Eccentric, idiosyncratic, aberrant, unecological House of Lords

Agricultural work is hard. When provision was adequate from the bounty of nature people didn’t choose to toil to grow crops. Just like with all other animals they foraged, hunted, gathered.

Humans overcame predation and then their numbers grew to the point where agriculture became necessary.

Once embarked upon, agriculture generated a surplus. The surplus enabled specialization, division of labor, wealth accumulation. All of that enabled a socio-economic macro layer of hyper-reality to rise above common chthonic life.

In imagination people had projected a world of gods in the heavens. The layer of macro-reality became an earthly manifestation of such. Since its rise the vast majority of people have lived in a local reality over which has hovered an upper realm, the province of an elite layer of the population, a complex characterized by states, empires, capital, technology, progress, development, power, wealth, high culture, History.

People want gods. People have a proclivity to think in terms of Heaven and Earth. High and low. High culture and folk culture. The House of Lords and the House of Commons. The latter is the province of the vast majority … who are impacted by the demands, vagaries, convulsions of the former (as they used to think was their lot vis-a-vis the realm of the gods). The commoners are conscripted; their labor and tax payments support the upper realm. But, other than that, they hardly participate in it. They read about it, but it’s alien, exotic … “up there” … “out there” … “not my concern.” They don’t participate in History.

That upper sphere, macro-reality, elite realm is eccentric, idiosyncratic. An aberrant concoction. And it’s always been grossly unecological.