The Nature Of Our Disintegration

The Nature Of Our Disintegration

“I do not think the danger before us is anarchy, but despotism, the loss of spiritual freedom, the totalitarian state, perhaps a universal world totalitarian state. As a consequence of strife between nations or classes there might be local and temporary anarchy, a passing phase. Anarchy is essentially weak, and in an anarchic world an firmly organized group with rational organization and scientific knowledge could spread its dominion over the rest. And, as an alternative to anarchy, the World would welcome the despotic state. Then the World might enter upon a period of spiritual ‘petrifaction’, a terrible order which for the higher activities of the human spirit would be death. The petrifaction of the Roman Empire and the petrifaction of China would appear less rigid because [in our case] the ruling group would have much greater scientific means of power. (Do you know Macaulay’s essay on “History”? He argues that the barbarian invasions were a blessingin the long run because they broke up the petrifaction. “It cost Europe a thousand years of barbarism to escape the fate of the China.” There would be no barbarian races to break up a future world totalitarian state.)

“It seems to me possible that in such a totalitarian state, while philosophy and poetry languish, scientific research might go n with continuous fresh discoveries. Greek science did not find the Ptolemaic realm an uncongenial environment, and I think, generally speaking, natural science may flourish under a despotism. It is to the interest of the ruling group to encourage what may increase their means of power. That, not anarchy, is for me the nightmare ahead, if we do not find a way of ending our present fratricidal strife. But there is the Christian Church there, a factor to be reckoned with. It may have to undergo martyrdom in the future world-state, but as it compelled the Roman world-state in the end to make at any rate formal submission to Christ, it might again, by way of martyrdom, conquer the scientific rationalist world-state of the future.” Dr. Edwyn Bevan, in a letter to Arnold J. Toynbee. This was written about 100 years ago and yet retains a freshness of thought even today.

But he was an Englishman, a man of the old British Empire as was Toynbee, one of the consummate British historians between the two world wars. His ten volume ‘A Study Of History’, published between 1935 and 1961 was widely discussed and debated in almost all university history departments but has since been out of favor due to its emphasis on Christianity as the ‘glue’ that holds Western Civilization together. Be that as it may, the work suffers from the influence of ‘class structure’ thinking, that is for those whose cultures have regarded class as positions one is born into and thus marked for the rest of one’s life, then this is bound to have an effect on how one perceives the world. But is such thinking truly wrong? America has often been describes as one of the few ‘classless’ cultures and societies as we have no recognized hereditary nobility while on the other hand, many European societies may not recognize or give legitimacy to hereditary nobility still informally practice these social divisions. Let us fly back to America and ignore Europe for the while.

If history is to teach us anything it is that as individuals and family groups leave the agrarian life and drift into urban areas, there is a shift in society as far as social structures are concerned. In the past, those agrarian workers had little in the way of skills and education to offer to employers in urban areas. But industrialization was under way and we often forget that agriculture was one of the first areas to benefit (or not, depending on your perspective) through the improvement of plows, seed drills, reapers, and harvesters, many of which appeared as early as 1733. Later on the use of water power at first and then steam power would provide manufacturers will the additional manpower requirements for mass production. For the English and American societies serfdom had long since ceased, the last of serfdom was officially ended by the Russian Imperial government just before world war one. But the British kept their class system even as it was slowly changing and morphing through the rise of wealthy manufacturing owners. In America, when society is constantly pushing back the ‘Frontier’ citizens have little use for nobility with titles and privileges. Besides, we fought a revolution to renounce such artificial nonsense. While in England unemployed farm workers flowed into the urban areas where there was some promise of work for the unskilled individual which meant a continuing supply of housing, food, and clothing, the only other employment possibility was service in his magistracy’s armed service, for there were still more wars to fight. For Americans, the movement of the various populations went into several directions. We were a nation of continuing immigration (true, there were peaks and valleys in the numbers over the decades), but we were a nation at work. Our cities grew in both retail and small manufacturing concerns as our ports engages in the import/export trade with the rest of the world. Still, frontier lands had to be secured, land planted, and crops planted. A few individuals even went beyond ‘civilization’ to trap furs and otherwise explore the wonders only seen by Amerinds prior to the ‘White Man’. Our civil war brought many things besides the bloodiest war this nation has ever fought. The estimate of the causalities runs over 700,000, the total more men and women killed than in any war we have since fought. The one deciding factory in the course of our collective history is that it spurred industrialization on a scale even Europe had never experienced.

