If you haven’t already, be sure to read the previous post in this series, Atlas In Relief: The Embankment.

The Layman’s Summary
• Our economy is like our appetite, and it shows in our national waistline.
• Merchants and soldiers have a few things in common.
• As much as we like our soldiers and our merchants we can’t allow ourselves to be governed by our appetites or our fear.

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Our National Appetite
I understand capitalism (any economic system, really) as our national gastrointestinal system. Hang with me for a minute while I get this out. It finds, processes, and distributes resources and then, presumably, disposes of its waste. It effects everything that the body does and can have sway over the body far beyond its size. Birds and herds migrate because of the needs of their stomachs. Predators follow the migration of herds because of the needs of their stomachs. For thousands of years, even we humans have ventured out of safety to satisfy our need to consume.

It is hard to judge harshly a part of your body that is so fundamentally a part of your survival. However, if all of your decisions were subject to the whims of your appetite… well, you’d have what we have in the U.S.; an obesity epidemic. This can happen when any class is elevated, when any aspect of your physiology dominates.

The Martial Class
Normally I only offer one metaphor or way of thinking about an issue. This time I’m offering two. We can all appreciate the contribution of the martial class, yet any reasonable person has complex feelings about it. Therefore, breaking from my normal metaphor, this is instead a near-perfect substitution.

Just as bankers, salespersons, entrepreneurs, etc can be placed under the umbrella term “merchant class,” the military, police and fire departments, the national and coast guards, and the intelligence-gathering organizations can be placed under the umbrella term “martial class.” If a nation’s economy can be said to be its stomach, its appetite, then a nation’s security forces can be said to be its reptile brain, its fear.

Not everyone likes this class of citizen. They tend to be opinionated, pushy, brash, arrogant … well we’ve covered this. Here’s the thing, if you dial 911, the person most likely to show up at your door is a person just like this and you’ll be grateful, because sometimes the best person for the job is the one with the attitude.

That said, historically, whenever the martial class has been artificially elevated, humanity has found itself constantly at war. The impetus for these wars always seems astoundingly unimportant compared to the loss of life in these periods. Yet these never-ending feuds always manage to create legendary heroes, many of whom we still celebrate to this day.

Commonalities
There is an overlap in people who become one or the other (martial or merchant), and some of them do both. Here are just a few traits that can be found in both groups.

• Their contribution is unimpeachably valuable, even to those who are loathe to acknowledge it.
• They require a certain amount of freedom to make that contribution; freedom you might be uncomfortable giving to someone else.
• The lower ranks, despite the inherent social issues, tend to be egalitarian, perhaps more so than the rest of society. (This is not true of the higher ranks, whose constituency is largely influenced by their civilian social status.)
• When arbitrarily elevated, they develop an artificially inflated view of their own value and the weight of their contribution.

The simultaneous challenge and blessing for the elevated is that they become known for their personality extremes; the eccentricities, good and bad. They become known for their unique prowess in whatever it is that they do better than others and this characteristic is expressed in a superhuman way. But they also become known for the uniquely worst characteristic of their personalities, the one possessed by no others that they defend as if it were a requirement for achieving this greatness. One wonders why a person would carry such a thing unless it was necessary. Perhaps it is.

The position of the elevated martial class can be exemplified by the speech at the end of A Few Good Men (about halfway down). He’s right of course. But should he run the country? Should his will take precedence over everyone else’s? Over economics, scientific research, or privacy?

What about Donald Trump? Even if his views on economics are correct, should he run the country? Should his will take precedence over everyone else’s? Over national security, education, or health?

Rather than answering that, consider that the martial classes throughout history have “despised” the merchant classes*. Here is a commonly accepted [feudal/martial] social structures that illustrates this point:

With little variation, this holds true for feudal societies in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The martial class protects society at the cost of less freedom for those protected. The merchant class resides at the edge of that protection in order to have greater freedom, and so is treated with disdain. If you do a little reading, you’ll find this hostility toward the merchant class is a shared opinion among the feudal martial classes in history. This hostility has been mutual, merchants holding comparable disdain for the martial class nobility.

Think this set of opinions is behind us?

Going
I realize that some people would be happy to see all people that pursue wealth, people that primarily respond to appetite, vanish from our national identity. Most of those people feel the same way about people that primarily respond to fear. Both provide a valuable and often under-appreciated service. And both are justifiably aggressively scrutinized, especially when they are rewarded beyond their contribution or have failed ethically.

Be sure to tune in next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, for the exciting conclusion of… Atlas… In Relief! The Far Side! Dun dun duuuunnnnnn…

And remember, talking is more useful than screaming,
-CG

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References
Japanese Feudal Society example
*Tzu, S. (1994) The Art of War, Translated with Historical Introduction by Ralph Sawyer, p.53, The Warring States Period
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal_Japan#Feudal_Japan_.281185.E2.80.931868.29 (Social structure)
(Don’t hate Wikipedia. It works.)

Tuareg Feudal Society example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people (Traditional Social Stritification)