Kipling’s Century-Old Warning About The Chaos And Mass Manipulation We See Today
Kipling’s Century-Old Warning About The Chaos And Mass Manipulation We See Today
How we’re voluntarily falling victim to the gods of the marketplace once more
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.—Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
If you’ve spent any time studying history, you’re well aware of the line too often used that history repeats itself. Others say it doesn’t exactly repeat, it just rhymes.
Perhaps that’s a good place to start, because we’ll be looking at poetic verse that’s tragically prescient for our times. It involves grand self-delusion and ignoring certain truths until our world turns into chaos around us.
This could be the story of any addict, but it just happens our tale today echoes a collapse which occurred about a hundred years ago.
In 1919, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that hid an epic betrayal of the people of his time by the ruling elite they’d followed and trusted. These citizens had been promised a greater economic system, forever peace, a new world, and prosperity. But they got the opposite.
Europe lay in ruins from WWI.
Governments were impoverished with war debt.
Millions were dead, including Kipling’s own son, that he’d pushed to become a commissioned officer.
Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings, references the headings on books used as penmanship lessons for children. Kids would copy these headings over and over.
But these weren’t just any sentences. These statements contained eternal truths from life, religion, and logic. The aim was to better a child’s character as they improved their skill with handwriting.
But eternal truths from the Gods of the Copybook Headings were a bit…boring and underwhelming. As Kipling eloquently rhymes:
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
The Gods of the Marketplace developed better, faster, and less painful ways to live, without the tribulations of the old-fashioned truths. These gods, or leaders, set an order to bind Europe together with economics, theory, and blood.
These new gods promised a brilliant world of perpetual peace and plenty. War was now a relic of past times.
Blood, Money, And Theory
“Now, as then, the march of globalization has lulled us into a false sense of safety. Countries that have McDonald’s, we are told, will never fight each other.”
— The Rhyme of History: Lessons From The Great War, Margaret McMillan
Professor of economics Margaret McMillan says the time before WWI started, compared to today looked similar in many ways. It was a time of globalization with tight economic ties and trade. Mass migration took place, along with great improvements to tech, communication, and transportation.
Albert Einstein was formulating the Theory of General Relativity.
Steamships, trains, telegraphs, and the first airplanes appeared.
The world became interconnected by travel and communication like never before.
The economic and technological ties appeared like an unbreakable link forged by the Gods of the Marketplace. With this in mind, McMillan says one of the most popular books of 1909–10 was The Great Illusion by Norman Angell.
The illusion referenced by Angell was that there was a possibility of a great war.
Nations were too tightly bound economically, so it would be against their wallet’s interest to go to war. Germany and England were each other’s biggest trading partner.
Even if war broke out, it would be short, because it’d prove to be too expensive.
Large scale war hadn’t happened in Europe since the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Since that time, more than three hundred arbitrations were worked out from 1794 to 1914.
If all this failed, McMillan also reminds us the monarchs controlling all of Europe’s great powers were related by blood. Cousins, aunts, and uncles would never fight. Obviously, anyone who’s ever brought up politics at Thanksgiving would know this is a ridiculous notion.
A war eventually kicked off that lasted about four years, despite the architecture designed to stop it. According to the Gilder Lehram Institute of American History:
“World War I killed more people — more than 9 million soldiers, sailors, and flyers and another 5 million civilians — involved more countries — 28 — and cost more money — $186 billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs — than any previous war in history…It left at least 7 million men permanently disabled.”
One of the nine million lost was John Kipling, Rudyard’s youngest son. The poet used connections to win him a commission and get him involved in the war. Rudyard went from writing propaganda for the British government, to penning the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the Gods of the Marketplace from creating their architecture to make a better world, they’re still at it today.
Printing Money, Linking A World By Trade, And No More War
The idea that Western style economics and the prosperity it can bring will dull the drums of war is far from true. The notion that countries that have McDonald’s present would never fight was also shattered on February 24, 2022 when Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
While sanctions and economic penalties followed, designed to dry up Russia’s monetary resources, the war continued unabated. McDonald’s (MCD) itself even left Russia entirely in May of 2022 as punishment.
