Of Aristocrats and Clergy, and Capitalists and Academics

 
 
With the much publicized royal nuptials across the pond, I reflect on the "progress" we've made since the so-called Enlightenment in Western Europe in the 18th century. I've mentioned elsewhere that Capitalism is very much like the old medieval feudal system, where Capitalists replace landed aristocrats in owning the vast lion's share of everything, and the rest of society is reduced to serfdom (or a minimum wage grind). We haven't progressed as far as we seem to think we have in the three odd centuries since the Age of Western European Enlightenment. But what I eventually came to realize, is that there are even more significant parallels between then and now in the way the two societies (Fedualist and Capitalist) operate. The parallel can be seen with the clergy and the aristocracy/monarchy dynamic in the feudal periods, and academic economists and Capitalists in the current era.

Aristocracy/monarchy and clergy are intertwined, just as Capitalists and academic economists are today. Both depend on the other to make their, frankly, demonstrably ill-conceived definitions of being and well-being in our reality. The Nobility and Capitalists rule, while the idiots in the Church and the academy justify their rule with quackery in exchange for riches. Both are toxic to the general well-being of the whole. Both need to be reformed from more pro-social elements within their ranks, with a greater embrace of the discovered empirical reality. Both need to get faster and more effective at peaceably adapting society to those demonstrated needs and wants of human groups. Otherwise, if history offers us any clues as to what could happen if these needs and wants aren't effectively delivered, the society becomes unstable and can implode into violence and poverty not seen since the fall of Rome (again, in Western terms; the Chinese have these patterns in spades too with each succession of the dynasty).

Any social order that does not prove effective or fast enough at evolving and adapting to real conditions in the environment, the society, and the economy will be left behind in the dust, as what happened in Europe where the clergy and aristocracy held on to power and wealth. The only reason why France became a developed industrial nation was because the stodgy old clergy and arrogant aristocracy were eliminated from influence (just as one example). Imagine what could happen if we marginalize and effectively eliminate the influence of our own aristocracy (Capitalists) and clergy (the academic economists who support the existing regime and policy regimen). Human beings can evolve and change their mindsets over a single lifetime. Human groups can potentially change faster than that, if the right people get into the right positions, and carry out the right actions with the right collective timing. We are limited by what we've experienced, are able to perceive, and our abilities to process and make accurate sense of this information we're constantly receiving. We are also limited by the physics of this world, and our biology and circumstances. But we can improve our collective lot significantly, if we are able to align everything well enough to have a sustainable, positive effect on the world. The odds are in the favor of that eventually happening, if you consider we have an undefined future ahead of us, and several billion Earth-years of knowledge at our fingertips, with some four billion Earth-years of Earth's own history to examine.