2.4.3 Power And Control In Society

The previous Sub-Chapter explored what I called corporate-closedness and this one will focus on power and control in a more general sense.

To kick start I will make a statement that I hold to be true.

True openness which invariably leads to uncertainty in respect of change has always been resisted by the privileged and wealthy who wish that society will be open to change only on their terms.

This resistance to change is manifest in names like Conservative – the political party in the United Kingdom that is explicit in ensuring that the needs of privileged and wealthy people are more important than the needs of the vast majority of the population.

But I don’t want to be too hard on the Conservatives – because at least they are honest, and their name is a dead give-away as to what they are.  Most political parties, even those espousing left wing values, are similar in nature.

People who don’t want the established order of privilege and wealth to change are often referred to as right wing, and they promote the idea that our world will be better if we all accept the fact that the elite, (i.e. a small group of privileged people) have more entitlement than the rest of the population. This is rooted in their desire to perpetuate privilege and/or wealth within their own circle.

Right wing values are exemplified in exclusivity, conflict, banality, dumbing down, heightened fear, the do as I say – not as I do thinking so prevalent among the ruling classes in general, and exaggeration of crisis.

Conservatism is summed up well by the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott:

“To be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss”.

As is sometimes said – from the perspective of the privileged and wealthy – keep the predictable going!

Now it is particularly important – I believe anyway – for us community workers to remember the following:

The forces of conservatism love crises – particularly the kind of crises that arise from minorities whose rights have been denied being driven to extremes to get their needs met. Governments can then bring in (and justify to the general population) all sorts of draconian law-and-order type measures which very often remain on the statute books long after the need for them has gone.

And the pure right wing almost always trumps the pure left wing because it is top down, organised, structured, reverential, and values obedience and adherence to hierarchy – which the pure left does not.  So, in a general sense, the left often needs to take on right wing characteristics (at least, organisationally and structurally) to optimise its chances of success.

This will be expanded upon in the next post and those following.

There is an oft-quoted assertion (in the English speaking world anyway) that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. The inference was that the traditional values that the English ruling classes claimed that they possessed (loyalty, courage, stoicism, steadfastness, honesty, fairness etc.) were inculcated over many centuries on the sports-fields of Eton and similar (ironically called public) schools and that they ultimately prevailed over the inferior values of England’s enemies.

An extension of this was that the British Empire (because the victory at the Battle of Waterloo was very advantageous in respect of England’s global imperial ambitions) was fashioned on the values that shone through on elite schools’ playing fields.

I don’t believe it was! In fact, I believe that this is a gigantic imperial myth designed not only to bolster such ambitions, but also to plant the idea in people’s minds that such schools produce those most suited to rule.

I believe that all Empires are fashioned in the values that prevail in what I will term disingenuous rooms rather than playing fields.  (I call them disingenuous rooms because they are places/environments where it is virtually impossible for the whole truth to get out). 

After all, a playing field is a place where openness is implicit.  The general public can see what’s going on.  Those on the playing field may experience embarrassment or sanction if they break the rules.  Cheating notwithstanding, players will generally want to show the public and their peers that they are playing fairly and winning honestly.

But fair play and honesty are values which are totally opposite to those needed to deny people their human rights while behaving in a cruel, dishonest, ruthless and brutal manner – all the time portraying a veneer of decency and righteousness – i.e. being disingenuous – when building a powerful Empire.

The restrictions of sanctions (or embarrassment) on an open playing field which might be imposed by a watchful general public where there may be people with integrity, and can influence others in their midst, do not exist in the far more furtive surrounds of private totalitarian type spaces.

In these places:

1. Dirty deals can be planned and executed away from public scrutiny.

2. The only response to bullying is more bullying.

3. Superiority, domination, hierarchy and elitism are the norm.

4. People who may feel insecure or unsure of themselves are manipulated.

5. People who promote truth, fairness, honesty and idealism are mocked and derided.

The last one above – 5 – is particularly effective.

Because of our need to avoid embarrassment or shame at all costs, mocking someone who points out falsehoods, or even warns about impending threats or dangers (i.e. making out the carrier of truth to look stupid, a killjoy or panicky) is probably the most difficult disingenuous-room type behaviour to address.

Mockery and derision are very effective control tools.  They are often used against radical left wing parties that are small, rubbishing their ideas as being laughable and not of the real world.  Messages are also transmitted through media (including – some commentators would say – cartoons aimed at children) promoting the corporate/establishment view of the world while subtly ridiculing the alternative.

