History is a series of variations on basic feudalism, with limited exceptions during which serfs threw off the worst of their shackles for some years in the sun, before being pilloried and stood on once more. Wealth is always most effectively accumulated through the indentured labor of others, so indenturing will remain the default. As most humans are too apathetic to kick others in the gut without instruction, or too decent to do so, there are relatively few lords, and always a vast number suffering under these lords’ psychopathies.

We have probably just had a rare period in the sun, stimulated when the worst excesses of colonialism, European fascism, communism, and a couple of world wars sort of coincided to lay bare the harm that unbridled power can do to others. The decay of Western democracies apparent over the past several years, including the weaknesses shown through compliance with Covid-related human rights abuses, suggests dimming memories are allowing the feudal norm to return.

Several decades of rapidly increasing inequality in wealth within Western societies have given this a sense of inevitability. However, tempting as it is to seek victimhood, we still have the freedom to highlight it and push back. This means we are still way better off than almost ever before. …

This all means we need to fight for ourselves, not complain about others failing us. And we need to pace ourselves and not claim the apocalypse is upon us whenever a distant United Nations bureaucrat writes some drivel or our supposed heroes prove more interested in serving the status quo. We also need to be really firm and resolute, because they will keep doing this and the struggle is not going away. Weekly apocalypses are exhausting.

The deep problems we see are not about to be solved – we are in a never-ending battle against the default societal model. This involves fighting to keep our present window of relative decency open, not to implement paradise. We are not in unusual times – we are fighting the same people with the same motivations – those who rise to the top by being more callous than others or were born there, and mistake their own profound human weaknesses for strength and divine right.

The sun will keep rising, despite the efforts of malicious miscreants to dim it. The first priority must be to hold onto that, and enjoy it, as those before us did in far worse times. Expect to be betrayed fairly often, because it would be weird if we weren’t. Humanity is what it is. If we put our faith in the transcendence of integrity and actual love over all the dross, then we have picked the side that never loses. There is an obvious reason why it hasn’t, which comes back to who really holds the ultimate power in all this. We then have a reason to fight and a platform from which to do so.