Nobility of the Image 1

"These vagrants, these second-class citizens, find their way back to the nation thanks to their decisive, militant action. Unchanged in the eyes of colonial society or vis-a-vis the moral standards of the colonizer, they believe the power of the gun or the hand grenade is the only way to enter the cities. These jobless, these species of subhumans, redeem themselves in their own eyes and before history."
-Frantz Fanon, 1961

"The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence."-Marshall McLuhan, 1976

"I kill, therefore I am."
-Phil Ochs

I.
Okay, so first off, we have to understand that the social structure hardly every changes. By this, I mean that there are always “elites” and “non-elites”, haves and have-nots, the rich and the wretched. From at least 5,000 BCE in the first cities of Mesopotamia we have seen the same pattern; division of labor, a professional priestly class, maintenance of public resources, and most importantly, a clear division between a working class, what could roughly be called a lumpenproletariat, who essentially handle all the manual labor, building walls, herding goats and so on, and a nobility, who are in charge of organizing labor, collecting taxes, and maintaining the religion. At the top of this was the King and, we can tell from texts like the Epic of Gilgamesh that his role was justified because he was understood to be a god. Of course, this idea may sound ridiculous to today’s reader, but hang on a bit. We have ridiculous ideas of our own.

Ultimately, most societies develop into this basic structure fairly quickly. The elites solidify their position and maintain it by keeping the wealth in their own family, and the poor can do little about the ossification of their own position. Let’s make no mistake however; the nobility or the bourgeoisie (ultimately the same animal) is noble because it has a monopoly of wealth. The peasantry is peasant because it has no money. This basic fact never changes, although it is considered boorish to acknowledge it.