- published: 24 May 2015
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A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.
The term —both as a noun and adjective— is usually applied to the field of politics, and is occasionally used in the context of science, invention or art. In politics, a revolutionary is someone who supports abrupt, rapid, and drastic change, while a reformist is someone who supports more gradual and incremental change. A conservative is someone who opposes all such changes. A reactionary is someone who wants things to go back to the way they were before the change has happened.
According to sociologist James Chowning Davies, political revolutionaries may be classified in two ways:
The revolutionary anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev argued in Catechism of a Revolutionary:
The Revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion—the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy...
Kunta Kinte (also known as Toby Waller) is the central character of the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley, and of the television miniseries Roots, based on the book. Haley described his book as faction - a mixture of fact and fiction. After Haley's book became nationally famous, American author Harold Courlander noted that the section describing Kinte's life was apparently taken from Courlander's book The African. Haley at first dismissed the charge, but later issued a public statement affirming that Courlander's book had been the source, and Haley attributed the error to a mistake of one of his assistant researchers.
Haley's novel begins with Kunta's birth in 1750 in the Mandinka-speaking village of Juffure in The Gambia, West Africa. Kunta is the eldest of four sons of the Mandinka tribesman Omoro and his wife Binta Kebba. Haley describes Kunta's strict Muslim upbringing, the rigors of the manhood training he undergoes, and the proud origins of the Kinte name.
Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.
Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.