Dear Friends,
It seems to me, elitist theory holds many truths that we would be wise to understand, before we have to learn them the hard way. Elitist theory is an alternative to class theory. Instead of classes (groups) vying for power, elitist theory posits that individuals vie for power. One advantage elitist theory has over class theory, is elitist theory is applicable to all human societies across time, whereas class theory only applies to hand picked historical times and places, but not to the whole of human history. Proving class theory false. The important truth elitist theory tells us, is that civilizations, nations and societies collapse, not because of some catastrophe, but of a long series of chipping away at the foundations of those civilizations, nations and societies. The fall is sudden but the lead up to it is long.
Elitist theory states that in any group of people, 10%, the elite, will rise to the top. (That is where I get my saying, The dross rises to the top). They are the people with drive, interest and are active. The rest, the 90%, are happy to be led. That 10% is not cast in stone however. There is constant churn in the elite. Those with merit, political favor and energy, move into it, while those who lose those things fall out. Elitist theory also states that the elite build up a people… else ruin them. That ruination comes from a slow undermining of the “societal myth,” the foundational ethos, if you will. As a culture moves away from it’s foundational ethos, that society becomes ever more unstable. While those civilizations who stay grounded in their foundational ethos are nearly immortal.
There are two obvious examples of nations that survived a catastrophe that would destroy almost any other civilization. Rome and Israel. Rome was conquered, burned to the ground, and it’s people scattered across Italy. The Gauls then laid siege to the citadel which held the last of the Roman elite. The Romans held fast to their laws, ethos and myths, and so survived. Eventually the Romans would conquer the Gauls and destroy their civilization. Israel was conquered, the second Temple destroyed and it’s people scattered to the four corners of the world, for nearly two thousand years. Nevertheless, Israel is a nation state today. Despite two thousand years of antisemitism, boarded up in ghettos and even outright genocide. In both cases, Rome and Israel, most other nations would have ceased to exist.
Examples of civilizations falling in an instant make up 99% of human history. Sparta fell once they abandoned the perverted laws of Lycurgus, the French Revolution despite all it’s bluster died in a day, and the vaunted Mongol empire only lasted three generations. Total, nearly instant collapse is the norm, not the exception. This is because the elite in any society believe themselves so much smarter, than the founders of the society they run but had no hand in building, they chip away at the foundation until it is perched on a point, which is obviously unstable. That instability is exposed at the first emergency that nation faces. Without a foundation no people can stand even a slight breeze. Then, once it has collapsed, the elite claim it was the emergency, not their own ineptitude, pathology or malevolence.
The West is in that position. Our elite have abandoned our founding ethos. Our nations, societies and civilizations foundation has been so hammered away, there is very little still there. We have given up freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, limited government, accountable government, the entrepreneurial ethos, individualism, capitalism, modernism, meritocracy and the equality of people. Instead replacing them with censorship, atheism as the established state religion, thought police, unlimited administrative state, unaccountable government, Nietzsche’s slave mindset, groupism, socialism, post modernism (sophistry), political favor and equality of outcome. An exchange that has made the West unstable. The fall cannot be far away. It will just take a slight breeze.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