If we listen to any political debate where uncomfortable truths are being presented to a politician, a mocking wisecrack by the politician under pressure is a very effective way of shutting down the debate and distorting the truth.  This is often accompanied by laughter and the issue itself suddenly appears to have lesser status to the wise-cracking going on.

These disingenuous values, (i.e. bullying and intimidating – but – all the time pretending to appear decent and upright to the outside world) are truly the values needed to ensure that, while portraying a veneer of openness, closed-ness actually prevails, real change is resisted, fellow humans’ innate rights are trampled on, and elitism, wealth and privilege perpetuate.

Democracy has been described as the worst form of Government until you examine all the others. I don’t know who said that but it stuck in my head for some reason.

But I believe democracy to be an evolving process – and what we have today is not at all the finished product.  Despite the presence, over many centuries of great and inspiring leaders in our Western world, far too many of the disingenuous room values that I described in the previous post still prevail.

Real human rights are hard won and the pace of change is slow.

Undoubtedly, the people who experience the worst aspects of democracy and feel powerless to do anything about it are those who suffer and have the least power, i.e. the people who are the principal concern of this website, (the Focus Group) but most of us experience a lot of powerlessness in different ways!

And there seems to be an air of helplessness around this.  A bit like the people on the bus witnessing the bullying, we are disgusted with the behaviour, feel strongly about what should change, but don’t really know how to change that which we’d like to change.  As I stated a few times already, in my work or training in general, I have not come across too much in the way of detailed analysis as to why we can often feel powerless – when, in a democracy, we should feel powerful, we should feel that we have a voice, and should be able to change things we don’t like.

(Though, as an aside, the extent of passive-aggressive behaviour in society – and we might also add in heightened anxiety, depression, addiction and similar conditions – suggests that we don’t really accept the powerful to powerless one-way knowledge flow paradigm).

Getting back to the corporate closed-ness that I described earlier, I believe that the control of vast numbers of humans (including many, but not all, thankfully, politicians, public and civil servants, academics and journalists) by a select few movers and shakers in the corporate world is now so pervasive, clever and insistent, in our free democracies, that it reaches far beyond past efforts at control such as feudalism, religion, imperialism, fascism, communism, etc.

And the reason why it is so pervasive is that it has what we described already, (and will be referring to again) a high impact-low noticeability character to it.

Totalitarianism, such as described already, has high impact, but it has also high noticeability.  Its overt displays of power and injustice makes it easier to notice, i.e. identify and, if we wish, (and are able) to fight against.

The subtle, ‘low-noticeability’ phenomenon of corporate closed-ness is, I believe, far more powerful, as it becomes woven into the fabric of our consciousness (and indeed our being) over a long time.

I digress a little now to dip into recent world history to put a context on powerlessness in general in today’s society. 

And I promise – even though it is a longish post – it is relevant to the subject matter of the website.

I suppose I could have gone back thousands of years to analyse why I think that powerlessness seems to be part of the reality of our lives and why, in the 21^st century, with all our apparent awareness, mass communication, social media, etc. such a high proportion of humans still appear to be powerless to be the change (a quotation often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi) and prevent suffering of our fellow humans, something that (I believe anyway), the vast majority of us aspire to do.

After some consideration, and because I live in Ireland which is in Western Europe [1], I have decided to start around the time of the American and French Revolutions in the latter years of the 1700’s – which signaled the rise of the middle classes in what we now refer to as the Western World.  (There was a middle class before that but it was not big enough to have substantial influence on society at large).

For those who are interested – historians sometimes refer to the period between the French Revolution (1789) and the end of World War One (1918) as the Long Nineteenth Century.

Another reason to start the analysis around that time was that the late 18^th/early-mid 19^th century saw the beginning of the gradual rise of big businesses, (or corporations as we’d call them nowadays), where vast profits could be made by a small number of entrepreneurs who saw great opportunities in utilising the kind of mass production enabled by the inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

This kind of get-rich-quick practice was not really a feature of previous centuries. With few exceptions, people in Europe were either born into wealth – landlords owning huge estates – or else were born into poverty, subsistence tenant farmers, peasants working on the landlords’ estates and dependent on their landlord’s whims for their and their families’ well-being.

Mass production in big factories with hundreds of employees was not really possible and towns and cities were much smaller, existing principally to directly service the needs of a predominantly agrarian and/or pastoral society.  The expectations of those born into poverty were limited by the all-powerful Churches (of every denomination) who were able to quote passages from the Gospel (and other good books I’m sure) that exalted the benefits of humility, meekness, self-denial, self-sacrifice and other such virtues.

The adherence by the poor to these qualities helped to perpetuate the status quo.

I have already mentioned how language can be used to display superiority.  For hundreds of years, churchmen used a language that very few people understood, Latin, to pronounce on important matters to and with each other.

This, on the surface, was probably to ensure accuracy and standardisation of edicts, doctrines etc. in different countries of Europe, but a by-product of using Latin was to put distance between the priests and noblemen (some of whom learned Latin also) and the ordinary people.

Historically, what we call the aristocracy (the titled heads of Europe and their minions e.g. lords, dukes, earls, etc.) pursued a self-serving agenda.  They stole, conquered or acquired vast tracts of land and other forms of wealth in different ways, or became super-rich by clever entrepreneurial activities and were rewarded accordingly.

They held their status at the top of society with a firm grip and endlessly promoted themselves and their superiority, asserting their dominance on ordinary people through schooling, outward manifestations of wealth, ostentatious buildings, fashion, material goods, sometimes celebrity status, and even jewelry.

They believed – and made others believe – that a hierarchical society with the rich and privileged at the top was the natural order.

Now, all that having been said, many of the wealthy and privileged were very good people and used their positions of influence to bring benefits to society.  But generally they did it on their terms. And at the back of it all, so effective was their propaganda through the ruling classes of society, including the established Churches – and through the media outlets that existed in those days – that to suggest that what they stood for might not be the natural order was unthinkable for the vast majority of the European population.

Peasants all over Europe had, for a long time, experienced hardship, poverty, powerlessness, insecurity and sometimes starvation. The majority of their so-called betters, (those born into wealth and privilege, royalty and their hangers-on, noblemen, top politicians and civil servants, powerful churchmen, as well as wealthy merchants and landowners) paid little heed to the virtues promoted in the Gospel that they espoused for others, as they openly flaunted their wealth, enjoying opulent, decadent and often totally unaccountable lifestyles, while denying what we would nowadays consider to be basic human rights to the vast majority of the population.

All this misery, starvation, and abject poverty erupted like a volcano on the streets of Paris in 1789 when, after a period of acute food shortages, the peasants revolted.  The storming of the Bastille and subsequent taking over of the country by the revolutionaries (a mixture of peasants, idealists, enthusiasts for constitutional change and intellectuals) promised a new era of liberty, equality, and fraternity.  Other royal families of Europe looked on in horror as the French royals and nobles were imprisoned and eventually executed by the new French Government along with many other members of the nobility in a period of virtual civil war that was known as the Terror, severely denting the liberty-equality-fraternity ideals promised by the leaders of the revolution.

In the decades after the French Revolution a middle class evolved in Europe, including in France itself.

The term middle-class gained popularity to describe people who were neither born into the traditional aristocratic families, or get-rich-quick entrepreneurs mentioned above, but had managed to raise their income and status above lowly paid, near wage-slave workers.

The rapid developments in technology in the 19^th century assisted this evolution.  Small businessmen, shopkeepers and merchants grew in number, in tandem with vastly increased levels of industrial production, transport, finance (banks and insurance etc.) building of houses, factories, roads, railways, ships and a huge increase in general trade.  Bigger towns and cities meant more civil and public servants, local government and support systems such as infrastructural, medical, educational and legal/justice systems.

As people became more educated and aware, many royal families and nobilities in Europe gradually (very gradually) gave in to demands made by these new middle classes which resulted in more rights for ordinary people, better working conditions, lower infant mortality, less exploitation, better safety standards in factories and better living conditions.

(Of course this acceding of power was as much a self-preservation strategy – having seen what happened in France – as a genuine concern for ordinary people’s human rights).

Now whether it was intentional or not, one long term benefit for royal families and the nobility were that there came a stage when a critical mass of people in their countries (i.e. the middle classes) had far more to lose than destitute, starving peasants (who had little or nothing to lose anyway) by rebelling and overthrowing the status quo. 

The benefits of introducing a measure of constitutional politics and allowing a middle class to form didn’t really reach Russia, or at least if it did, their ruling classes didn’t really appreciate it. There had been some peasant revolts (including the Peasant War of 1773-75, which, ironically, may have inspired the French revolutionaries) but all were defeated. So the misery of poor Russians continued until, ravaged by poverty and war, they finally succeeded in 1917, overthrew their Imperial family, subsequently executed them all, and ushered in a communist Government that was ultimately as controlling and closed in style as the Imperial regime had been.

Like the royal families of Western Europe over a century earlier, the allies of the Russian nobility banded together and raised an army (known as the White Army) which tried unsuccessfully to defeat the Red Army, (the defenders of the Revolution) in a terrible civil war.

In the mid-19^th Century the outcome of revolutions in general but in particular the French one was summed up by a French journalist and writer with the phrase plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose which means the more things change the more they stay the same.

Or get worse, if we are to take the example of Nazi Germany, where, in the 1920’s, National Socialism was seen as a revolution [2] of sorts.

Or as a man from a man from the Travelling Community, who, the day after a visit by a well-meaning person from the Council to check on changes to the layout of a Halting Site to allow better access, said to me, (when I asked him what he thought of the changes), ‘sure everything changed but nothing changed’.

[1]. I am being very Eurocentric here – it’s just that this is the only part of the world that I am familiar with.  I am sure that if I was born and raised in other parts of the world I would probably come up with a similar discourse on powerlessness and frame it in a context relevant to where I was a native of – and it might differ a little!

[2]. It always intrigued me that the term revolution is used to describe the efforts that desperate people make to change their fortunes.  After all, if I turn through one revolution (360⁰) I end up facing the same direction that I was facing before I revolved!  Perhaps there is some unconscious wisdom that prompts us to know that a revolution is, indeed, plus ça change.

There were 5 to 6 generations (125 years) in the period between the French Revolution and the start of World War One in 1914.

In the previous post I described how middle classes evolved in Europe over that time. Those in the middle classes experienced higher overall living standards, far wider access to education, higher literacy levels, extension of the right to vote to all adult males, and due to hugely increased access to rail and sea transport, increased population dispersal and communication across the continent that would not have been possible in previous centuries.

Now it would be reasonable to expect that over those generations – and particularly after the upheavals of 1848 – the power of ordinary citizens in the (partially) democratic countries in Europe (at least outside of Russia) would have risen to the point where they’d at least have enough say in the running of the affairs of their countries to prevent a situation developing where tens of millions would be killed in horrific warfare in World War One (and World War Two that followed) in the 31 year span between 1914 and 1945.

Why, when the middle classes were garnering rights such as higher pay, shorter working hours, better housing and property rights, better literacy, welfare rights, medical and educational prospects, and equality in general, did they not include the right to life, or to put it another way, the right not to be killed in war?

The fact that they didn’t, or couldn’t (I believe anyway) speak volumes about where real power rested in society in Europe over the 125 years between 1789 and 1914 – and, in a way, continues to this day!

Now because the people who have most to lose in wars have least to gain from them, kings, queens and emperors throughout history told their subjects, (who were generally peasants with little or no education), that they (the kings and emperors that is) had God-like status and were pre-destined to be born into privilege and rank.

So convincing poor, uneducated people that they didn’t really have a right to life, and that they could be ordered to head off and die horrible deaths, and enslave and/or kill others in wars of conquest was relatively easy – it was achieved by a mixture of promise of material wealth from the new conquests and the fact that our God was happy with it.

And, as an aside, the material wealth was an illusion too. The rich and powerful know that the best way of staying rich – and getting richer – is to maintain the status quo. And if that means getting ordinary people in their countries, and particularly people who are poor and powerless, to fight and kill each other, so be it. (This is still going on).

Throughout centuries of colonial adventure, we, the enlightened Europeans, were spreading our God’s word to ignorant primitive peoples, enriching ourselves in the process, which was our right as we were superior, and God’s representative on Earth (our king or emperor) was carrying out his wishes.

Indeed, colonised populations in Africa and Asia were often referred to as the white man’s burden, further bolstering the belief in European countries that our brutal and unjust colonisation had a mandate from a Christian God, to convert those of other beliefs (pagans) to Christianity, and that the native people were the people with the problem, the problem being that they were of lesser intelligence and also ignorant of Christianity.

(In this respect, it is important to remember that the assumption that white people were superior to all other races, and entitled to more, including the right to enslave and/or eliminate other races at a whim if they got in the way of progress, began long before Nazism).

The same mandate from our Christian God was evident in our 1916 Proclamation of Independence which, though idealistic, well thought through and assertive, still, (to quote) placed the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no-one will dishonor it.

While God’s blessing on our weapons of death (arms) sounds very uplifting and noble to Irish ears, it is the same as the invoking of God to wage war for all sorts of reasons everywhere in Europe at that time – and nowadays the concept of Jihad, or Holy War in some Middle Eastern Countries.

And fast-forwarding to the 21st century, the extent of corporate closed-ness grooming is evident in the fact that we think that it’s okay that 4 or 5 so-called Superpowers throughout the world think that their population’s collective safety is enhanced by having weapons that could incinerate everyone in the world and destroy our planet many times over – and that those who oppose this kind of thinking are eccentric or even subversive – and dangerous to our security.

One wonders where ordinary peoples’ right to life is in all this!

After the last posts, the little bit of history, and a discourse on our right to life, I’d like now to explore how we, ordinary people, have been influenced down through the centuries to accept the unacceptable. (I will return to this theme in the Chapter on Energy when I attempt to chart the process of how we come to believe myth).

I believe that one of the most difficult things that war mongering conquerers had to do down through the ages – and still have to do – is convince parents, particularly mothers, to be compliant proxies in war, utilising their sons as tools in the killing.  (Nowadays of course women can join armies but traditionally the vast majority of people who kill and were/are killed in battles are men – almost always at an immature impressionable age). 

In order to convince a mother that her child’s right to life was lower than the right of the state to send him to his possible death in war she must believe that there is some greater good in the sacrificing of her son in war (even a so-called just war) than in the non-sacrifice of her son, that is, persuading him to stay at home – and alive.

In my view this project required a fairly extensive degree of conditioning, the principal element of which was keeping women powerless, and rendering women’s opinions, and therefore their influence, less important than men’s over many centuries.

I have no idea how mothers who adhere to religious beliefs in the Middle East, Asia and parts of Africa have been conditioned to accept this sacrifice (because, obviously, judging by the history of those parts of the world, they have) but a very powerful archetype in the Christian world is the willingness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to accept that she had to give up her only son to a greater cause – to save the rest of humankind.  This is a very powerful Christian message and I do not know enough about other religions to know whether or not it, or an equivalent, exists as part of them.

And while in a general way I have a strong belief in most of the messages of the Gospels the mother-must-sacrifice-her-son story seems, for the military industrial complex (which will be referred to again later in this Chapter) almost too good to be true.

Jesus was a radical change agent and posed a significant threat to the establishment of the time. Was the story of his untimely, violent death with his mother accepting the will of God doctored to suit vested interests that did not have justice, peace and non-violence as their central aim? And is it not ironic that Jesus (or his equivalent – God) has been invoked down through the centuries to support the very kind of establishment that wanted rid of him?

Another depowering symbol in the Gospel might be the sheep.  This (generally portrayed to be humble) animal is surely one of the most referenced in the New Testament.

The hymn, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd – I shall not want’ implies that God cares for us ordinary mortals, who, obviously, have the status of sheep.  The psalm has beauty and invokes warmth and love but the reason that it interests me is that sheep are generally thought to be very meek and compliant animals.

In fact, the writers could hardly have picked a more submissive image than the sheep, who always seems a little worried and anxious.  Sheep also have an image of being gentle, calm, a little serene, and trusting; and lambs are among the most appealing of young animals.

But the overall meekness symbolism is striking.  Like the image of the mother making the ultimate sacrifice does it set us up to be, well, a little bit too controllable, and – if we allow ourselves – to be manipulated?

Even our expression that describes being duped into doing something we don’t want to do – like lambs to the slaughter, which itself comes from the Old Testament – is interesting!

The Gospel also encourages us – if we are hit on the cheek – to offer the person who hit us the other cheek, implying that we are okay with him hitting that one too. I have never met any person who actually does this. And, looking around me, I observe the entire world of many billions of humans who are born into Christianity and who claim to follow the teachings of Christ to be built on the belief that, if someone hits us – well – we hit him back. A more humane, and probably progressive and modern belief might be that, if someone hits us, we make ourselves safe, forgive him, and, perhaps, let go – but crucially – make ourselves safe.

To actually offer a second cheek to invite further punishment goes against all modern child protection and safety of vulnerable persons practices – and also flies in the face of ordinary common sense.

Once again, there is such strong parallel between turning the other cheek and the domination of poor and powerless people by their lords and masters that it is impossible to ignore.

All Christians will be familiar with monikers such as Christ the King, the Kingdom of God etc. – such terminology is used a lot in the Gospel. From my knowledge of Jesus’ life and teachings I don’t think that he wanted to be associated with royalty – in fact his Sermon on the Mount promoted the opposite of the disingenuous room values that I mentioned here that originally gave rise to, and then perpetuated (and still perpetuates) the injustice that sustains royalty, and which, of course, preceded Christianity.

It is interesting that over 2,000 years of history – because, once again, the Gospel is irrefutable – no Christian leaders have questioned the contradiction between the humility promoted in the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus as a royal figure (including pictures of him with a glittering crown on his head – even as a little child) which parallels the imagery used to keep people in their place for countless generations.

Another message from the Gospel that might be interpreted (or manipulated) by powerful people so that harm could be visited on others was the disvaluing of doubt by Jesus.  When he arose from the dead his disciple Thomas doubted that he had been dead at all.  However Jesus proved that he had been dead by asking Thomas to put his hand in the wound in his heart. In fact, according to the Gospel, Jesus is reported to have said “stop doubting and believe“.

This diminishes Jesus’ leadership skills. After all, good quality leadership allows the gift of doubt – from it may come new directions, truths, or better alternatives. And why did Jesus have to say anything at all?

I couldn’t help thinking that this set up the Christian world very nicely to preach that doubting our leaders was an undesirable trait – and proving someone wrong is something that has to be done to garner loyalty.

Consider also the term Saviour.  Instead of saving ourselves, we have to be saved by Jesus.  Once again, the image of helplessness is evident in the term.  The symbolism suggests that if we do not place all our trust in Jesus, who, remember, is King – and we try and save ourselves, we won’t succeed.

This leads me to the phenomenon of original sin. When I was young the purpose of the sacrament of baptism was to clean our soul of original sin. Now in a more enlightened era it is to welcome us into whatever Christian religion our parents want us to be part of. But this interpretation of baptism, to the best of my knowledge, has only been popular for the last 40 years or so. Can you imagine the effect of being born flawed in some way on generation after generation of children over hundreds of years?

I can’t help thinking that there’s a link between original sin and keeping people powerless and dependent on our betters to save us.

Finally, consider the strong parallels between the corner-stone of the Christian religion, the resurrection, and the notion of the glorious sacrifice (that I mention in this post) that has been used for centuries to motivate populations to go to war. The resurrection that followed the sacrifice, i.e. the crucifixion of Jesus – if we die we will live again – is a fundamental of Christianity. And the word glorious turns up in the Rosary, where the Glorious Mysteries follow the Sorrowful.

Jesus’ crucifixion involved not only death, but also torture and suffering, all of which he endured to save us flawed sinners. The strong message that comes from the story is that if we endure enough pain and trauma we will win out in the end – and it will be worth it.

I am sure that all these messages from the Gospels can be contextualised in a kind of theological framework but only a minority of the population know enough to do that. I am merely going on the immediate felt-sense impact of such imagery – not the more educated, informed, metaphorical or symbolic interpretations of which I am sure there are many.

Were the Gospels written by very devious people who invented this very good man so that people would be attracted to him and then introduced all these images of helplessness and suffering so we’d be happy being dominated?

I am not really being critical of Gospel messages here – I actually believe that the New Testament in general is a brilliant (and very challenging) blueprint for living. I am merely inviting people to look at their impact, and remember, as Shakespeare said – the devil can cite Scripture for his purposes.

And he’s right – manipulative narcissists (mostly of the grandiose variety) have interpreted Gospel messages to benefit themselves and undermine and dominate others for centuries – and are still doing so.

And I mention them because Christianity has been such a powerful influence in Europe for over 2000 years – so surely its messages have had significant impact!

(By the way I return to, and expand on the use of metaphorical and/or theological references in this post in the Chapter on Organisational Matters).

In the 19^th Century – read about it here – the new get-rich-quick entrepreneurs (the nouveau riche as they were insultingly called by the older families of the gentry) dovetailed nicely into the age old tradition of the powerful and wealthy sending people out to war to kill and be killed for their (mostly) get-even-richer purposes.

Assisted by armies of the ruling classes back in Europe (or, indeed, setting up private armies, such as the British East India Tea Company) they plundered and pillaged foreign lands to accumulate wealth and power that would have been impossible had they traded in a non-exploitative manner.

In European expansionist policies our superiority and arrogance knew no bounds.  To give a few examples, an Englishman (Cecil Rhodes – remember him – I mentioned in the Sub-Chapter on Academia that a scholarship in Oxford University is named after him) had, in an act of unbelievable arrogance, a huge tract of land in Africa (the size of France and Spain combined) called after him; (Rhodesia).  In another example the Belgian King Leopold decided to call the capital city in the Belgian Congo after himself (Leopoldville, nowadays known as Kinshasa). There is substantial evidence to show that both men were responsible for exploitation and impoverishment, (and death), of millions of native peoples as they pursued their imperialist ambitions.

