Meandering Political Essay #1

[Cain]

How did we end up in this state?  An economy perpetually on the edge of collapsing, a world ostensibly devoted to peace but where multiple wars rage (and are supported by the largest industry in the world, the arms trade), a world where 400 years of scientific, political and cultural progress have led to a renewal of religious warfare across four continents and where, despite the spread of democracy, people are feeling more disenchanted and less powerful than ever.

And that's not even without going into the issue of the inevitable environmental catastrophe we will soon be facing.  Global warming, super-hurricanes, decreasing food stocks and increasing sea levels will kill us, if we don't manage to commit suicide as a species first.

It is entirely too easy to blame this on a near-decade of the Warlord's hilariously inept "rule".  To do so involves falling into the trap of partisan hackery.  It's been three years now – look around, has any of this really been addressed or reversed?  Precisely.

Furthermore, these problems have roots going back decades.  We've been in an economic crisis since 1973.  It's not just a series of crises; it is the same crisis, with no solution in sight.  Inter-state war was on the rise since well before the fall of the Soviet Union, as one would expect in a world awash in cheap weapons, the discarded trinkets of a superpower conflict.  A religious revival has been in the making since the 1980s, with a corresponding rise in religious terrorism at the same time.  Global warming was a given the moment we started to use fossil fuels in large amounts.

An apparently unrelated tangent...

It is no secret to those who know me well that I am an admirer of the writer Voltaire.  In fact, when I wrote for a satirical magazine at university, my pen-name was Arouet, as a nod to the great man.

I am well aware of the history of Voltaire and his various contemporaries, the reformers, philosophers and activists who helped create the period we call the Enlightenment.  These men lived in a truly hideous period, one dominated by the vagaries of court life, the gossipy intrigue of courtiers and the vices of kings and princes.  Torture was even more common then than it is now and frequently used in public.  Exile for expressing unpopular or dangerous opinions was almost certainly guaranteed and the Church, though diminished, still lurked in the background, seeking to punish and silence heretics, atheists and scientists who contradicted Catholic dogma.

The Enlightenment reformers were divided in some ways.  Voltaire, for example, favoured enlightened absolutism of the sort of practiced by his friend Frederick the Great, whereas the likes of Thomas Paine preferred a democracy.  Nevertheless, almost to a man, all of these reformers were united in their belief that humanism and reason would overcome the superstitious dogmas of the past that keep people in thrall to deceitful priests and corrupt governments.  

And back to the plot...

All of the above problems can be classed as political problems, and fairly so.  In today's world, the focus of political power is mostly within the state, despite its relative decline in recent decades.  And as we've established, these problems are not just related to the unfortunate choices of some recent lacking political figures, but they are systemic.  And the system in question is the state system.

Who invented the state system?  Most political scientists would refer to the Treaty of Westphalia as enshrining the modern system, but they are fools, and that does not answer the question.  States as we understand them were the invention of a few dedicated individuals, most notably Machiavelli, Richelieu, Loyola, Bacon and Descartes.  Without exception, all these men were imaginative, talented and intelligent.  But they were also, above all else, courtiers.

What is a courtier?  Well, we could go for the traditional explanation, but let's cut through all the bullshit and get straight to the point: a courtier is someone who wishes to exercise power through manipulation, someone who craves power without end and prestige without responsibility.  To this end, they pretend to serve greater and more recognizable figures than they themselves are.  For Machiavelli, this was the Medici, for Descartes and Richelieu the French King, for Bacon James I and for Loyola the Pope (and, presumably, God).

Courtiers, as a rule, naturally hate democracy, accountability and similar things.  Democracy is difficult, because you have to court the people as a whole, meaning secrecy is not viable.  Democracies are also accountable, with public figures always facing the possibility of having their privileges revoked.  Not good, not at all.

But it's worse than just that.  While the above were all courtiers, they were, to one degree or another, rationalists.  And they had shown, well before the Enlightenment revolutions, that reason could be put to uses other than the humanist ones the like of Voltaire would have desired.

Loyola is one to consider here.  A Spanish courtier, before an unfortunate meeting between a cannonball and his legs, Loyola put his tremendous talents into the creation of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits.  In creating this order though, he took deliberate inspiration from the Dominican Order, also known as the Inquisition.  The Inquisition was brutal, there is no doubt of that, but they were not fanatics in the conventional sense of the word, fundamentalists frothing at the mouth to kill any and all heretics.  No, the Inquisition knew their task was to uncover heresy, in other words to find the truth.  As such, they dedicated themselves to a very precise process for questioning and testing those they were tasked to investigate.

They also kept very precise records of everything they did, and operated in secret.  But the most important thing was that the method was followed, as accurately as possible.  It did not matter how many died.  Or how many of those were not heretics.  The method was above all.

Loyola also believed in the use of method and structure above all.  When working as a wandering preacher, Loyola had tried to convert through use of logic, and he brought this logic to bear when he came to found the Society of Jesus.  Its members were a trained elite, given the best schooling the Church had available.  Membership to the Society would be limited to those who were able to master its techniques and methods best.  The society was organised like an army, its aim not to spread the doctrine so much as to spread the political influence of the Vatican.  By 1700, there were twenty-three thousand Jesuits.  They were the most powerful political force on the Continent, and influenced many governments from behind the scenes.  They became so powerful, that the Pope himself came to fear the Jesuits, and disbanded the society in 1723.

But in a very real sense it was too late.  The Jesuits had begun to educate elites outside of the Church, passing along their methods and skills to bureaucrats and government officials, helping to build the modern civil service and modern state.

It should never be forgotten that the chief aim of the Jesuits was to fight the Counter-Reformation, against Protestant preachers.  In this, Loyola was especially ingenious, as he had taken more than some of their methods and styles, applied his logic and used it to prop up a fundamentally anti-rational organisation and society.  He had shown that reason could be a weapon, even in the hands of those that despised reason.

Those tools were also most eagerly seized upon by a state eager to assert it's independence from the aristocracy and Church, to rule absolutely.  And we shall deal with the consequences of that in the next instalment...

[Adios]

I like this, a lot.

It occurs to me that the weaker the State becomes the more those in power seem to demand and to steal that power. Many times I wonder if it is because in a still strong state, they know in their hearts that they would not be in power.

[Elder Iptuous]

Looking forward to the next installment...
thanks, as always, for you thoughts, Cain

[deadfong]

If this is an example of your meandering, I fear to ever read an essay of yours that has your full focus - it would probably burn my eyes right out of my skull.

Can't wait for the next one.

[East Coast Hustle]

Awesome as always.

And as always, bittersweet because it kind of chaps my ass that PD.com is the best and most reliable source for political news and analysis on the internet or anywhere else.

Even the Strait Times has gone to shit, and The Exile isn't far behind.

[BabylonHoruv]

very informative.  I am looking forward to the next piece.

[LMNO]

I feel incredibly fortunate that Cain posts stuff like this. 

[Eve Hill]

I feel incredibly fortunate that Cain posts stuff like this. 

Same here!

[Kai]

I would love to hear more about how the influence of courtiers lead to the state system we have today. This is fascinating stuff.

[Cramulus]

I like the use of "courtier" here... the term has fallen out of popularity, but the concept is very much still in style.

excellent essay, Cain!

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Very enlightening, looking forward to more.

[Kai]

I like the use of "courtier" here... the term has fallen out of popularity, but the concept is very much still in style.

excellent essay, Cain!

The terms more often used these days are "partisans", "lobbyists" and "cronies".

[Rumckle]

Fascinating, Cain. I started to get a chill down my spine in those last paragraphs.