Amerika

It should strike us as funny how groups of people dedicated to “racialism” are also afraid of other genetic determinism, whether Calvinism assessing character or The Bell Curve assessing class structure and its relationship to genetics and general intelligence (g).

In fact we might view these movements as the non plus ultra of genetic determinism and Darwinism, with portly fascists swaggering as they tell us, “Of course the races are different. But that is all; absent race, we are all the same, equal humans.”

All of these philosophies are nonsense for the same reason that conservatives do not know who they are: they descend from the last major historical event in Europe, which was the displacement of the kings by the middle class, called bourgeois long before Commies heard the word:

1560s, “of or pertaining to the French middle class,” from French bourgeois, from Old French burgeis, borjois “town dweller” (as distinct from “peasant”), from borc “town, village,” from Frankish *burg “city” (via Germanic from PIE root *bhergh- (2) “high,” with derivatives referring to hills and hill-forts).

The word was later extended to tradespeople or citizens of middle rank in other nations. The sense of “socially or aesthetically conventional; middle-class in manners or taste” is from 1764. Also (from the position of the upper class) “wanting in dignity or refinement, common, not aristocratic.” As a noun, “citizen or freeman of a city,” 1670s. In communist and socialist writing, “a capitalist, anyone deemed an exploiter of the proletariat” (1883).

We can see its roots through a similar term, burgher, referring to those who lived high up on the hill in the fortified citadel, as opposed to the proletariat/peasants who dwelt in little huts on the surround:

1560s, “freeman of a burgh,” from Middle Dutch burgher or German Bürger, from Middle High German burger, from Old High German burgari, literally “inhabitant of a fortress,” from burg “fortress, citadel” (from PIE root *bhergh- (2) “high,” with derivatives referring to hills and hill-forts). Burgh, as a native variant of borough, persists in Scottish English (as in Edinburgh) and in Pittsburgh.

Even better, we can see the political history of European society through the philology of the related word borough:

The meaning shifted in Old English from “fortress,” to “fortified town,” then simply “town” (16c., especially one possessing municipal organization or sending representatives to Parliament).

To summarize history through language, long ago towns were built around fortified centers. These consisted of a castle to which one could retreat during siege and a large walled area in which the most expensive homes were situated.

Outside of that, the peasants lived near their fields, with essentially no option during wartime except to flee to the woods and live in caves and dugouts, surviving on whatever mushrooms, roots, berries, and small game they could acquire.

As organized standing armies came to pass after numerous invasions, these towns depended more on national borders and cavalry to keep them safe. At that point, the burghers became those who lived in town, instead of outside on the land. Those were the pricy, comfortable houses.

Over time, burgher became synonymous with comfort and the pursuit of personal wealth that defines the shopkeepers of the middle classes. Unlike the warriors and kings, the middle classes and peasants contributed little but taxes to the defense of the realm.

Even more, the anonymity of large town and later city life shaped their consciousness. To them, life was transactional: they paid taxes so that someone else would be paid to defend the city. They gave charity to buy off the social problems at the edges of their society.

But for them, civilization was not something in which one invested effort, but a chance to sell stuff and increase their personal wealth, status, and power. They focused entirely on the individualistic goal, and society became individualistic in their wake.

When this passed on down to the peasants, they realized that the middle classes would outcompete them, so instead of demanding the ability to conduct more commerce, they demanded “equality” just as they did in their unions so that the most mediocre levels were on social, legal, and monetary par with others.

Since the peasants were their primary consumers, the middle classes expressed sympathy with this view, figuring that no matter what happened, the middle classes would remain in control. This follows from their idea of government as transactional, even if in reality the revolution turned against them often.

In this way, the burghers of the middle classes became the implements of social destruction: they removed culture by replacing it with commerce, catered to the ideology of the peasants, and then perished once the revolutions gained momentum.

They came to resemble their caricatures of Jews at the time, who were portrayed as twisted, selfish, perverse, and mercantile-minded creatures of their own convenience who were oblivious to the good and holy. The middle class became its fears, bugbears, and scapegoats.

We might view the bourgeois strategy as consisting of the following:

• Individualism: me first above all else, and if anyone contradicts my narcissism, they are wrong and can never be forgiven, and any serious issues are a problem for someone else, since all that matters to me is increasing my personal wealth, status, and power.
• Conformity: fit in with the crowd at all costs so that the sale of goods and services can continue; if the crowd turns against conformity and becomes iconoclastic, this serves as an even better background hum in which to camouflage my self-centeredness.
• Transactional: the individual pays for his position in society as if it were a product, and everything else is a transaction, with him purchasing the products that enhance his feeling of well-being emerging from the notion that his is the best life. This includes ideas as products.

