For most of modern history, you or I as ordinary people would have been peasants. So why aren’t we today?…

For most of modern history, you or I as ordinary people would have been peasants. So why aren’t we today? Only catastrophe really changes societies. The Black Death killed up to half of Europe. That destroyed peasantry as a way of life. /1 https://t.co/IwsS2GL5Lm

There was such a catastrophic loss of peasant workers that those that remained suddenly had the upper hand in negotiations with the landed gentry. They became mobile, paid workers, rather than indentured slaves. /2

This was such a threat to the existing status quo that Edward III issued the Statute of Laborers, in 1351. To try to rein in this new power of laborers. It’s only very short, have a read: https://t.co/O3yJc6ihmw /3

He failed, and from that failure our lives as modern workers began. It’s why you and I are no longer peasants. We saw the same thing with lesser impact, with Covid. The vaccines saved the status quo’s bacon. /4

Work from home is one of the only victories for ordinary working people that came out of Covid, and the pre-existing status quo despises it and is still trying to rein it back in. Again, only catastrophe creates meaningful change in a society. /5

The civil rights victories in the mid-20th century and in the early 20th century are often evoked as evidence that ‘people power’ was triumphant in these most modern times. Look more closely and you’ll see that catastrophes preceded all of them. Wars, plagues, pandemics. /6

For example feminism made apparently large gains in the 20th century, often attributed to protest and other activist action. Many historians will tell you that it was mostly the killing of so many men and the diminution of their influence that opened the door to that shift. /7

To shift a status quo, you first have to destroy it. It will never give up status on its own. And a status quo is all of us, not just ‘elites’ oppressing ordinary people. Take away those elites and ‘the people’ will recreate them, in quick time. /8

Why when we got rid of most kings, the people in ‘democracies’ quickly replaced them with Presidents and Emperors, and today with a variety of ‘influencers’. Status is to human society what gravity is to the material world. /end