<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Bob Reuschlein</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bobreuschlein@gmail.com">bobreuschlein@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 9:18 PM<br>Subject: Modern Feudalism, Two Cases<br>To: <br><br><br><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:black;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Link to send to others
by:</span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'"> </span><b><span style="font-size:16pt"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt"><a href="https://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/modern-feudalism-two-cases/" target="_blank">https://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/modern-feudalism-two-cases/</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:16pt;line-height:115%">Modern Feudalism, Two
Cases</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Times New Roman'">by Dr. Bob Reuschlein</span><b><span style="font-size:16pt;line-height:115%"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">What happens when an advanced civilization breaks down and
leaves feudalism in its wake?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">One case is when the global temperature changes and new areas
are favored while other areas are left behind.
The other case is when an advanced civilization becomes an empire and
the erosion caused by high levels of military spending steadily reduces the
civilization into a lower state of existence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">CLASSIC FEUDALISM</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">Classic feudalism or medievalism refers to the down period in
European development between the end of the Roman Empire
and before the Renaissance of the Modern Era.
With the overrunning of the well organized society by barbarians, the
breakdown was replaced with rampant warlord militarism leading to many fiefdoms
dominated by castles with motes. The
lord would give protection to those working the land in his or her castle at
night and from time to time as these workers were called serfs. The lord serf relationship features high
income inequality. The lack of
intellectual development as martial skills are instead rewarded leads to a lack
of what we in the developed world call progress in the sciences. The church steps into the void in scientific
progress and becomes a dominant institution.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">ROLE REVERSAL</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">Just as one great religion rose at the peak of the Roman Empire,
Christianity, another great religion, Islam, rose at the peak of the Byzantine Empire. As the Western European world was in decline,
the Arab world was in ascendancy with the invention of algebra, the zero, and
the spreading of Islam across the Southern Mediterranean and into Eastern
Europe and Asia. The reaction to all of that was the
Crusades. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">Then the tide turns with the Renaissance and the Industrial
Revolution, as Christianity once more became ascendant. The reaction to all of
that were the rejection of colonialism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The
recent attacks on the president for mentioning the Crusades in the same breathe
as the current religious extremists just goes to show how determined to be
wrong the right usually is. The Middle
Age world warming that favored more Northerly Europe over the more Southerly Middle
East lead to the Crusades, which lasted about as long as the farming in Greenland, both ending as the world cooled. The first Crusade when it reached Asia Minor,
now called Turkey, descended on a town there where every man woman and child
were killed. It turned out they had
unwittingly chosen a Christian community.
So the Crusades of yesteryear did not lack in barbarity in comparison to
today’s religious militants.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">MODERN EMPIRE DECLINE</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">Today’s America
seems ascendant in every way on the world stage, but the rot from within is
well advanced. While China and India
graduate ten times the engineers the US does, we send our best talent
into financial schemes on Wall Street. As
the rich get richer and the middle class fails to obtain pay raises at all, we
devolve more and more into a lord serf relationship society. Indeed, the military seems the only way out
for many in poor white rural communities.
When the technology manufacturing sector is in decline and the retail
and service sectors are ascendant, that is the surest sign of a declining
empire. When 4% of the world’s
population houses 25% of the prisoners, crime is at epidemic rates in America. When America has the highest homicide,
prisoner, mental illness, teen birthrate, and obesity rates in the developed
world, surely it is because of high income inequality and militarism, as shown
in my tables in the Empire Economics presentation listed second immediately
below:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">More on the climate change scenario:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4485586/CIVILIZATION_Changes_with_Climate" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/4485586/CIVILIZATION_Changes_with_Climate</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">More on the empire decay scenario:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)"><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4044446/EMPIRE_ECONOMICS_Peer_Review_AWARD" target="_blank">https://www.academia.edu/4044446/EMPIRE_ECONOMICS_Peer_Review_AWARD</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Times New Roman';color:rgb(51,51,51)">Dr. Peace, Dr. Bob Reuschlein,
Real Economy Institute<br>
best contact to ask Bob to speak to your group: <a href="mailto:bobreuschlein@gmail.com" target="_blank">bobreuschlein@gmail.com</a><br>
to leave message: 608-230-6640<br>
for more info: <a href="http://www.realeconomy.com" target="_blank">www.realeconomy.com</a><br>
(<i>Real Economy</i> and/or <i>Peace
Economics</i> free pdf on request by members of the press)<br>
An archive of this two year press release campaign can be found at: <a href="http://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">http://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/</a></span></p></div>
</div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan" target="_blank">http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan</a> </div><div><br></div>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br><br>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br></div></div>
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