Amerika

Once the majority of intellectuals become acquisitive, materialism degenerates into supermaterialism. There are no more religious or ethical restraints on the avarice of the elite, and as the public follows its leaders, everything gets commercialized.

There comes a point when the intellectual acquisitors are virtually unchallenged; that is when the process of wealth concentration runs full throttle, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer at incredible speeds. The boundless hypocrisy of acquisitive intellectuals ultimately torments the majority of people. Salaries go down, and the bulk of society is forced to devote much of its time to making money. Warriors and intellectuals then have to become laborers and are left with little time for the finer pursuits of life. They have to labor hard to support themselves and their children. The intellectual’s inherent love for art, music, painting and philosophy give way to routine work all day long to provide the means for family survival. The warrior’s innate predilection for adventure and sport is replaced by overtime work to make ends meet. The vast majority of society comes to adopt the laborer’s way of living and thinking.

Only two classes then remain – acquisitors and laborers, or the haves and have-nots. The age of acquisitors eventually turns into the age of laborers, which may now be called the acquisitive-cum-labor age, in which the acquisitive intellectual is dominant.

For a while, people suffer through the deceit and exploitation of the reigning class. They maintain their lifestyle by increasingly getting into debt. Acquisitors now have a field day. They make money left and right. They enrich themselves through their control over businesses, farms, and factories, and through lending money to the other classes.

This is right about where we as a society find ourselves now, Batra argues.

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Tags: civilization life cycle