It makes sense to repeat here that a millennium ago, the replacement of the aristocrats by the middle class began, occasioned mostly by invasions which required high amounts of taxation to fund the armies which could repel them.

The middle class, always sensing a good deal, exacted concessions in return for those, starting the tear in the silk which would eventually split it in two and leave our society divided between those who have money and those who do not.

The stereotypical Jew — money-grubbing, manipulative, apathetic to the concerns of others, opposed to beauty and goodness — practically describes this middle class mindset. To them, beauty only has value in decorating a high-value property.

Their thinking follows the tripartite strategy of all solipsists:

• Convince the others to chase after the irrelevant
• Prejudice others against noticing one’s own bad deeds by projecting a mantle of altruism
• Hide these behaviors from the others

The mentality of the bourgeois middle classes consists of both “keeping up with the Joneses” and moral righteousness signaling. They want to compete, because that way, they appear to be successful and therefore further success is more likely to come their way.

Most likely, these middle classes are not overwhelmed and making bad decisions. They know what is rewarded and brings the good life, so they focus on that and cut out everything else. For a shopkeeper, there will always be a chance to make money, so there is no point trying to save the world from itself.

Bourgeois feeling intensifies in the cities. Where someone in a small town or even small city might know the people around them, in a big city they know only a few coworkers and service providers, and those come and go over time.

The bourgeois middle classes — these exiled crown and culture so that commerce could dominate — tend to ignore or avoid the following things:

• Time: time means mortality, so people do not think ahead of the next pay period and do not mention aging or death in any sense of changing their own behaviors to add meaning.
• Goals: meaning, hierarchy, and goals are intertwined and must be thrown out because hierarchy would naturally lead to replacement of the bourgeois middle classes with actual aristocrats instead of pretenders.
• Impersonal: they do not like anything which does not relate to the opinions of others that can lead to success, therefore while they approve social collectives like insurance and unions as a way of building customer base, they are oblivious to nature and civilization.
• Classical Art: to the bourgeois, classical music and art are things to be enjoyed like a chemical, bolstering the feelings of individualism with contentment, and have no value in themselves, only as a signal of being “educated” (proxy for intelligent) and successful.
• Reality: the reality that matters is comprised of socializing and public opinion so that products can be sold and careers built, and any consequences outside of this world are considered a dead loss like expired products in the stockroom.
• Pioneering: risk-taking is viewed as the domain of fools, along with trying to save civilization from itself or improve humanity, because there is simply no profit in it.

The bourgeois middle classes, being explicitly status-conscious, idolize those with celebrity and money while demonizing those who are below the urban middle class level, disdaining them as ignorant racists who live as dirt people in flyover country.

When the burghers adopt political beliefs, it is purely as symbolism, and they never think of the consequences. To them, endorsing diversity, a UBI, and climate change action is required behavior to be in a social group, so they never question it.

On the plus side, outside of voting and mailing donations, the insincere social climbers have no intent to actually support anything. Given a chance, they move away from the diversity, UBI, and climate change people and go on living comfortable resource-intensive lives.

The takeover of the West by its urban middle classes has resulted in replacing culture with commerce and ideology designed to co-opt any revolutions by agreeing with them and handing out free entitlements from government in order to buy off the restive poor.

They embrace diversity to damage or destroy the futures of those in the lower middle classes outside the big cities who might someday replace the urban middle classes, who tend to have more money even if they can buy less than people in the suburbs.

Such people live in a state of paradox. The resentment that forms the roots of every rebellion propels their actions, yet when a revolution has occurred, there is nothing to revolt against, only constant agitation for more free stuff from government, leading to socialism.

Ironically, the educated upper-half-of-middle-class urban bourgeois tend to enthusiastically support socialist revolutions because this pleases their clientele and social circle of “intellectuals,” but then find themselves staring at the wall as the gun cocks behind them.

How does one revolt against a revolt, after all? They sabotage it, refuse to take it seriously, and abuse it for their own ends. When something goes wrong, they blame the system and endorse radicals in order to get enough cred to seem like they are not stodgy system tools.

In the end, their greed for more commerce, status, and celebrity leads them to doom but because they refuse to think ahead or about goals, this escapes them every time. They see themselves as players of a long game to ensure the perpetuity of their wealth and power.

As the hook of history turns, however, it becomes revealed that their real game is to take everything and destroy the rest so no one can supplant them. Eventually this pathological behavior turns on themselves, and their civilization tumbles to third world status and exits history.

Tags: bourgeois, burghers, middle class revolt, urban middle class