with Light to dispell it
Neofeudalism - a term used to describe present-day social stratification, transnational corporations, neo-corporatism, globalization, labor and immigration policies - is involved in problems of wealth distribution arising from the huge social changes caused by modern industrial and technological revolutions. Neofeudalism focuses mainly on economics, but it also includes other geopolitical issues such as the earth's environment, human rights, and security which concern entire societies, states, transnational entities, regional divisions such as North versus South, "developed" versus "developing", "undeveloped" or "failed" states.
Feudalism is usually associated in the minds of most western-educated people with the Middle Ages in Europe where landholders, lords of estates and castles, effectively owned the serfs or peasants who worked the land and undertook the crafts and services required. Social, class and wealth disparities were quite well-defined. Such traditional land-based feudalism is still found in some parts of the world.
However, neofeudalism is not primarily based on land ownership, but rather on the industrial, technological and knowledge-based ownership of the means to produce goods and services. Its serfs or peasants are called workers or employees. The shift of neofeudalism from ties to the land gave rise to massive population migration and dislocation, generally described as urbanization, with the explosive growth of cities in modern times. Neofeudal business interests have generally located their operational headquarters near centers of state political power, while their factories and offices have been located in, or near, cities where landless serfs looking for employment have migrated and provided ready labor for their new corporate lords.
Neofeudalism especially defines the way business interests, and particularly transnational groups, actively push their private agendas using political-action committees and lobbying across all political parties to influence state policies. The projected result of private, wealthy individuals legally using their connections to strongly influence state policies for personal gain may be seen as an automatic, machine-like, or unintentional neofeudalism. But although private business interests may work with all political parties and appear to be non-aligned in the promotion of their agendas, they do give the impression of there being a cabal, conspiracy or closed, secret society intentionally guiding state and global policies. Such pressures on state and global politics by a wealthy elite are pushing towards a new kind of feudalism with a newly defined social structure.
The crucial question is how far private, corporate interests are allowed to override the public interest as supposedly expressed through free, fair, open democratic elections. A so-called "democracy" in which elected politicians are bought and influenced by private business interests is a deceptive democracy with a sham ritual of democratic voting which merely provides a cover for an oligarchy to rule by covertly influencing policies that are then not in the interests of the voting public! Public ignorance of the issues at stake also allows private interests, which certainly do know the issues at stake, to sway public opinion against the general public's own interests! Deceptive advertising, the secrecy of corporate information and knowledge, and the proffering of goods, services and jobs as sweeteners can sway voters.
Perhaps people do get the government they deserve due to their ignorance of the issues involved. If people identify themselves as job-serfs, peasants in need of work, they are likely to give rise to feudal lords who either will or will not provide them with their needs. Is this the way things inevitably work out for human cultures? Many people seem happy to be peasants or serfs, with a house to live in, a job to give them a decent lifestyle, and that's all.
Neofeudalism looms over the global horizon because we have not understood history and are condemned to repeat it! The key to our own personal dilemmas, as well as those of humanity as a whole, lies in our thorough understanding of the past, and not being ignorant of it.
If our visions, perspectives and worldviews can open and broaden out sufficiently to give us a feeling of unity, or community, with people worldwide - and if we understand that others are struggling with essentially the same dilemmas as our own - then we may discover a fertile field with vast resources, strength and health opening up which has been repeatedly plowed and turned over, or revolutionized before by our human struggles throughout history and geography. Such a re-membering, or the seeing of our selves as members of the whole human phenomena, or manifestation throughout time and space, can give our psyche, or soul, tremendous roots to nourish, renew and invigorate our health and well-being in new ground. Such deep and new foundations are required to bring a new day dawning with light shed freely on all throughout the whole world and boundlessly beyond.
Neofeudalism, or slavery, cannot loom and cast its shadow over those who understand such an open, free vision from the light or life within. This illuminating light within each of us is not the private property of any global elite or illuminati. It is our own life of self-sacrifice and understanding that lights our way through this world of the shadow of death. Until this is realized people will repeatedly look to others for that which they have misplaced or lost from themselves. This is why they are enslaved under the shadow of others in feudalistic, and again in neofeudalistic, systems over which they have no control. Such systems can be called the matrix, the machine or Big Brother. When we see and realize this, no matter where we find our selves in the system, we will be free from the dark shadow it casts over us, fearing it not. Only then are we boundlessly free to begin authentic lives anew on authentic grounds, not prescribed by others, but fully ours in a New Heaven, a New Earth, a New Creation.
http://current.com/community/93143486_american-neofeudalism-old-world-order-or-new-world-order.htm
http://www.historyonthenet.com/Medieval_Life/feudalism.htm#The_King
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neofeudalism