And – a lot more recently, I was watching an old newsreel where Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the UK in the 1960’s, (who was actually a left-leaning politician), spoke about the UK granting Kenya independence – as if he was doing the Kenyans a favour – not realising that all peoples have an inviolable right to choose to be independent. His choice of words said it all!

Talking about words and language (and, I promise, this is the last example) the beautiful and evocative name of a giant waterfall in present day Zimbabwe; Mosi-oa-Tunya, translated as The Smoke That Thunders, was changed to the meaningless Victoria Falls after a woman who happened to be the English queen at that time.

As stated in a previous post, in the nineteenth century in Europe, the level of education of the general population was starting to rise.  As more people were able to read and write, and ideas (many of which originated in the principles that had led to the American [1] and French Revolutions also referred to in that post) were spreading around Europe, domination by the ruling classes became a little more challenging, and the old assertions that kings, queens or emperors were Gods, or Gods’ representatives, were beginning to wear a bit thin.

So the royal families and the vested interests that surrounded them (noblemen, top civil servants, churchmen – but, increasingly, and far more than in previous centuries, the very wealthy business ‘get-rich-quick’ people) – had to find other, newer ways to impose their power and control to preserve their privileged status, and face down these newly educated people who began, slowly but surely, to see through the falsehoods of the old order and began to think that it was fair and reasonable that human beings had rights.

One of the most effective ways of doing this was, of course, to control education – this I will explore in the next post.

[1]. The USA was perceived to be a place where merit, hard work and intelligence had higher status than rank and birth.  Such ideas coming from the New World would have been quite threatening to the established order of most European countries which at the time were colonial powers that visited terrible cruelties on their colonies. Promoters of this new self-made man, merit, equality were, however, blind to the fact that the New World Europeans were doing the exact same both to African slaves and also the native peoples throughout the entire American continent.

Schools and educational institutions of one form or another have been around for thousands of years. It was not, however, until the 19th Century (in Europe anyway) that education became available to the majority of children – rich and poor. As the middle classes got bigger, universal education was encouraged, and eventually became compulsory for children.

Education for the privileged had evolved over many centuries to meet the needs of court, nobility, high office in Church and State, and the aristocracy.  The education for the masses followed the same general model but instead of preparation for aristocratic needs it evolved to meet the needs of industry and the rapidly expanding world of business (what we have referred to already as the corporate world).

I believe a major reason why the middle classes’ increased awareness of rights, morality, justice etc. did not challenge the values of the ruling classes was because ruling class values permeated through the education system, from baby infants to post-graduate University students.

In fairness I don’t believe that the ruling classes got together in the early 1800’s and said let’s control the education system.  (Or maybe a small segment of them did – I just don’t know)!

Crucially, the education model that evolved did little to draw out [1] the creativity, intelligence or critical thinking of growing children.

After all, the last thing that either the new get-rich-quick corporate businessmen (or, indeed, the old traditional born-into-wealth families) needed were poor children who would read widely and grow up to be thinkers that would become aware of injustice and then have sufficient knowledge and insight to be critical of the establishment that was perpetuating that injustice.

(Undoubtedly, despite the influence of such norms, many children did grow up to be independent critical thinkers, but their views were not often promoted in the top echelons of society).

So despite the noble ideas, ideals and hard work of many wonderful teachers and educators, (of which there have been many), sadly, the paradigm of education in Europe was (generally) riven with class difference, competitiveness, regimentation, manipulation, violence, severe punishment, cruelty, mockery and unquestioning obedience, indeed, all the disingenuous room values described in a previous post that the wealthy needed to keep their agenda to the fore.

[1]. The word education is rooted in the Latin verb, educare, which in addition to meaning to train or to teach also means to lead or to draw out.

Police forces have been around for a few centuries in Europe and we must assume that there was a certain amount of concern for what we might nowadays refer to as community safety when Governments decided to set them up in the 1700’s and 1800’s.

In the USA, in contrast, there were vast areas of the country (the so-called Wild West) where order was preserved and justice was meted out, over many decades in the 19^th century, by self-styled vigilante type groups – but these eventually were replaced by establishment of official state police.  (The National Rifle Association is a kind of legacy of this era).   

While the stated purpose of the police was to protect ordinary citizens, (and, I suppose, particularly the new middle class citizens), from criminals, they also served a vital purpose in upholding the pyramid of injustice and unfairness atop which sat royal families, the nobilities, and the wealthy of the time.

We remember that in Ireland, in the 1840’s, the police force of the day – the Royal Irish Constabulary – had an important role in implementing the economic policies of the ruling merchant classes supported by the British Government in Westminster which were partly (and many would say, more than partly) responsible for the widespread starvation among poor people in Ireland at that time.

