A) Fiddling while Rome burns.

Fiddling while Rome Burns has become more of a metaphor than a historical reference to an actual event where an elite member and his entourage, consciously did something satisfying, to themselves whilst avoiding doing something to save the capital city of the Roman Empire from burning. Reality in the form of a natural phenomenon (fire) was destroying the social ideology of the might of Rome and the brilliance of its Imperial rulers. However, the metaphor stands for the inhumane lack of concern shown by elites for the people they govern. Homes and civic infrastructure burning to the ground is of little concern to those who have multiple homes and multiple resources located in safe places. The estrangement from their human essence as an intelligent species, afflicts all members of competitive, class-based hierarchical mass societies, albeit in different ways and with differing intensities. Nevertheless, the saying does cover a very real phenomenon due to the wealth and power gap between the elites in such societies and the ordinary citizens subject to their power and privileged life-stylel.

The hierarchical form of mass society, with elites in control of the social mechanisms of power and privilege, have always had the ability to do something or to do nothing about situations which are existentially detrimental to the mass of ordinary citizens of such societies. The 21st century is no different in this regard. Currently, the burning and destruction of homes, infrastructure, lives and livelihoods of ordinary people in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Ukraine is being achieved directly by missiles, bombs and drones; indirectly by the interruption of supply chains. Both of which are the results of the direct and indirect actions of elites in Israel, USA, and Russia, and direct and indirect inactions by European elites. This destruction is merely a repetition of elite action and inaction during the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. However, the 21st century ‘fiddling’ is not being done on an alleged stringed instrument, as was conjectured in ancient Rome, but by bribes, contract deals, investments in war production, speculating in Bitcoin creation and real-estate futures and purchases.

Another lucrative ‘fiddle’ has been by the practice of taking advantage of incidental or deliberate shortages of essential materials such as food or fuel, in order to artfully raise prices. Despite the many differences, between ancient Imperial Rome’s elites and Modern Capitalist elites, the hierarchical mass society system still functions in the way it was always intended to do, ever since it began in ancient Sumer, Egypt, Persia, Greece and then Rome. From their formation the ancient elites manipulated and eventually cleverly perfected the scam of monopolising control of nature and its resources. Since that beginning, the function of such societies is to enable the enrichment of their elites by benefitting from the employment of the labour power of their working populations. In exchange for working people being minimally fed, clothed and housed (along with their families); either in the form of slaves, semi-slaves, landed tenants, or wage/salary slaves, their main activities were to produce wealth for the elite classes.

The substance of scam initiated by the above noted historical elites, is revealed by the fact that humanity had previously employed themselves in collective groups for millions of years of hominid and Homo sapien evolution to live off the land, lakes, rivers and sea, which no individual or species monopolized or ‘owned’. Moreover, those global hunter-gatherers who remained outside hierarchical control still did so until the 16th and 17th centuries and of course, a remaining few still do. In contrast, the terms and conditions imposed by hierarchical mass society elites for providing such alternative ersatz employment has always been decided by the governing elites. This has led to the relative or absolute impoverishment of the working masses and the poor, throughout that hierarchical mass society history. Hierarchical control or purchasing all the land, rivers and seas (and since these are the only sources of nutrition and useful materials) this has meant that the bulk of humanity has little or no alternative source of obtaining such essential resources.

The historic elite scam of producing and monopolising essential aspects of life on earth, such as thinking and doing, has been perfected by the capitalist mode of production. Incidentally, the fact that some modern elites are buffoons and incompetents whilst others are more calculated and systematic in their manouvres and military annexations and predations, is no different than was made clear by Edward Gibbons’s in his lengthy study ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’. The historical record going as far back as ancient Greece indicates that hierarchical mass society elites were, and are, no different in that idiocy and incompetence regard also.

The war against Iran.
The genocidal alliance of the elites of Israel and the USA has now added Lebanon and Syria, to its list of Gaza and the West Bank to ethnically cleanse and occupy. Behind the decisions to attack Iran, lie the elite visions of a Greater Israel and a Greater America which are no longer a closed door discussion but openly admitted. Lebanon, Iran and even Turkey, are targets for a Greater Israel project; Canada, Venezuela and Cuba are viewed as logical targets for a Greater (Make America Great Again) America for invasion, occupation and control by the Trump and Netanyahu cliques.
Whilst, Trump’s strategy in this first phase of crush Iran, seems to be no more advanced than is needed to play a drunken game of ‘chicken’ Tiddly Winks, with military buttons standing in for plastic ones and yet he and his backers already seem closest to chickening out or managing to make a humiliating loss appear as a strategic win. In contrast, the Iranian elites are playing a disciplined but ruthless form of economic and military chess, albeit with a more limited number of pieces, but plenty of sacrificial pawns; with the straits of Hormuz being one of them. On balance the Islamist elites  appear to be winning this first round of who are to forcibly govern the rest of us.

Natayahu is playing his usual game of a multiplayer Russian Roulette with himself and his Zionist followers deploying willing Israelis to commit war crimes and genocide in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria on behalf of his Zionist ruling Cabal. They seem to be determined to become more than just a rogue fascistic mythical ‘chosen’ nation. The real war-time fact is that the Zionist elites in charge of Israel, are hell bent upon building a middle-eastern ‘Greater Israel’ empire ruled by Zionists of Jewish identity. No multi-cultural liberal capitalist democracy for them. Such a project is certainly ambitious in the 21st century, bearing in mind that the previous Ottoman and Islamic empires also governing most of that territory, failed to survive into the 20th century. Israel’s attempts at doing any better, does not bode well for themselves or anybody in the path of their American supplied weapons.

Indeed, that prospect would be a complete anathema to all other peoples who aspire to retain some – if not all – remnants of the humanity inspired by the popular resistance to the National Socialist empire-building of a Greater Germany. That same war also ended the ‘allied’ Japanese Empire building project in Asia. So how long an exclusively Jewish one, even if initially successful, could survive in the middle-east is perhaps indicated by the following fact. Even with the American dysfunctional elite-run putitive empire on its side for the last 70 plus years of funding and weapons, it could not subdue the Palestinian, non-state popular resistance in Gaza, let alone those resistence fighters populating Lebanon or Iran. Whatever, the individual or collective level of narcissistic self-indulgence of the various global elites and their respective fantasies; empires since the 19th century have been on the decline, not on an upward trajectory .

The conditions for the existence of empires no longer exist. Empires, only succeeded in the past when most parts of the human occupied world only had hunter-gatherers and pastoralist peoples, to resist and oppose them, not armed and militarised nations, willing to resist. The 21st century reality is that the relative strengths of the declining large-scale nation states such as Russia, China and the USA has altered and along with that relative strength alteration, so too have their alliances. The surface phenomenon at the moment is the Israeli-led war against Iran with a section of the US elite enthusiastically in tow, but the within the mayhem of this missile and drone conflagration is a historic economic and military re-adjustment of hierarchical mass society nation-based elites.

The elites, in China, and Russia are asserting their economic and military prowess (institutionalised in the form of BRICS) and asserted during the Iran war and the US elites (institutionalised in the form of a collapsing NATO) are further draining their own. The end of this Iran war, will merely formalise what has already occurred and witness a consolidation of the elites in China as the dominant world power. In contrast, the USA, elites, of all political persuasions will replicate the demise of the British Empire elites after the Second World War. Historically, powerful elites, from Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome also drained themselves of resources and support, whilst desperately trying to save and retain their relative economic and military status. This hubris (insolent pride of superiority) and nemesis (eventual failure and retribution) is a common narcissistic socially transmitted arrogance which infects those elites socialised within many hierarchical mass society forms of human aggregations.

The elite in Iran, may or may not retain its lucrative control of the Hormuz straits, but in surviving this mutual, malignant negation of humanity claimed as liberation from authoritarianism they will, like the elites of Israel, have drained their human and infrastructural resources along with their citizens patience with enduring outdated and humiliating hierarchical and patriarchal forms of rule. The endless wars by Israel to increase their control over middle eastern land and natural resources are proving self-destructive. Plus it should not be forgotten that armed nation states (large, medium and small exist everywhere and furthermore their elites are now first and foremost at war with their own citizens over who gets what in the hierarchical mass society system. The biological and ecological system can no longer sustain the demands made upon it by elites.

Maintaining previous and current levels of production, consumption and pollution is unsustainable. Class wars, within, national wars without are therefore, inevitable. Those recurring skirmishes remain the dormant first fronts of the coming class wars of elites versus their working citizens. The second front of this global class war is between elite alliances and the rest of the life on earth species. The pursuit of elite interests throughout the globe is extracting, processing and consuming more from nature than nature can reproduce. This process of competitive, extraction, production, consumption and pollution on an international scale is creating climate change, extreme weather events, essential species loss, viral spillover events, systemic human and infrastructure poverty and degradation and global discontent.

Here too the ‘Fiddling whilst Rome Burns’ analogy can be applied because of the fact that all the elites on all sides, are treating the ordinary citizens in their own countries and the citizens of their enemies countries, not as the essential producers of nutrition, clothing, shelter, energy, culture, education, safety and entertainment, for our species, but as an unlimited layer of pawns to be replaced when the last lot have been swept off the board of national existence, by drone, bomb, or missile strikes. But an additional layer of Fiddling whilst life on earth is burning or failing is with regard to the whole existence of life on earth. Elite hands and brains in militarily advanced countries are already enhancing nuclear capabilities, whilst fingers are already hovering close to Nuclear Option buttons.

The elite mentality, which surfaced long ago in the history of hierarchical mass societies and reappeared in the form of defeated Nazism, and Christian Zionist end-time nihilism, still has a following among estranged and dehumanised citizens of modern hierarchical mass societies considers that; ‘if our side can’t win and rule the world; then let’s kill everyone on all sides’. That sentiment in the mind of a demented ruler who asks for nuclear codes, means that there is now, a chemical, biological or nuclear means, of actually doing so. That is the logic of the hierarchical mass society system when it is governed by hierarchical elites and others who have been so estranged and maladjusted by their process of class socialisation, that their own (and others) dying is preferred to existance as a non-privileged and average human being.

Killing and harming other humans because of honour, anger, religious or national duty or ‘following orders’ has only become a pattern of human behaviour due to the dehumanising results of hierarchical mass society living. Think about it! Take a moment to think about the following sentence! No other species of life on earth has resorted to that self-destructive pattern of behaviour in pursuit of ensuring that the metabolic necessities of living are regularly obtained. Only the human species systematically kills large numbers of it’s own species and large numbers of other species, not for urgent need, but for greed. Those are not the results of biological species living but of hierarchical mass sociological living.

Note also that the elites within these systems, when not involved in military wars, (the so-called peacetime periods) their targets may be marginally different, but their actions are fundamentally the same. The ‘normal’ non-military activities of hierarchical mass society socio-economic efforts involve extraction, production, consumption and pollution is still on such a scale that it is disturbing, degrading, destroying and destabilising the biospheres inorganic and organic resources of land, sea, air, rivers, lakes, plants, insects and animals, and, doing so on a 24/7 basis. Yet these inter-dependent and integrated biological species life-cycles are the ‘natural’ efforts which sustain and support the whole bio-chemical and ecologically balanced system of life on earth!

