4 ms·

Aristocrats are able to focus on the arts, culture, politics. They are the next level of social evolution.

• barry-cotter 7y ago
  The joy of economic growth is that it enables more and more of us to live the lives of leisure that were the preserve of aristocrats in times past. If you want to live in what Wilde or Adams would have recognised as material comfort and devote yourself to the life of the mind you can get an undemanding part fine job, live in cheap housing and spend the rest of your time at leisure. We live in a world where the norm in developed countries is that people spend a significant fraction of their lives not working, between school and retirement, when people in the bottom decile of income take not just holidays, but international holidays. In many respects in the first world we’re all aristocrats. Most people waste the opportunity to cultivate themselves, to become excellent, but it’s not like aristocrats didn’t mostly waste it too. > I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. > John Adams > US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826) > The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. > OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism