A Recipe for Reformation

The cartoon version of the story of the Reformation is that it started with Martin Luther in 1517. I think this version of history is similar to the claim that Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492. Just as Europeans were traveling to the new world centuries before Columbus, the Catholic church never really had a true monopoly on European religion, so the Reformation really had no starting point on a timeline.

As late as 900 AD, people in Northern Europe were still venerating the ancient gods. In the 12th Century, the French King and the Pope waged war against the Cathars in southern France. Similarly, complaints about corruption in the Church sparked forerunners of the Reformation as early as 1170.

I think the present day alt-movement is really very similar to the Reformation. It stems from a general dissatisfaction with the corrupt status quo. The status quo institutions are always and everywhere corrupt, but most of the time people put up with it because they see the institutions as necessary. The institutions' parasitism is regarded, perhaps, as symbiosis, or at least, as tolerable. However, just as the Catholic indulgence industry and the blatant corruption of the Popes and Rome forced many people in Europe to see the Church as a tapeworm that needed purging, people today identify the institutions of the Enlightenment, for example, the central bank system as parasitic.

Today, the cronyism and nepotism of governments, financiers, and their lackeys in academia and the media are on full display. Financial crimes, sex crimes, and a two tiered system of justice are features of "the establishment". The systems of daily financial life are parasitic, constantly draining wealth from the peoples of the West. For many, the bank bailouts of 2008 were a jolt. They felt the parasite dig into their necks.

It's my belief that it's not just some aspects of "the system" that are problematic, rather it's a whole way of life--a religion, a philosophy--just as the Protestant Reformation was not really a quarrel about the Catholic church, or nonsense like crackers and wine, rather it was a struggle against the medieval status quo. It was also a struggle against institutions and concepts that were made defunct by new technology, e.g. the printing press.

Over the next few posts, I'll elaborate a recipe for reformation. How do you do it? How do you do something this big?

In most respects, the Protestant Reformation serves as a negative example. It was only nominally "the people" versus the medieval status quo. It was probably hijacked from the start, and perhaps became a social engineering project to further the interests of despots like Henry VIII or banking families. The leading men of the movement were probably agents of the oligarchy of the day. Also, the Reformation was an enormous bloodbath and many thousands of men, women, and children died over the most trivial arguments about religion.