09-12-2019, 06:22 AM
(09-11-2019, 11:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: 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.
In Marxist terminology the classes are the Big Bourgeoisie of financiers, industrialists, and big landowners; the petit- bourgeois traders, intellectuals, shopkeepers, and (stability suspect) yeoman farmers; and of course tne numerically-dominant but otherwise-powerless proletariat who do the nasty, hard, and ill-rewarded toil from which other classes profiteer.
It is suspect. Others see class as largely cultural in identity which means that a PhD who scrapes by as an adjunct professor and has a love for art and literature, but would never dream of setting foot in an amusement park, is superior to some nouveau-riche fellow who makes a fortune selling manufactured housing to proles or who creates reality television. Think of the late Paul Fussell, who had his nine classes of modern American society:
1. Top out-of-sight: super-rich old-money types who avoid public scrutiny.
2. Upper: people who live off inherited income
3. Upper middle-class: people who might be rich but were not always so. Typically they are business founders and high-level professionals such as physicians, attorneys, and architects. This includes much of the executive nomenklatura that may now be the worst exploiters in America (my observation).
4. Middle. Not rich, but possibly on-the-make. It used to include lots of small businessmen, but with the increasing concentration of the economy those (especially small farmers) have gone on to other things. The middle class includes mostly degreed professionals in accounting, engineering, teaching, dentistry, and computer programming.
---- THERE IS NO LONGER A LOWER MIDDLE CLASS ---
The once well-off class of clerks distinguishable by their 'solid high-school educations', or earlier 'solid eighth-grade educations', are now working class.
5. High-proletarian. Skilled workers -- the craftsmen such as machinists, electricians, welders, plumbers, butchers, and the like who need a formal apprenticeship. Heavy-equipment operators. Nurses and flight attendants. Blue-collar supervisors, police, and prison guards. Postal workers.
6. Mid-proletarian. The machine operators and assemblers with machine-paced jobs, retail clerks (even if they 'only' operate a cash register), and vehicle drivers. Ill-paid or subject to frequent lay-offs. This is the largest class in America. It is ill-educated and often very resentful but can do little about it except perhaps to fall for demagogues like Joseph R. McCarthy, George Wallace, Jesse Helms,and Donald Trump.
7. Unskilled workers. Porters, janitors, messengers, roustabouts, pickers, and servants. Their work is invariably ill-paid or extremely unsteady.
8. Destitute. People managing to keep from being institutionalized due to welfare or disability payments; people with questionable means of making a living (prostitutes and criminals) and hobos of an earlier time.
9. Bottom out-of-sight. People institutionalized for stupidity, insanity, senility, extreme disability, or gross immorality (as in criminals who get caught and sent to the Big House).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.