“Davos man” is an epithet coined by the conservative scholar Samuel Huntington to describe the very specific type that attends the conference. These are people who, as Huntington wrote, “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”
Not everyone Rothkopf writes about in “Superclass” is a Davos man, but despite his efforts to remain impartial toward “the global power elite” he describes, you can tell that the elect milieu of the WEF gives him a palpable thrill. The book opens with a scene of the author making his way through the town’s frozen streets, recognizing CEOs, oil company executives and Harvard professors on his way to a fondue restaurant. Suddenly, he’s greeted effusively by a bestselling inspirational writer with whom he has been trading e-mail: Paulo Coelho, “an icon of the global literary scene”! (The literary scene? I don’t think so, though Coelho certainly is a publishing phenomenon.)
Rothkopf’s credible, if not especially original argument in “Superclass” is that over the past several decades a “global elite” has emerged whose connections to each other have become more significant than their ties to their home nations and governments."
My guess would be that his point is that governments are less and less relevant and increasingly provided “for show” and for people to feel in control, when the actual control rests largely in the hands of powerful individuals who do not answer to voters.
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. The era of nations is coming to an end. Think of the Davos Men as the Inner Party in Orwell’s 1984, though they appear at this point to be benign, running foundations and the like.
This cadre is evolving into an elite that administers the world. Given that they owe no loyalty to anyone but themselves, we have to wonder about the long term implications of such a group.
BTW: Nietzsche predicted the rise of such a group, that they would be ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ (title of his book), that their morality would be quite different from ours. Their moral regard for us would be the same as we have for a bunch of lab rats.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
lixy wrote:
What’s your point?
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. …[/quote]
And this is different from the past in what ways?
You can look at royalty from Europe to ancient Egypt and you will see this behavior.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
lixy wrote:
What’s your point?
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. [/quote]
Well, duh!
What do you expect from a system that worships the doll…err, the Euro?
Last I checked, that was the plan of the imperialists all along the way.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
lixy wrote:
What’s your point?
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS.
Well, duh!
What do you expect from a system that worships the doll…err, the Euro?
Last I checked, that was the plan of the imperialists all along the way.[/quote]
We should all worship a mythical man in the sky and murder those that worship him in a slightly different way.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
We should all worship a mythical man in the sky and murder those that worship him in a slightly different way.
Uhhh…that is so Medieval Christian. Can’t we just get along – live and let live, etc?[/quote]
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
lixy wrote:
What’s your point?
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. …
And this is different from the past in what ways?
You can look at royalty from Europe to ancient Egypt and you will see this behavior.[/quote]
The difference is that this group has historical perspective. They’re not just an elite but a highly educated and refined one. They allow brilliant people to rise into their ranks much more so than any feudal aristocracy or Soviet Communist Party. Its an aristocracy of intellect.
That’s not such a horrible thing UNTIL they begin subverting/influencing elections, inflaming and manipulating the masses, and basically dehumanising individuals. Such an elite becomes stifling — what if, for example, you don’t want to follow the life planned out for you by a Harvard University Political Scientist? You are excluded from the society. The Soviet Union was a mini-version of a planned society. Sounds pretty awful to me.
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. …
And this is different from the past in what ways?
You can look at royalty from Europe to ancient Egypt and you will see this behavior.
The difference is that this group has historical perspective. They’re not just an elite but a highly educated and refined one. They allow brilliant people to rise into their ranks much more so than any feudal aristocracy or Soviet Communist Party. Its an aristocracy of intellect.
That’s not such a horrible thing UNTIL they begin subverting/influencing elections, inflaming and manipulating the masses, and basically dehumanising individuals. Such an elite becomes stifling — what if, for example, you don’t want to follow the life planned out for you by a Harvard University Political Scientist? You are excluded from the society. The Soviet Union was a mini-version of a planned society. Sounds pretty awful to me.
[/quote]
It is business as usual. We must always resist tyranny.
As Pookie points out, we’ve produced men (and women) who no longer owe any allegiance or loyalty to a nation, but loyalty to each other in their CLASS. …
And this is different from the past in what ways?
You can look at royalty from Europe to ancient Egypt and you will see this behavior.
The difference is that this group has historical perspective. They’re not just an elite but a highly educated and refined one. They allow brilliant people to rise into their ranks much more so than any feudal aristocracy or Soviet Communist Party. Its an aristocracy of intellect.
That’s not such a horrible thing UNTIL they begin subverting/influencing elections, inflaming and manipulating the masses, and basically dehumanising individuals. Such an elite becomes stifling — what if, for example, you don’t want to follow the life planned out for you by a Harvard University Political Scientist? You are excluded from the society. The Soviet Union was a mini-version of a planned society. Sounds pretty awful to me.
[/quote]
HH,
I wouldn’t worry too much about this. The elites may be able to accomplish this in the short term, but in the long term, they’re just as error-prone and mortal as the next man.
Somebody tried to shoot Putin the other day. He’s one of the elites, but he bleeds the same as the rest.
The Catholic Church has lasted thousands of years based upon an idea. Because it willingly accept new members and is not a government per se, it persists.
In the same way, a group that purposefully and intelligently ministers the world is evolving. What are the consequences?
Since these people do not answer to us, only to each other, we have to believe that they will regard us eventually as basically a nuisance. It is far easier just to issue edicts than to have to appeal to voters. Voters may not like or understand the ‘plans’.
If this is a natural evolution, then so be it. We are doomed to be dominated by a global oligarchy — an oligarchy not of just people but of ideas, ideas we may not like.
“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State… For Truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity. For Law is the objectivity of the Spirit.”
— Georg Hegel
The Philosophy of History
Most modern political scientists follow Hegel, in one way or another.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Since these people do not answer to us, only to each other, we have to believe that they will regard us eventually as basically a nuisance. [/quote]
Eventually? Do you live under a rock or something?
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe