DUCKPOND

Such was the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, although it too was denied by people living over a period of four or five hundred years, or however long it took, that new institutions had to be invented to retain what they could of the knowledge of the past, and to meet new social needs. The remarkable thing is that many of the medieval institutions have transcended modernity. There are many examples such as parliament, universities, surnames.

Sometimes cultural developments in institutional form did not retain their relevance in the transition to modernization. The obvious case were the monasteries. The inspiration was an escape from the world, to go to remote places, be self sustaining and pursue an inward life. The wilderness was safer from the pestilence of roaming armies attacking the entrails of the remnants of urban life. Sometimes with careful attention the wilderness flourished. Along with the prayers and the scriptoria, there was work in the outdoors. Previously physical work had only been done by slaves. Of course, there is a larger and more elaborate story, as the institution evolved over a thousand years.

Looking at this history we can see that values change, culture changes (no pun intended) and institutions change. I should immediately add that this is not an original thought. I do not understand the development, and I doubt that it is necessarily sequential or intentional at the first instance. But it is clear to me that for example Martin Luther King called for a change of values, and however necessary that might be, however accurate the diagnosis, there has to be institutional change. This type of change is of the type that Gandhi was suggesting with his notion of constructive change, although Gandhi’s proposal for independent village communities seems to have run headlong into to the force of global corporatism in such fundamental matters as control over water sources and ownership of seed rights.

Corporations are the most characteristic institutional and cultural feature of modern history. They seem to have developed a particular relationship with the nation state, which simultaneously developed democratic forms and processes. The East India Company made the early encroachments and then was superseded by the British Empire. Corporations closely linked to the Military Industrial Complex, as defined by Dwight Eisenhower, now control the mass media monopologies in the United States, who in turn control the electoral process in that country. They determine who will be a candidate, and who will not.

My rule of thumb is to be sceptical of calls for changes in values, until and unless those cultural calls are expressed in sustainable institutional forms. Secondly, the hegemony of global corporatism, it seems to me, under threat by the pressing reality of climate change. Hierarchy and decentralized technology do not mix. And, it seems there are implications for the national state, which for example must be necessarily be secondary to the planetary survival and well being. Suffice to observe, the next two hundred years will not be the same as the last two hundred years in the cultural and institutional dominance.

Postscript:

Family names do appear universal, and it seems to me their use is essentially administrative. The Roman aristocrats, eg Julius Caesar, Aurelius Augustinus (St Augustine), typically had two names. Family names according to Wikipedia were adopted in England following the Norman Conquest, and it is likely I suggest that it was the Church rather than the State that had the administrative motivation and clerical resources to record and maintain the necessary registers in the first instance.