Dear Jan

I think that your description of the European Feudal System is heavily distorted, flawed and simplistic.

For example the books of the bible were all in place for the first century AD, but you put it as an invention of some cleric in the medieval era.

Beside the monasteries may be for men or for women, and there were approximately 50% of each. The monasteries of women were always presided by a woman (the abbess).

The monks were not usually the owner of the land but the religious community, but they were who most labored it. There were monasteries that have external workers but in most monasteries the work in the field was done by the monks themselves . If you read about the origen of Montecasino, Clairveaux, Citeaux, Cluny, etc, you will see that the monks arrived to this places when they were a desert almost inaccessible and they developed the agriculture of the field from the beginning. There were monks that only worked in the field each day, and there were others that worked in the field some time each day and worked in cultural works for part of their time. All of them use time for praying too. This kind of life is the usual life in any monastery which have some agriculture field today.

The Church build the first colleges, universities, did copy all the preserved manuscripts of antiquity, invented the hospitals, teached the agriculture to the barbarians which were nomad at first. She was the pillar of the european civilization as we know it.

There were many women in the first place of influence in the feudal period of the european society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Middle_Ages), like Isabel of Hungrary, Blanca of Castille, Catherine of Siena, Eleonor of Aquitania, Brigida of Suecia, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, etc. As the quoted paper said: "As with peasant men, the life of peasant women was difficult. Women at this level of society had considerable gender equality,[3] but this often simply meant shared poverty".

The society was more homogeneous in standard of live than today. I do not see how you may be anticipating a new feudal period.

The classic François-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal).

Dear Jan

I think that your description of the European Feudal System is heavily distorted, flawed and simplistic.

For example the books of the bible were all in place for the first century AD, but you put it as an invention of some cleric in the medieval era.

Beside the monasteries may be for men or for women, and there were approximately 50% of each. The monasteries of women were always presided by a woman (the abbess).

The monks were not usually the owner of the land but the religious community, but they were who most labored it. There were monasteries that have external workers but in most monasteries the work in the field was done by the monks themselves . If you read about the origen of Montecasino, Clairveaux, Citeaux, Cluny, etc, you will see that the monks arrived to this places when they were a desert almost inaccessible and they developed the agriculture of the field from the beginning. There were monks that only worked in the field each day, and there were others that worked in the field some time each day and worked in cultural works for part of their time. All of them use time for praying too. This kind of life is the usual life in any monastery which have some agriculture field today.

The Church build the first colleges, universities, did copy all the preserved manuscripts of antiquity, invented the hospitals, teached the agriculture to the barbarians which were nomad at first. She was the pillar of the european civilization as we know it.

There were many women in the first place of influence in the feudal period of the european society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Middle_Ages), like Isabel of Hungrary, Blanca of Castille, Catherine of Siena, Eleonor of Aquitania, Brigida of Suecia, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, etc. As the quoted paper said: "As with peasant men, the life of peasant women was difficult. Women at this level of society had considerable gender equality,[3] but this often simply meant shared poverty".

The society was more homogeneous in standard of live than today. I do not see how you may be anticipating a new feudal period.

The classic François-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudal).

There is marvelous book by U. Eco, The return of the middle ages. In that book, a log with other historians, it is suggestively shown how indeed a new middle age seems to be returning in our times.

The privatization of security, the practice of "cocooning", the distinction between down-town and the suburbs in the large cities, are some other arguments that could be brought here. The nation-state is in a real crisis (Belgium, UK, Spain, the former Yugoslavia…).

Now, apart from phenomenology, the real question is whether it is a good and convenient, or an obstacle and a going-back - the "new" middle age that seems to emerge around us.

Oh my, from the "fuel era" to a feudal era. Just add a "da." As Ramos suggests, the Feudal era was a set of social obligations, and these varied widely from place to place. England had a version of "ideal" feudalism because it was set up by design by William I. On the other hand, there are some conceptual similarities if one replaces "fealty" with "financial obligation." Rather than an oath to support, one signs a contract or purchases stock shares or bonds (an interesting term in this case). Rather than a subsistence economy, however, we are operating in a growth economy in financial terms, so capital might very well be comparable to god's infinite love, or the undying loyalty of vassals. Seen in this way, the world is a patchwork of corporate and investment interests (perhaps corporations are royalty and nobility, while investors are prelates of the capital church, who might, like Julius, also be militarized as CEOs.) Below this ruling class of "spiritual" and martial leaders, the peasants might be analogous to labor of all types. Such a scheme argues that the nation-state of modernity is perhaps obsolete. This is supported perhaps by the way corporations and wealthy investors are moving operations and capital out of nations of their origin to escape tax rates and other sorts of regulation. But that leaves the nation-state to make itself attractive to these financial interests by lowering tax rates as the UK has lured Russian elites of late. Another interesting reverse analogy would be with the Roman empire that used to bribe hostile tribes not to invade. But nowadays the nation-state tries to do the reverse, to attract the Goths, Lombards, Huns and Alans with promises of willing victims and no restrictions on the violence a barbarian might do to the society or its environment.

