We have, here in Canada, a feudal system in, regardless our parliamentary democracy and our lovely liberalism. It even reflects on our political system. Even though our head of state is elected for a limited term they are still going to live like kings, queens and emperors, in the lap of luxury, all their needs and wants attended to and with constant security protecting their sorry soft fat hienies from the envious unwashed.
Feudalism is very much the inheritance of Western Civilization. It is so deeply engrained into our collective DNA, I doubt that we will ever be able to completely shake it off. Factor in the unpleasant fact that humans tend to be hierarchical by nature and we really have a communal ethical dilemma. It was the feudal lords dominating their little parcels of land throughout Europe during the Dark Ages that laid the foundation for our nation states and eventually our capitalist economy. The lords became kings as their lands increased into small nation states, all gained through military prowess and bloodshed, of course.
With the signing of the Magna Carta in the Thirteenth Century began the long and slow progress of creeping democracy. Revolution and threats of general uprisings, over the centuries, limited the sovereign`s power. Global commerce became such that goods and products from all over the world stimulated such curiosity and envy in the masses that their rulers would have to gradually begin the irksome process of gradually ceding their power to the masses. The bourgeoisie began to grow and flourish further eroding the power of the king. Aristocracy slowly would evolve into a commodity of purchase.
The French Revolution flung open the palace doors, following the American, and in the Nineteenth Century all bets were off. Popular movements and uprisings, advances in science and commerce and the advances in public education all seemed to conspire in making the aristocracy irrelevant, a charming anachronism to be dusted off and brought out periodically for public viewing, much like the contemporary British Monarchy.
Democratic processes would not be restrained. Monarchies either fell through popular uprisings or fell into irrelevance through public enlightenment as the Common Man rose to take his place of predominance.
The Common Man is a great lover of money. And power. And influence. And dominance.
The Industrial Revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie, parliamentary and liberal democracy, the secularization of the state and the disempowerment of religion and the abolition of slavery all might have worked beautifully in tandem to transform Europe and America into a Utopian paradise, but for one little detail. We never did shake ourselves free from a mentality of feudalism. Not even with all our democratic and human rights, nor with the huge progresses in the social and hard sciences.
In the workplace you have the CEO governing the administrators who control upper management who supervise middle management who take care of lower management who supervise the low rung employees who often are structured, officially and unofficially into their own professional and social hierarchies. There is still virtually no democracy in the workplace. We are at the mercy of our bosses and of our betters: lords, vassals and serfs. The contemporary workplace is a recipe for disempowerment, professional and personal and power is very easily and readily abused. The fallout for poor mental health outcomes is already well known and documented and is worsening.
It is that our survival, our lives, depend on our work that makes this a particularly odious reality. Our ability to feed and house ourselves and our families is usually dependent on the good will of our paymasters who exploit us. They have this control over our lives and they can pay us whatever low crap wage they want because of this feudalistic mentality we have never really grown out of. Yes, they can make our lives miserable, and, no, they are never going to break us.
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