Dear Friends,
It seems to me, every civilizational collapse that has ever happened, was the result of the elite destroying the very edifice they ruled. This is due to several factors. Our propensity to take for granted that which is given to us, the arrogance that comes of power and our innate yet false belief, that things will always go on as they are today. The way the elite corrode the edifice they set atop, is by turning away from the societal myth, using law as a political weapon, and excreting on it. Not once in human history has the fall come from the people, always from the elite, and those times that might be argued the people were so corrupt the fall became inevitable, when plumbed of truth, show the people were just following their leaders. Because every collapse is the result of bad leadership.
Saint Aquinas said that Routine is a gift from God, in that it allows us to do mechanistically, that which would take a great deal of thought otherwise. Routine and the expectation of routine leads to normalcy bias. On 911, people stayed at their desks and continued working until the towers fell, because of their normalcy bias. The elite are as susceptible to this as any of us. Which allows the elite to believe, no matter how they pervert the system to their own corrupt ends, it will always work fine, they are biased to thinking everything will always be “normal.” People in the West take for granted the extraordinary times we live in as ordinary. For tens of thousands of years, until the industrial revolution, humanity lived in perpetual want. That is normal, not our opulence, and normal is where we could end up.
Power grants those who have it with many benefits, the virtue of modesty is not one of them. People long accustomed to power become arrogant thinking they can do no wrong. Evidence of their ineptitude only reinforces their absolute confidence in themselves. Once there is a nexus of the arrogance of long held power, normalcy bias and presumption… the elite will destroy the very edifice that gives them authority. Unless limited somehow and enforced with draconian punishments the elite cannot help themselves. It is human nature. You and I are no different. Given long held power, our tendency to normalcy bias and the presumption, or taking for granted that which is given not worked for, we would be no different. It is how the elite always destroy a culture that is interesting though.
All cultures are created along side a cultural myth. That myth is the foundational ethos that gives a culture its resilience. The people adhere to that myth until they are divested of it by the elite. Since it is always the elite who abandon it first, thinking themselves too smart, cosmopolitan and sly, to fall for that old myth. That scorn flows downhill. Eventually even the lowliest street beggar has nothing but contempt for the ethos that sustains his culture. What do you suppose happens then? Once the elite realize they can use law as a weapon of political power, with impunity, why wouldn’t they? Only a fool would refuse to, allowing such a weapon to fall into the hands of an enemy. Then there is the open defecating on the system they stand atop. Smearing it with contempt, bile and excrement.
No culture, system or nation can withstand such a sustained attack from within for long. History shows they fail, slowly at first, then all at once. They are rarely, or maybe never saved, once the slow failure starts. Because the elite by that time are intractable. Filled with the arrogance of long held power, firm in their confidence in themselves and knowing in their hearts that everything will always be normal, such an elite cannot help but undermine the societal myth, smearing their system with scorn, while using law as a political weapon of mass destruction. It might be possible for the people to suddenly embrace virtue and put the elite in their place. More likely, any that try will end up in a gulag, like the Jan 6 protesters. Then from the rubble, the elite will whine, “How could this have happened?”
Sincerely,
John Pepin
