The way I might be wrong is in the assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for creating cleavages within the European elites that might have f

The way I might be wrong is in the assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for creating cleavages within the European elites that might have formed in other ways and for other reasons. Did society need the Protestant Reformation, at that specific point in time, to get those advances? Possibly not. Did we need a Cold War with the Soviet Union, rather than some other kind of conflict, to get the Internet? Again, no. It's not specific conflicts that humanity has needed to advance, insofar as history could have played out in a million of other different ways. However, it has been the case throughout most of humanity's history that social health (rather than slow degeneracy due to a parasitic elite) requires some kind of intractable enmity to exist within the elite.