In mediaeval Europe, the rich and powerful lived in castles divorced from the reality of everyday country life. Today, the rich live in electronic castles divorced from the reality of street life. 

Their mansions, villas or huge lofts are situated in specially developed and secure areas. These castles are not only protected by their very location, police rounds on request, state-of –the-art fencing and aggressive dogs, but particularly by electronic devices: these are used to keep the reality of street life out (e.g. cameras, electronic gates, code-operated locks)  or to establish virtual contact with their powerful and wealthy equals.

Obey and Believe 

In mediaeval Europe, the rich and powerful controlled the landless masses by a combination of armed might and religious fright. In our democracies - few and far between as they are – the populace is not generally held down by these methods. Instead, a far more sophisticated and most clever combination of these two previously separate roles nowadays produces similar effects. In fact, the very goal of life and one’s self-worth are now reduced to and justified by the ability to purchase goods in ever-growing quantities. The fear of unemployment  – i.e. the fear to lose a reason for living rather than losing life -  proves to be at least as strong as plain repression: one is not only controlled in one’s earthly behaviour by the need to be a valued worker bee, most people add self-control as an extra means to secure a place in the system. This behaviour is coupled with the religious characteristics of materialism: for those who obey and believe, today’s facts and realities are but a bleak prefiguration of tomorrow’s possibilities and opportunities. Your promise of heaven is the latest hi-tech toy, without which you do not exist.

Although the average 21st century consumer owns more in terms of material value than the richest 14th century lord (land and house excluded), these possessions have not yielded power. People are simply given the illusion that their mortgaged house and all their goods bought on credit make them part of a share owning, property owning democracy. The masses simply accumulate property and goods for their own consumption and to keep their lives going.  However, possession can only lead to power when it is used for expansion, growth and multiplication, i.e. when it also affects other people’s lives.

Which knowledge? 

On top of that, the cleverest trick has been for those in control to convince the powerless that they do have power because of their unparalleled access to information. Repeating the slogan “Knowledge is power” ad nauseam, the powerful always forget to add that only certain types and certain levels of knowledge may lead to power. A supplementary condition is that this knowledge must  be backed by funds and well-defined strategies. A genius as such does not have power.  The accumulation of all the knowledge of a regular school career does not equal power. Moreover, few seem to realise that the information they access they have requested through the conditioning a multimedia world has placed on them.

Their free choices (so they believe) are in fact imposed thought patterns using the same highly developed techniques  by which they are sold whichever washing powder the makers want them to buy. A lifestyle, a political philosophy, a moral viewpoint, it’s all the same to the image makers.

In their electronic castles, the  “idea people” and the makers of dreams reign supreme over their serfs surfing untold amounts of provided information that they do not understand, do not need and will never give them any power. This is even more true now that the economic paradigm modelled by the new castle lords has successfully killed off all other paradigms world-wide, including parliamentary democracy. 

© Jim RILEY, musician & manager (London) & Eddy BONTE. 

First version written in 2002. The Dutch translation was politely refused by Flemish daily De Morgen. Meanwhile, "electronic castles" are now also being built in Belgium. 

Read also: H. Belmessous, “Voyages à travers les forteresses des riches”, in: Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2002.

(ed. 02Sept2007)