50
The Brahmans were not the only folk to turn plunder into a
permanent condition, grafting the conquered into the underbelly of
their own superbeast. The aristocrats in many civilizations are the
fossils of earlier conquering hordes. Their position at society's apex is
the residue of robbery.
In England, the titled classes, the folks who hold their noses in
the air and disdain their lowlier countrymen, are the descendants of
Saxon, Viking and Norman soldiers who pillaged, slaughtered and
raped in successive waves from roughly 470 to 1066 AD.101 In Japan,
the aristocracy which has sat securely in place for nearly 1,800 years is
the remnant of a population of nomadic Mongoloid horsemen who
came across the sea from Korea in the first century A.D., brutalizing the
local population into submission with long iron swords.102 Yet we still
gush with excitement over princes and princesses who show off at
elaborate parties and are featured in fashionable magazines, not
realizing that the virtue which distinguishes their families from ours
was the greater willingness of their ancestors to use violence.
In Japan and England, just as in India, religion, philosophy,
poetry and ideology have all been used to nail the lowly conquered in
their place. For a view of the invisible world holds a very visible world
together--the world of society. A web of memes justifies the
subjugation of those on the bottom, upholds the power of those on top,
and sometimes maintains the specialized roles that allow a static
society to work. Even more, it clothes the power of those who rule
with a sublime halo, disguising overlords as the chosen of God--or, in
the case of Marxism, the inevitable heirs to the forces of history. It
beatifies the pecking order.
<< < GO > >>