How the world worked back when the world worked

Back when the world worked, the world consisted of a few menⁱ, generally not under 30 and generally not over 60, in possession of sufficient capital (financial, yes, but not just financial - culturalⁱⁱ, also, and social as well) to dominate the rest of society.ⁱⁱⁱ

For these men's convenience there existed in the world such things as train porters, as well as such things as women. The term "women" is ambiguous, as it denotes two different types of item : one of which was used as a living deed^iv, tokenizing patrimonial agreements that spawned generations (these would be called wives to resolve the ambiguity) ; the other of which was used as entertainment, and to explore the possibilities of the human body (these would be called many things, for obvious reasons). For these men's convenience there existed also composers, such as Wagner, who composed, items such as Tannhauser. And everything else.

And idem for these men's convenience the women to be used exploratorily and to be called many things (for obvious reasons) were assembled in a corps of themselves, and held to participate in every single Opera. Because every Opera had to have a ballet in it, so the girls could show off their bodies. Because doesn't it make sense, if you're keeping a pretty young thing or two like all your friends also do, to put them all together in a large pile and make them move synchronously once a week ? Seems the very core of sensibility.

And that ballet was not to occur during the first act, because the men were still over at Grand Cafe, which was a special building existing entirely for their convenience. Just like the Opera. But then Wagner had to put the fucking ballet in the first act because he was a special sort of nutty fuck, and so he got booed out of Paris, over which matter he got all butthurt, instead of understanding the errors of his ways like a sane fucking person living in a working world would have.

And it's been going downhill ever since. But we're working on fixing things, if that's any consolation. It might take a while however. Yet however long it might take - not like there's anything else worth doing, nor like there's any practical alternative of any sort or description. Just - if you have any sort of talent, or intelligence, or personal worth or value of any kind - try as best you can not to be another Wagner. The world is broken enough as it is.

1. This term denotes the gender, rather than the sex of the involved individuals. It is not merely right and proper, but absolutely necessary that the world be made up of male gendered individuals, lest it devolves into some variation of a wasp colony. Contrary to what your ignorance (of the world as well as of yourself) might lead you to believe, nobody actually wants to live in a wasp colony, least of all the wasps themselves. They just don't know how to get out. We do. [↩]
2. This bears two prongs. On one hand, their possession of cultural capital in the sense of "artistic" follows from the very definition of art. On the other hand, cultural capital in the sense of "scientific" is trickier, largely because reality provides some degree of checking on the results. That degree is altogether not very large, mind you, as amply exemplified by the recent pseduo-scientific debacles of "global warming", "women's studies", "democracy" and so forth.

   Nevertheless, the remainder, as thin as it may be, is still the principal eater of worlds that otherwise appear to be working and as such it is always an excellent idea to ensure that every member of your elite, whatever that may be, is capable of designing fridges and explaining how bull riding whores work and what a p-n junction is and so forth. [↩]

3. This is the important point : not "how much" as some sort of absolute term (which absolute is necessarily meaningless) but, in the Bitcoin fashion, how much as a relative share of the total. One that did not control at least x% of the total available money would not qualify for manhood and that's the whole story.

   The exact value of that x was established through a relatively simple procedure : take a specific meeting venue (such as an unnamed Parliament, or the Opera de Paris, whose Jockey Club provided the impetuus for this article, or whatever other definite item in that vein), fill it up, and the x of the last admitted is the qualifying x. Thus, in a society of 100 heads (how many feet does a society of 100 heads have ?) living on an island worth altogether a thousand [Bit]coins, where the foremost owns 69 coins' worth (6.9%) and the next 5.1% and the next 4.7% and then 4.4 and 4.2 and 3x 4.1 and 8x 4.0 and the rest 84 together the remainder 30.4%, the world will be made up of anyone who can show ownership of 40 coins, and that's that.

   If this island exists in a universe where the Dunbar number's over 16, and the practicalities of geometry, human anatomy and other physical considerations allow halls to be built to comfortably house 16 people, then that island may support a world that actually works. If for whatever reason these prerequisites are not satisfied, the world you dreamed up will not work, and it will not work irrespective of any manipulations, considerations, aspirations or aferations. It simply won't, because it simply can't, because that's what it is.

   On a cursory examination, the extremely flat nature of the "Western democracies", with their flat profiles and drastically insufficient inequality makes it impossible to construct a working Western world. This is not only empirically obvious, but also, from what my ISIS-involved readership informs me, a problem in the process of being fixed (in the usual way). [↩]

4. Very much like an entry in deedbot's ledger would work today. [↩]