Cyrus McCormick and others started the agricultural revolution with the invention of reapers, binding machines, harvesting equipment, and the steel plow that ‘tamed’ the prairie. If one was a farm worker, meaning one who did not own his own plot of farm land, one either followed the move westward or drifted into the urban areas to work in factories, work on building roads, canals, or railroads, or worked on building factories, skyscrapers, and apartment housing. By 1870, the shift of the population to urban areas resulted in sixty percent of the population living in urban areas. What had once been territories were now states with land-grant colleges and universities, education was fast becoming more than a cottage industry. Sole proprietor merchant enterprises gave way to corporations and trusts, requiring a demand for education beyond the common humanities style of learning. Science, engineering, and finance were the pathways to advancement, to the achieving of a new class of elites. If one could obtain an education one could obtain a share of wealth, and with education and wealth one could rise past that common class of laborer. We were embarking on the new ‘American” dream, creating a sense of common equality that one could achieve and bequeath to one’s children. Education led to the elevation of the common laborer into the semi-skilled and skilled blue collar worker who was paid good wages, and if he had a mind to, rise into the white collar worker world and maybe as far as the skilled professional world. Thus we created a blue collar class – low middle class, if you like; a white collar class – middle class; a professional class – upper middle class; and finally a small elite of the wealthy – upper class that was occupied by both the old wealth and nouveau riche.

If one reads about Europe and its education system development one sees that one’s class membership determined one education. The lower classes were sent into apprenticeships and a few technical schools for simple factory work while those middle class children might have some opportunity for a more academic education. For Americans, every child attended elementary school and then would have the chance to attend secondary school depending on a number of factors. It was not unusual for the poor and the blue collar class children to have to go to work by the age of fourteen to help with the family income. The early death of a parent was not all that unusual as was permanent unemployment due to some medical condition. However, in the larger urban areas we find a number of education societies dedicated to providing some secondary education for such individuals. In fact, we became a nation of post secondary technical and business schools that operated in the evening hours. The difference was that while in Europe the individual was occupied in taking his assigned place in society we were busy making our own place in society and education was the key.

Time to ask if such is still the aspirations of the young today? When in my father’s day, the 1930s-1940s, graduation from high school was the assured path to the good life and if one was ‘smart’ enough college would jump one up into the middle class and above. My generation was expected to graduate from high school and those of us who showed promise for academia were expected to go on the college. Those who were not the college type would go into technical training for good blue collar and even a few white collar jobs. This was the juncture of the 1950s-1960s, the point where popular culture as told by liberal academicians told us culture changed. Actually, it didn’t, few of us ever become hippies who tuned in and dropped out. The film American Pie was closer to the truth that the film Easy Rider. What came in the 1970s and turned America on its collective heads was that liberal ideal that all children are equally gifted and should obtain the college degree of their choice no matter how non-academic it was and no matter how dumb downed the curriculum. Did you get a college or university degree since the 1970s? I have a challenge for you, take the Harvard College placement test of 1896 (actually, any placement test from that college – now university- prior to the turn of 1900) and see if you can pass it. You will be shocked by how far our educational standards have fallen.

But I digress. We have seen another great shift in our country, the end of the great industrial manufacturing sector, along with the degradation of our raw materials sector. If one follows the second industrial revolution, the development and wide spread use of electricity, we can see that this sector bifurcated into the electrical and the electronic sectors. This second sector brought new wealth accumulations to a great many people. Westinghouse, General Electric, Con Edison, and a host of other industrial corporations have given way to the new kids on the block like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sperry Corporation, Raytheon, and the like. Then came the newer kinds like Intel and a host of chip manufacturers and designers, giving us the computer age and a new way of doing business, science, and war. The number of millionaires that were made by this sector is astounding, a new group of well educated nouveau-riche and a new way of doing business. We now had the urban planners dream of clean manufacturers, except for the chemicals they tended to dump into the ground water structures in Silicon Valley. And finally, we had another group of Robber-Barrons, the software/marketing companies. Yes, Apple became a marketing company and did Micro-Soft and a host of others. These companies like Face-Book, Google, and the rest don’t really make anything, they market services of dubious value. But all these derivatives have helped to spawn not just a few more millionaires, but hundreds of multi-billionaires and hundreds of billionaires. If you want a real shock to your sense of reality go look at Forbes list of the richest people in the world. In terms of billionaires alone that are close to three thousand names. I really don’t have any idea of how many millionaire and multi-millionaires there are but I would wager the number to be at least ten times that amount. Most of the non billionaire class, and yes, they are the new classes, are small business owners of one kind or another. But the billionaire class, well, there are the ones who believe they should rule the world.

Why would I say that? A cursory look at their political donations, their creations of 507c and what are political think-tanks masquerading as charitable foundations and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to ‘change’ the world according to their ideals and the rest of the people be damned. Don’t believe me? There are a few books on the subject that detail much of what is in these various programs and the methods they use to convince you that they know best and your should go along because they know better than you what needs to be done. Back to the first two paragraphs in this post/article. Our greatest danger is despotism and almost all of us think in comes from the politicians. I’ve got news for you, the most fanatical and fascist of the future despots is this billionaire class and they are intent on remaking the world in their image. This is the New world Order and it thinks it can buy its way to power.