Excerpt from my final essay for history of western civ that traces Europe’s March from the 1600’s to modernity. I called it, “The Story of the Guy Who Hitched a Plow to an Ox and Dug a Hole for the Entire World.” 😆

“As Europe grappled with antiquated and failing systems of governance, the Industrial Revolution steadily separated people from the land and put them to work in factories amid grueling conditions adding to the tensions developing between the people and those with the power to govern. This separation from the land created a crucial, often unnoticed dependence on financial systems as the primary means for satisfying one’s basic needs. In time it would become rare for a family to grow their own food and build their own house. Rather families would come to rely on employment and a complex system of functioning intermediaries (colloquially known as “the economy”) for their primary means of sustenance. Rather than physical territory, money itself would become the new realm of power, and those with the power to print it - the new global monarchs. Today, bureaucracies are the bedrock of human life, rather than actual bedrock. Nature has bowed and debt has enslaved the world.”