https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/05/contingency/#this-too-shall-pass
“About halfway through Thomas Piketty's 2013 barnstorming
Capital in the 21st
Century, Piketty tosses off a little insight that skewered me on the spot and
never let me go: the notion that any societal condition that endures beyond a
generation becomes "eternal" in the popular consciousness:
https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/
Piketty was referring to "primogeniture," the ancient practice of automatically
passing the family fortune onto the eldest son (or, if no son was available,
the eldest nephew). Primogeniture did important work by keeping dynastic
fortunes intact, rather than dividing them up among all children of some baron
or lord or other guillotineable monster.
Primogeniture persisted until the age of colonization, when Europe's "great
powers" stole the rest of the world. In that moment, the size of Europe's great
fortunes expanded by orders of magnitude. This vast increase in the wealth of
Europe's most murderous, remorseless looters made primogeniture obsolete. There
was so much blood-soaked money available to the nobility that
every son could
found a "great house."
After a couple generations' worth of this, the colonies were exhausted. There
were no more lands to conquer, which meant that every son could no longer
expect to found his own fortune. But for these chinless masters of the
universe, a world where every son of every rich man wouldn't get his own
dynasty was incomprehensible. To do otherwise was literally unimaginable. It
was
unnatural.
For Piketty, this explained World War I: the world's chinless inbred monsters
embarking upon an orgy of bloodletting to relieve one another of the lands –
and peoples – they'd claimed as their property in order to carry on the
"eternal" tradition of every son starting his own fortune.
It's a very important idea, and a provocative explanation for one of the 20th
Century's defining events. That's why it struck me so hard when I first read
it, but the reason it stuck with me for the decade-plus since I encountered
that it is a vital observation about the human condition: as a species, we
forget so much. Something that was commonplace a generation ago becomes
unimaginable today, and vice versa.”
Via Rod Mesa and Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
