Year Zero or a Year One.
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When infused with a destructive ideological worldview, the temptation to begin history anew can be catastrophic.
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In February 1917, the Russian people collectively overthrew the monarchy. Six months later in October, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and his extremist band of followers, seized power and created a one-party communist state in order to 'end history' and launch a socialist 'workers paradise' from Year One. Over the next seventy-four years, Soviet leaders employed brutal tactics against the population, including severe repression, famine and exile, to remain in power to achieve their Utopian objectives.
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Even more horrifying was the rise of Pol Pot in Cambodia on 17 April 1975. As a fanatically devoted communist, his ambition to initiate a 'Year Zero', in which society was to be purged of all 'bourgeois' elements (education, employment, wearing glasses etc.), was realized with forced evacuations of cities, mass torture and the execution of more than 1.7 Cambodians.
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While altering the timetables of history can be an enlightened achievement (i.e. the American Revolution) or a detrimental experiment (i.e. Cambodia), the decision to break with the past on a personal level is usually quite healthy and rewarding.
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In 1932, a revolutionary book entitled, Life Begins at 40, changed societal conceptions of the aging process. Rather than a final barrier on a slippery slope toward gray hair, limited mobility and quasi-usefulness, age 40 could be seen as a new beginning with maturity, wisdom, life experience and a little more money. Walter Pitkin, the author who also wrote A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity, was advancing the notion that life contained numerous starting points and that age 40 was a significant time of renewal on a different scale.
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As life expectancy now hovers around 78 for men and 85 for women in many industrialized countries, 40 is now younger than ever before - as is 50 and 60.
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It has been said that 'old age is always 15 years older' than our current age. At age 17, a 32 year-old person seems 'old' to many teenagers. Similarly, a 62 year-old individual may look back at age 47 as being relatively young.
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Failure is an inescapable part of living. Rather than succumb to regrets of the past, each and every person ought to summon the courage to declare a 'Year Zero' or 'Year One' at some point and attempt to engage life for the present and the future. Radical changes are not necessary, but a new appreciation of life and others is required.
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J Roquen