The earliest civilizations organized themselves into caste systems. These systems were typically broken down into four distinct sections from bottom to top: the worker, the merchant, the warrior, and the priest.
The ancient Hindu’s give us one of the oldest known examples of this.
Initially these castes were not supposed to be explicitly hereditary, and mobility could be achieved by way of merit. Skill would dictate one’s location within the caste system. Being born a poor farmhand did not mean you’d have to die a poor farmhand.
In this arrangement, the castes could be complementary to one another, and the healthy functioning of each meant the prosperity of all. Healthy, meritocratic migration between positions meant that resentment wouldn’t bubble up, overflow, and then result in violent conflict.
But over time, this would change. As the authors of what counted as legal or illegal, good or evil, and right or wrong, the priestly caste realized they could re-write the script for personal gain.
For instance, Mahapadma Nanda, founder of the Nanda Dynasty in the 4th century BCE, was a powerful ruler from a low-caste background. His ascent to power threatened the established caste hierarchy dominated by the Brahmins, the priestly class.
In response, the Brahmins undermined his rule by manipulating religious doctrines and social norms to denigrate his authority and legitimacy. They propagated narratives questioning his right to rule, and lobbied for a more rigid caste system in order to protect their own dominance.
Leveraging their religious authority, the Brahmins promoted rituals and interpretations of dharma that amplified their own status and riches. Re: more or less forced tithing. This allowed them to consolidate their economic power and influence over society.
This phenomenon is of course not limited to the ancients. Today’s priests are called, among other things, politicians and ‘experts’, and vary widely in their dogma and denomination. One might say that the game remains the same, and only the players of changed.
Dick Cheney is such a new player, and offers insight into a well cited case of modern priestly corruption.
Prior to Dick Cheney's tenure as Vice President from 2001 to 2009, he served as the CEO of Halliburton, a large government services contractor, from 1995 to 2000.
When Cheney left Halliburton to run for Vice President, he received a severance package valued at around $20 million, which included substantial stock options in Halliburton. Throughout his vice presidency, Halliburton was awarded numerous government contracts, particularly related to the Iraq War. For reasons I won’t get into right now, I can personally attest that Halliburton, and especially one of its subsidiaries, KBR, is a garbage company.
Anyways, by the end of his vice presidency, Cheney’s net worth would increase to somewhere between 3x and 7x to an estimated $60M-$150M.
If such a thing was happening right now, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious, just as it was not immediately obvious with Cheney until after the fact. Remember that parasites specialize in stealth, and by simply being noticed, their existence is threatened.
Corrupt priests often shroud themselves behind the deafening, blinding white noise and distraction-rich environment of complexity of religious, political, or bureaucratic dogma. Consider, for example, the extraordinarily opaque and complicated defense acquisitions process:
Your money gets lost in here somewhere.
In fact, this process was initially made complex on purpose in order to prevent waste fraud and abuse. Unfortunately it ended up doing the opposite, and much to the demise of public welfare.
I have to clarify that some of the best, most kind and well meaning people I know work within these machines. 99% of the machine’s constituents are good, honest people. I think that most parasitic processes start out well-meaning, but then become corrupted over time. Living things simply decay, and the troubling realities of this are stored neatly in the hazmat boxes of our collective unconscious, out of sight but still deep in the mind all the same.
It is a flaw of the system that makes it susceptible to the Cheney’s of the world, but there are better systems available to us.
The pre-cursor to such new and improved systems has always been and will always be culture. And specifically one which promotes noble virtues of optimism and boundless prosperity for humanity. But these things are not free, and parasitic systems actively oppose them.
The ‘warrior caste’ is the most suitable for planting the seeds and growing the roots for such a culture, for holding the priestly caste accountable, and for opening up the way.
It is within a warrior’s genetic programming to bring attention to parasitic things, call out the injustice of it, and in doing so, vanquish it. The good news is that, thanks to the internet and a variety of supporting technologies, this whole sequence can happen non-violently. It is not exclusively the capacity for violence that makes the warrior, but also their capacity to inspire by example. There is no substitute for example, and warriors tend to set the best ones.
This new breed of warrior has a responsibility is to become prosperous and growth-oriented themselves. They must breathe life into themselves and the world around them. They must be the living, breathing example of inspiration, virtue, and prosperity in act and deed for others to see, and this must be done with taste.
But no matter how tasteful such a campaign would be, those that call for change and improvement will always earn the hate of some rabid enemy camp. But because the warrior caste trains to be strong in every sense, they are indifferent to this, and carry on smartly. And eventually, they win.
More next.
LH