The primary goal of the original question was whether we are going back to a feudal period where there were large differences between the rich and the poor in spite of what I have read in the answers which were given by others..

As such, I am of the opinion that it is not a good omen that the gap between the rich and the poor, or the mighty ones and the guy who has nothing to tell is progressively becoming larger and larger.

Whether you see the world ruled by weapon dealers and oil magnates in the financial domain or by church and sectarian group religious leaders who keep the stick behind the door with the motto that you better believe in a supreme being or otherwise.. all those who do not belong to that elite group of people will suffer their whole life, exactly as people were fighting to survive during the feudal period.

In such a future world, the rich will enjoy the financial and technological progress, whereas "the others" will live in a dreamworld without any reality by thinking that they too are well off because they have access to some cheap technology inventions that keep them busy during the day, week, year and years,

I am less interested to hear about how some religion did good deeds to those whom they ruled, or governments which also claim to promise their voters that THEY--this time--will really do what they promised.

A bit pessimistic? Realistic, I guess. With IS (ISIS) around and nobody who has any notion what to do about this disaster of killing people in the name of a religion or state, I do not foresee a happy ending for quite some years to come.

Dear Jan

I share with you (and with the Pope), the negative vision of the gap between the rich and the poor, which is progressively becoming larger (http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-s-address-to-the-plenary-assembly-of-the-pontifical-council-for-justice-and-peace). But we are each day more distant from the European feudal era, which was an era of more equity than our own time.

I also share your preoccupation, with the uncontrolled violence of ISIS and with the silence of most of the moderate muslims. This kind of violence was very ancient in the Islam, because It was very violent from its beginning in the 7th century, but this was before that their feudal era.

We are again a few years after I first put the question to you whether we are going toward a new feudal age. I am more assured then when I asked the question because indeed we are going to a feudal era.

In the time, I got the first answer from dear Guillermo who told us a few things with which I don't agree. At that time, I found it losing his and my time to discuss who is right or wrong.

I leave it up to the reader to call my description simplistic and the like and refer to what the monks did for the poor. Monks choose deserts on high rocks to feel defended from anyone around them and they flourished and never had a day without food, which is not saying the same about the people who worked for them.  The monks were not usually the owner of the land but the religious community, but they were who most labored it. There were monasteries that have external workers but in most

The monks were indeed the owners of the land and the lords saw to it to keep them happy because the same workers in the fields of the monks could also be used to fight in the wars to expand their territory.

After many years in Dutch gymnasium college education, we got the pertinent impression that it would be good for a farmer, gardener or builders to stick to the lords and monks.  The only thong that the monks kept the crowd under command was by spreading fear for God, or gods in other religions (in fact there are more religions than the ones quoted by dear Guillermo) in order to let the plebs ( also named "the others") not think individually, otherwise the monks could pack their belongings and move to better pastures.

Guillermo claims, and I quote "The Church build the first colleges, universities, did copy all the preserved manuscripts of antiquity, invented the hospitals, taught agriculture to the barbarians which were nomads at first" Wrong! the first university on earth was Moroccan, whereas hospitals and copying Greek writers and having a solid system of education and learning in Andalusia and northern Africa was due to the Muslims which then was copied by the Church (the Renaissance). Also, the Jews had a learning system that antedates any Christian or Muslim bring up of youth.

Concerning women and how they are treated, why quote Isabel, Jeanne d'Arc, Catherina of Siena, Eleonor and Brigida, while the much earlier Bible is filled with women worth following.

  Nonetheless, the biblical examples of fair women were also not followed by Judaism, although it of course much better than the status of a woman in the Muslim world.

With the Indian population, large portions of China and Russia and entire Africa before us, we cannot and we may not compare the world today with what was accomplished by a few individuals in Europe, from where Guillermo obtains his information.

So my question remains: What on earth are we going to do against the return to the feudal state that thousand years ago was the seal of each lord, knight, clerk, and bishop, or the head of an abbey?

Have a look around you and try to imagine where YOUR input is in the domains of technology, weapon exchange overlords, and fuel magnates, Try to suggest an answer which is feasible in our world so that we do NOT return to a feudal state. I hope that this time my contribution will not be marked with the word "simplistic".