So the establishment of police forces ensured that the great, the wealthy and the privileged were protected within the borders of their own countries.  The newly educated middle classes (who may have harboured opinions that society perpetuated unfairness and injustice) were controlled by making them fearful that somehow their slight and hard won advantages in society would be done away with if they did more than simply complain about their lot.

After all, they saw the way the police treated the poorer working classes if they went out on the streets protesting and got a bit stroppy.

Many protests in the 19^th Century in Europe and in that new bastion of freedom, the USA, were brutally put down with loss of life by the police.

Some middle class people may have been sympathetic with the struggles of very poor workers in spirit, but tut-tutted in public at their lack of patience, or lack of forbearance, or lack of acceptance of their lot in life and/or how the world works.

(And things hadn’t changed that much really in the late 20th century. Closer to home, we saw the reaction of police to the miner’s strikes in England in the late 1980’s, and the actions of the so-called heavy gang in Ireland in the 1970’s when quick results were demanded by the political establishments in those times).

A very old trick of the powerful in keeping people in their place is to divide and conquer.  A particular favourite of the incompetent leader who feels under pressure is the invention of an enemy – someone we should all dislike, be suspicious of, be perceived to be some form of threat, and ultimately be afraid of.

It is my belief that the more incompetent the leader, the more enemies there will be at the gate!  (I have personal experience of this in my working life – I’d say that most people have).

Sometimes the incompetent leader gets lucky and a convenient enemy emerges, but sometimes an enemy needs to be invented.

I believe that incompetent leaders are often, (as will be described in the Chapter on Trauma and Related Topics in Section Three) grandiose, narcissistic, and neurotic and have little or no empathy for others who might suffer as a result of their decisions.

We can see divide and conquer happening nowadays in Europe as so-called right-wing leaders are blaming poor immigrants for the fact that citizens of their own countries suffer disadvantage. This is, of course, untrue. There was acute poverty in Europe long before there was any immigration of any significance.

But incompetent leaders also seem to have an intuitive knowledge of what buttons to press to make people fearful or angry!

Nowadays, we know how important identity is to people – indeed, how it is fundamental to a healthy sense of self, our existence and our being in the world.

I will propose in the next Section in the Chapter on Universal Theory of Change that it is a root foundation of growth and ultimately emotional well-being.

In the late nineteenth century royal families, what was left of the nobility, and the wealthy and the privileged in Europe used the natural human yearning for a strong identity, dressed up as national pride to stoke prejudice, narrowmindedness and fear of the stranger among the middle and poorer classes to further their own colonial and wealth agenda.

We know from our history that many thinkers, writers, activists and even some politicians in Europe [1] whose ideas were well known, studied and publicised over those decades, felt strongly that humans had a higher destiny than being helpless automatons, and that, in a democracy, we should have a real voice, and be able to change things we don’t like.  (Perhaps these were once children who internalised different values within their education – and became the critical thinkers)! 

But noble aspirations of international cooperation, equality, comradeship, unity of working people and their common interests/purposes promoted by many left-leaning people was easily shouted down and rendered insignificant, threatening to well-being, dangerous to the world order, and even if desirable, impossible to achieve.

What was promoted instead was deceitful, dishonest, secret, underhand and largely unaccountable behaviour of Kings and Emperors in Europe of that time and their hangers-on – driven by what I described earlier as disingenuous room values. These leaders, (poor leaders [2] all) were cheered on by an increasingly bought and compliant media, and by the wealthy and privileged who benefited from their vacillations and underhandedness.

Thus, the 125 years between the French Revolution and the start of World War One – the Long Nineteenth Century as I called it in a previous post, and particularly the latter half of the 19^th Century – saw the rise of vast military industrial complexes and alliances among the Great Powers of Europe, (the Austrian Empire, the British Empire, France, Prussia, and the Russian Empire) preying on a mixture of the fear of the stranger and the need for identity.

Just like nowadays, the stated intention of these alliances was to keep docile, well-behaved middle class populations safe from imagined foreign threats, while the police forces, as described in a previous post, kept the same people (but particularly the wealthy and privileged) safe from internal threats.

The enormity of this myth of safety was truly exposed when World War One broke out in 1914.

[1]. Marx, Nietzsche, Comte, Feuerbach, Dickens to mention but a few.

[2]. I would regard any person in a position of authority who gives in to narrow, insular interests and rates acquisition of power and wealth over people’s human rights as a poor leader.