A Russian comedian in reply thanked America for removing Coca Cola, McDonald's, and KFC, saying, “Now by summer we will be healthy, strong and without ass fat.”
The same strategy was employed with China twenty years ago. The Gods of the Marketplace believed if China were brought into the trading world and became part of the World Trade Organization, they’d become less totalitarian. As this article from the Brookings Institute points out in 2001:
“A rapidly modernizing economy is likely to generate gradually growing pressure for political change, away from one-party, authoritarian rule…Although China has been conducting popular elections at the village level for more than a decade, at least another decade or two of sustained economic growth probably will be required before a more pluralistic political system begins to emerge.”
The Gods of the Copybook Headings would point out our McDonald’s policy of world order might not prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or them exporting their totalitarian policy abroad.
We’ve also been sold another bill of goods about the economic system. Namely, you can print enough money to bail yourself out of any jam. Kipling mentions this in his poem too, since crippling government debt was something he lived through.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
In our time, during COVID-19 lockdowns the U.S. Government printed unprecedented amounts of money. Questions about inflation from doing so were blown off. When inflation did occur, it was called “transitory” in 2021, with a belief it would only be here for a bit — then poof — be gone.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen later admitted she was incorrect about this. Although recently the media has lined up with an all too coordinated story, claiming inflation is fixed because it stopped rising, and we’ve achieved a “soft landing.”
The problem is: if you’ve gained 150lbs, then stop adding weight, you’re still 150lbs overweight. It doesn’t matter if your money is getting less worthless, when it’s already lost so much of its value.
Investment guru Ray Dalio in his economics video The Changing World Order, explains printing money has collapsed the past two dominant global empires (The Dutch and British), and is now causing the American Empire to teeter. Dalio says this is a recurring cycle.
The cycle starts with a conflict, usually a war, which establishes a new leading world power, and a global order around them. This is followed by a time of relative peace. This is due to a mixture of war fatigue, and a lack of a strong enough challenger to dislodge the leader.
The leading power captures a large share of global trade, and their currency becomes the main medium of exchange. It’s then established as the reserve currency all other nations want to trade in. This brings more money into the leading power, causing an economic bubble and trouble.
The bubble eventually bursts, causing economic difficulty.
The government chooses to print money instead of addressing the true issues. This money can purchase less, and their power diminishes.
Outside rivals step up to challenge. Usually a war starts, then this cycle begins again with a new leader.
It’s depressing, but Dalio believes we can head off the end of this cycle with more disciplined economic policies. Although Kipling is a bit more pessimistic. A recent event is causing me to lean more towards Kipling’s view.
A Narrative Pushed By The Media And Accepted Happily
The 2024 United States Presidential election cycle is unlike anything I’ve seen or even read about. The most galling part being about the current president. It’s not difficult to see he’s mentally diminished, slow, and confused.
Although we were continually told that wasn’t the case. Videos proving this were called cheap fakes. The presidential staff admitted his public appearances were only set between noon and four pm weekdays with weekends off because he was too tired.
While it was obvious to many he wasn’t mentally there, people in front of the cameras jointly told us in unison he was “sharp as a tack.” But that proved laughable in a disastrous debate with his rival a short time later. Suddenly media groups took a 180.
It was like a truth light turned on and these organizations magically started doing their job. There’s also no way they didn’t know this ahead of time. Either they’re totally incompetent, or were working with the government to cover for the president’s diminished state. Both are damning.
But there’s one more element. Many wanted that narrative the media was spinning, just like Rudyard Kipling wanted the British Empire’s narrative — until disaster shook him out of his fever dream.
We voluntarily feed the Gods of the Marketplace, so we can only fall victim to them when we go along with the charade.
We want to believe terrible regimes will see the light once they have Netflix, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and a pair of Nikes.
We want to believe we can print as much money as we want with no regard to debt or inflation.
We want to believe money and trade will tame the demon inside humanity that’s summoned in the activity of war.
But eternal truths never go away no matter how much we wish them to, and the Gods of the Marketplace are bound to fall. Once they do, it results in conflagrations like WWI and WWII. Or as Kipling puts it:
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Hopefully, we don’t follow the same course. The Gods of the Copybook Headings may not be as forgiving with a World War III.
-Originally posted on Medium 8/12/24