expeditions to distant lands. In this case the energy of strong and active individuals was aimed not only at satisfying their needs, but in a majority of cases also met the requirements of the elite in the distribution of their influence on other countries.
Still, the Crusades remained a unique historical method of deliverance from a potent opposition at the point of economic rise in Europe. The psychological mechanism of their origin was also related to systems of comparison. Thus, wealth increased for family members who had inherited private property and land. The growth of such inequality resulting from an accumulation of causes gave birth to the desire to not fall behind in this process. Desire and motivation emerged. This was dangerous for the elite, especially those of the third generation. And what should be done with such people if they are strong, distinguished, ambitious, prepared to die to achieve greater status, to obtain property, to rule, and who no longer wish to go to their death in a Crusade?
The massive expeditions for wealth to India, China, and especially America were psychoeconomically typical. This course of events was understood by the smarter representatives of the elite in this period. They supported such expeditions. Those seeking adventure, wealth, and success followed Columbus to rich America. Columbus brought this news to Europe at a time when it needed deliverance from people who were able to destroy the rulers in more than one realm. It is no accident that historians so exaggerate the fact of Columbus’ appearance in Europe with the news of the discovery of America. America had been discovered long before Columbus, but the news of Columbus’ success was transmitted at the right moment to the right people, so that a massive epidemic of expeditions for gold and wealth was organized.
With the building of caravels, active colonization of other peoples began, bases in Africa became feasible, and thus slave trade began. The discovery of America in 1492 and of a sea route to India around Africa by Vasco da Gama in 1498, given previous successes in maritime trade, created the economic and sociopsychological mechanism for satisfying the need of strong, active and capable individuals who were inclined to take risks and increase their social and other status.
Eighty years passed between the execution of the Knights Templar and the economic mechanism that directed the energy of bold, venturesome, and strong individuals to seize new lands and become rich outside of the countries where they lived. How then at this time did the rulers of Europe control the slowly growing opposition, with the strong and active individuals of each new generation? This involved a whole series of measures, which were found in different countries for each new generation. Otherwise the elite or even the country itself might cease to exist. In this situation the elite organized themselves with greater rapidity and enthusiasm than the protests of the masses. Considering the growth of protests by the subjects, the third-generation elite greatly desired to submit to the strong elites of other countries, for it was better to be a vassal to someone stronger but preserve your wealth, than to risk losing everything and simply be hanged. Either hang your opponents with the help of the elite of other countries, or be hanged.
With the increase in the population size despite the limitation of land in the Middle Ages, an historically tested mechanism was worked out for preventing protests by strong, capable, warlike individuals. It included:
– Periodic organization of campaigns (approximately one Crusade per generation, but not less than one expedition in three generations) by such people for long distances to seize land, property, and valuables. Loyalty was thus assured of these people to the rulers of the countries where they were born and lived, along with loyalty to the church.
– Directing the aggressiveness of these people against neighboring countries, within Europe and to the extent possible, beyond the bounds of Europe. This heated up the wars within Europe, but ground down the aggressiveness of such people through their self-destruction or through satisfying their need for power or wealth by capturing these from neighboring states.
– The destruction of the paramilitary groups that no longer submitted to secular authorities and could no longer live off wars with neighboring countries. Members of these groups looked with lust upon the wealth of the kings and aristocrats of the country where they were situated, and at neighboring states. Therefore not only the execution of the Knights Templar, but also wars with its members became socially and psychologically accepted. This unified the elite of different states in the struggle with potential adversaries of their sovereignty. Thus, Poland smashed and subordinated the Teutonic Knights during the Thirteen-year War (1454-1466). The process, begun by the French King Philip the Fair at the end of the thirteenth century, was completed. Thirty years of war! Victory was only achieved with the change in the generations of the warring sides.
– Suppression of dissent by mass executions, and through the work of the Inquisition. The year 1022 saw the first mass execution of heretics in Orleans, and in 1165, the Cathar heresy was suppressed. Bogomil Vasilii was burned at the stake in 1111. In 1233, an inquisition was created to fight heresy in Languedoc. That is, together with the organization of the Crusades, the rebellious activity of potential enemies of the existing elite in certain countries was suppressed. But the struggle against heresy began with particular barbarity after the depletion of ability of the Crusades to lower the level of social unrest and before the shift of the activity of the strongest and most active individuals to conquering America, to trade with distant countries, with possibility of economic and social advance of the strong and capable under capitalism. Jan Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, and Joan of Arc was immolated in 1431. Witchcraft trials occurred in 1442. The Spanish Inquisition began active persecutions in 1481.
– Rapid unification of countries and consolidation of the elites into a single, more powerful state against protest-inclined people began. Hence in France the period of feudal disunity came to an end under the rule of Louis XI (1461-1483). During the Burgundian Wars, Burgundy united with France. Spain was unified (1469) bloodlessly, through matrimonial alliances. In this period the Habsburg dynasty led the unification of Austria, Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary (1438, Albrecht V). The elite quickly found ways to unify themselves in the face of the danger of revolts and its overthrow..
During a period of development of capitalism and relative democracy, satisfaction of the ambitions of the strong and venturesome began to occur more thanks to the natural rivalry between people. Strong and capable people naturally occupied the highest economic and social positions in the society. The social structure came into congruence with the social-psychological one.
History teaches us that if the government and the elite cannot attain a social order that would bring the social and sociopsychological structure of the society into harmony (stronger, smarter, more capable individuals occupy higher places in the social hierarchy), they are swept away and replaced by others. There’s no other choice.
Either mass executions and mass repression with obligatory excommunication of the strongest, most ambitious of their immediate social environment were needed, or else the social environment will react to those signs of power that provide evidence of who the actual leader is. This is an innate system of reactions and reflexes. It is analogous to similar reflexes in a herd of animals that acknowledge the right to leadership of the strongest. This reflex cannot be reformed. It is either necessary to step forth and hand over part of the power to the stronger and more capable, the more assertive, or else be dethroned.
After the privatization of the 1990s, in the absence of an effective mechanism of accumulation that naturally would reconcile, in a period of capitalism, the social and sociopsychological structure of the society with the replenishment of the elite by around at least 1% per year, measures are desperately needed for creating social elevators, for creating the means of elevating stronger and more capable individuals through their natural escalation on the social ladder.
Importantly, in history such means were connected to the separation of strong, active individuals capable of warlike actions from the milieu they inhabited – sending them to war in other countries (while preserving the values of that culture that they offered) engaging them in active, creative, commercial or military activity at long distances, etc. Thus, now such measures might be those at governmental scale such as conquering the North, constructing roads, massive involvement in developing water resources or facilities of utmost government importance, service in the army ( and giving those who served a land allotment or cottage in a place where the government deems necessary),