Since the social history of hierarchical mass societies, has been recorded in language and literature it has too often been assumed that human societies and their language and thinking processes are part of a qualitatively different process and domain from the biology of the rest of living nature. Anthropocentric ideology assumes that, unlike the rest of the non-human species, humanity owes its uniqueness to its own social structures of language, technology and scientific thinking. A majority of the human species, if they think about it at all, guided by religious and secular elites, think that humanity has moved on from ‘crude’ nature and left the biological origins of nature and the rest of the non-human species behind. If even someone as critical and self-critical as Karl Marx could write;

“An animal only produces itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature…and therefore he contemplates himself in a world he has created.” (Marx. 1844 Manuscripts. Section: Estranged Labour.)

This 19th century assertion by Marx is patently not true. An animal doesn’t only produce itself. It produces and recycles its habitat and its own death has produced the source of nutritional content for many other life-forms. Furthermore, human beings don’t reproduce the whole of nature. On the contrary, the whole of nature, reproduces, the whole of nature and the biology of nature as a whole reproduces humans. We can see from this extract (and others) that 19th century anti-capitalist human intellectuals and activists had neither fully understood nature nor fully understood its own species absolute dependence upon the bio-chemical and biological structure of life on earth. Sadly, this lack of understanding also extends to those who claim to follow Marx without yet even recognising his own personal and the general 19th century intellectual limitations.

Consequently, this and the sections yet to be published, will once again consider the biological essence of all forms of life on earth, including the fundamental biological essence of human social systems and the biological essence of human thinking and the forming of our collective social ideas and ideologies. Previous generations had been taught to think that all this human uniqueness was created by divine magic. Later secular thinking considered that humanity had created it’s own uniqueness, by its ability to think and produce complex machines and among those thinking that way was my own economic analysis hero Karl Marx

But we also now know that human thoughts and experiences including speaking, writing and manufacturing complex systems, arise from human sensory perceptions of our environments, via specialised biological cells in our eyes, skin, bones and combined in biological organs such as ears, vocal chords and neo-cortical cellular matter. These sensory perceptions, moreover, are also circulated via bio-chemical nerve chains, dendrites, synaptic gaps and other brain-linked bio-chemical cell clusters. All these biological assets, no matter how sophisticated they have become in various species, are all evolutionary developments of the bio-chemical biology of multicellular organisms.

Human thinking as well as human actions are the biological results and responses which are bio-chemically processed within and between biological cellular links and connections. This biological fact remains so however socially saturated or reinforced they have become, with collective knowledge accretions. Even socially mediated and modified thoughts are the still the product of one or more biologically, multi-cellular functioning species members contributing to the collective understanding or misunderstanding. This complex and sophisticated evolution of organic life on earth, from the single celled bacteria type organisms to large and multi-talented multi-cellular species of life on earth – including the human species – is truly amazing! But far from perfect! Far more amazing, than any previous myths or mystetious ‘origins’, of life on earth, imagined by our distant historical religious or secular ancestors, who imagined an imaginary form of perfection.

Moreover, we know that even the many sided social inputs on understandings – even at their best – are not perfect representations of reality. Indeed, many external bio-chemical and social events and substances accidentally or intentionally administered can interfere, with the quantity and quality of these biologically acquired sense perceptions, memory storage systems and their memory stored conclusions. It is well known and documented that drugs, alcohol, emotions (such as love, hate, fear), loyalty, rewards, peer group pressure, religious preferences, hope’s, age and threats can effect the perceptions, memories and understandings we all take away from our experiences of life on earth. These influences and influencers effect what we may then transmit to friends, family and other members of our communities.

In class-based societies, class-based, gender and ethnic preferences and prejudices, make it difficult to know who or what to trust for reliable information. As a consequence of this universal problem the philosopher Bertrand Russell advised those – who would listen – that whenever we have seriously studied anything and we are sure of our due diligence in selecting appropriate evidence and in reaching our considered conclusions then, we should still maintain our certainty – but at the same time maintain it with a measure of doubt‘. That way our own individual and social limitations will be open to the emergence of further evidence and alternative understandings and help circumvent our entry into the twin cul-de-sacs of dogma and confirmation-biased thinking.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2026)