13 March 2023
In the Ancient Near East, you had a frank admission that some people owned other people. In essence, the primitive tribal warlord rose to his position because he could do the job of protecting and leading the rest of the family tribe. This didn't totally disenfranchise the elders who had led the family via simple birthright. However, it developed that when the tribe grew larger, the warlord became a king, and the elders became judges. These judges were still regarded as nobility, and if a dynasty died out or came to some other end, it was up to the judges to select a new king and establish a new dynasty. It became hereditary for the most part, but was never entirely so. And people were always the ultimate treasure. The whole point of productivity was for the family of people for whom the kings and judges were responsible.
There was, of course, the consideration of a deity's input on these things. But from the human scholarly angle, that's a little harder to define. At the same time, the power and influence of a deity could easily be absolute in the minds of the people. The focus was on higher values from the start; it was the foundation of all consideration. Life itself was not the highest value, but took its meaning from interaction with deities. But human scholarship tends to discount such things because it's western.
In the West, there was far less of the influence of deities; it was more a matter of superstition than formal worship. The approach was far more man-centered, though the flavoring varied greatly. Mankind was the measure of all things. At some point, the superstitions of the Germanic tribal hoards was blended into the reasoning of the Greco-Roman Civilization to become the Medieval West. In the West, ownership of persons was not so forthright; the peasants were considered part of the land itself. Thus, nobility and political power was a matter of combat capability granting ownership of resources, to include the people.
Thus, the West has always been focused on material assets, which actually degrades people in contrast to the eastern viewpoint, making them simply an aspect of the physical assets. The ultimate good was more stuff, which buys more comfort. Only then could men consider higher things. The first priority was survival of the flesh, then comfort, then higher values. Thus, those who had more power owned more stuff also had leisure to become educated. Their higher values remained rather man-centered.
At some point the general welfare of the western populations managed to rise just enough for the people to begin getting educated, as well. Education was focused more on the means to manipulating materials to increase wealth and welfare directly, and far less on higher values. However, this rising middle class merchant bunch suffered from a sort of inferiority complex. Having discovered that wealth could be gained without resource ownership, they began to pick at the privileges of nobility. But instead of rising to nobility in the sense of actually being noble, they simply tore down the privilege system so that nobility didn't have it, either. The concept of "being noble" was defined downward as a set of traits one could adopt, not some inward quality of soul (never mind the rhetoric).
But when the soul kept manifesting itself in ways that defied any explanation on this basis, it was captured by folks who were totally ignoble. There was yet another corruption of the definition of "being noble" into wokism. And suddenly it became something about the soul again, though it is still poorly understood. Since it can't be defined in concrete terms, it is simply assumed a priori to produce certain traits.
Thus, we have the rise of a new nobility who have nothing of "being noble" by any useful definition. Rather, it's just a fresh attempt to plunder and seize property and comfort from those who actually created it. The economic system is being dismantled, and the assets are no longer increasing. Rather, the existing assets are degrading and the pie to be divided is shrinking very quickly. Meanwhile, what remains is being confiscated by the new "nobility" by their imaginary privileges.
This is what DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) alongside ESG (environment, social and governance) policies represent: a new nobility seizing assets and totally mismanaging the material output. This is why banks collapse, in that the policies are causing economic output to collapse.
As long as you carry a western orientation, this is an outrage. If you step back and embrace the Ancient Near Eastern outlook of the Bible, you aren't surprised; this state of affairs was expected. Moreover, it is regarded as the hand of God, in that He has handed it all over to Satan to mislead people into embracing his lordship. Now comes the harvest of that choice. There is no way to turn it around, because the foundation itself was on Satan's terms, primarily the focus on this world. Instead of a focus on higher things, there is only superstition and scrambling for more physical comfort.
Don't get lost here. You cannot simply assert the importance of people if you aren't actually responsible for them. If they aren't your family, then you have no power at all to bless them. Granted, in the Covenant of Christ, covenant relationship trumps blood kinship, but you cannot generalize a covenant identity on false terms based on western thinking about it. You must live together as a family with one covenant identity, and all property and prosperity must be shared as among feudal tribal kin, not like western kinfolk scattered far from each other into individual nuclear family households.
It has to be genuine extended family household (at least as a goal), and it must be built upon feudal dominion granted by God. It must be a covenant family, not merely shared DNA.
Folks, God does not sponsor the western pattern. It reflects Satan's work to pull people away from God's original plan. The eastern feudal tribal structure is what we are wired for, as is the whole of Creation. It's how God intends to bless us, and it is only way He will do so. We get into trouble by trying to shape the outcomes instead of letting God handle that. If we lived to please our Lord first and foremost, everything else takes care of itself.
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