Prabhat Sarkar and his social cycle

[Eric the Green]

Usually the classes of traditional society are described as Priests, Aristocrats (originally warriors), commercial classes, and peasants/workers. Sarker substitutes intellectuals for priests and puts them second. Joseph Campbell pointed out a succession of stages in a society, and saw it as stages of decline. The religious or spiritual era is the sourcepoint and the original highest class, the priests. In France that was the First Estate. It was given evidence by the religious building predominating the town. The second era was the aristocrats, or lords, called in France the Second Estate. In the town we see the predominance of the palace. The third stage is dominated by the commercial and business classes, the bourgeoisie, or Third Estate. The type of building dominating the town was the commercial tower such as a bank or insurance company. In France, all the common people were lumped into that category. Obviously the USA falls into this kind of society. The fourth stage might be Marx's utopia: or at least attempts at worker ownership or socialism, and was represented by the Jacobin "Mountain" during the French Revolution. Whether this process is a decline or an advance is a matter of opinion; might be some of each. But the point is that the original impetus for a civilization comes from the Spirit.

Obviously perhaps, as a prophet I am sympathetic to this succession, since that archetype is similar to the priests. Nomads like Gen X are certainly warriors, and the civics are certainly enterprising, although the character of entrepreneur or businessman also belongs to the nomad type, and civics are more political, so maybe those two archetypes can be switched in the generational succession. And civics are also more "intellectual," but mostly in a technical sense, not philosophical. The Adaptives are like peasants because they are sympathetic to all the people, and believe that people are people and all are equal.