History has weird ways of paralleling itself. Looking at the graphic “Feudalism Then & Now” above provides an interesting perspective. The idea we are today experiencing a kind of corporate feudalism has ample material to draw upon. The possibilities are alarming and what it suggests about human culture is chilling.
If all humanity has managed to achieve over the past 500 years is to alleviate a bit of poverty and make life a little easier for about 98.5% of humankind while maintaining the same structure, the same control, and the same hoarding of most all the wealth in the hands of the 1.5% and less (regardless what label we attach to them), then we’ve not progressed one step forward as a species and our civilization is a fraud, an illusion.
The sad reality is human beings have changed very little over the last 50,000 years. Yes, we have developed language and communication skills. We have created art. We have advanced materially and technologically, building cities, creating marvelous machines, gone to the moon and probed nearby planets, but the structure of our brains hasn’t changed. In our heads, we are still Stone Age hunter-gatherers who kill or strive to eliminate “others” we perceive to be in competition with us for control of vital resources. Our tribes have grown larger, but our behavior is unchanged. It is literally written into our DNA.
