Ourselves

The Enlightenment is characterized by an Oedipal Complex towards the Reformation.

Instead of taking the insights learned with gratitude, it was all rejected as equally worthless. This was done by the capitalists, who thought they were good because they did well in peace.

Commerce, as opposed to conquest, is an exchange of wealth by consent.

It was done by Catholics because they hate free inquiry, believing it to lead to asocial behavior. Many Enlightenment figures were French.

What occurred was a sublimation of five polity options.

Anglicanism declares arbitrary central authority. Catholicism declares good central authority. Both are top down. As political theories these are unappealing, except that they are descriptions of what already exists: or rather the negative - arbitrary and positive - good - interpretations of such.

The others are appealing, because they would give more authority to the subjects. These are three: Presbyterianism, Congregationalism and Quakerism.

The former is a model of parliamentarism: how we wish it were, with an Aristocratic bent: the Church made up of smaller and smaller units, at each level joining together to pick the higher.

But basically it is pyramidal in shape.

Then there is the Congregational. This does not attempt to dominate a national Church. It allows there to be diverse churches, and yet does not give up the idea of quality. It is convinced of the superiority of a minority, but will not centralize power for them, by vote or divine right. They are thus exclusive.

Finally there are the Quakers, who deny the superiority of anyone over anyone, and therefore any power over anyone: one over another, a few over one, many over one.

All are, in short, convinced that either very few or no one should rule another. None of them would allow the possibility that all people might come together and judge one another.

This attitude was tolerable for the Church, because ultimately it didn’t matter. Power was merely the right to damn, and if nothing comes of it - as, if you will be so tolerant, is the case - whether the system works or not is irrelevant.

But people were not content to let these polities rest in the religious sphere.

They immediately tried to drag them into the secular. Thus Hume observes at the front of the Parliamentary Cause in the Civil War were the Presbyterians.

Likewise in the French Revolution, a polity that was similar to Congregationalism, Genevan Calvinism, was translated by Rousseau and Robespierre tried to implement it, resulting in the Terror: when the people were deemed not pure enough to rule themselves.

We have had similar experiences here. The Federal Constitution is a Presbyterian text, and the various measures like Prohibition stem from the Congregationalists, through Unitarianism.

Then Quakerism is there to say let no one rule another, which is really a typical servile philosophy, combined with a noble conception of society. Ultimately, however, it leaves the power to anyone, and is content to shake signs. It will do this because it preaches weakness of all people who tell the truth: that truth is weak.

The first four are elitist. Quakerism is not, but as a result forgoes all responsibility to lead, and so feeds into elitism, which accepts the status quo, and is content to half-heartedly try to convert them.

In no instance is there a church polity which accepts the physical and psychological importance of organization.

The individual is weak alone. Organization is essential, centralization is not. But then the small organizations must be everywhere to not be mere toys of the central.

These must be organized not on the basis of revelation, but self-reliance. The problem was power. But the solution was neither representation nor predestination nor conversion, all of which cannot happen, but are mere pointings in the direction.

The sought could be realized, but only if the material conditions reflect.

Aristocracy only works in feudalism: where elites are evenly distributed throughout the land, and are in place for a very long time.

However, the aristocrat maintains his force by violence, and disappears as he becomes just. Inherited wealth corrupts. The successor of his weakness would degrade his inferiors or join them. Then there is a totalitarian state, which does not even have the virtue of competition, which might make lords less tyrannical. The only acceptable relation is one in which there is no hierarchy, but rather leadership, which occurs when there is an emergency. And this can only be good when the group is small enough, that interpreters cannot surround the halls of power, and obscure the view of the people.

Normally there should be no exercise of authority. This requires that the Federal Government be stripped of much of its power, and its role in the world be merely defensive.

All its power are bandages on the capitalist system, which if transformed at the local level would make them unnecessary. Thus parents who are not degraded can teach their children. Old people whose children love them do not need pensions. People who eat good food do not need doctors. People who had good lives are willing to die. Likewise the evils like the media and entertainment would disappear, because people would not need distraction from their suffering.

Our society, in a capitalist form, makes men and women live in ways that are unnatural: getting up to clocks, being humiliated by inferior people, eating poison, sending children away, being with strangers, doing things only for money, not because the activity makes sense.

All these can be dealt with because they are what affect all of us, as we are human and from a relatively common culture.

Finding the way is merely a matter of details.