Good Evening and Seasons Greetings to you all! I hope you all eat too much, sleep too much, laugh too much, and love too much; but that you do not spend too much.

Friends, it is a fact of history that throughout the entire span of the recorded chronicle of the existence of the species on this Earth, that the extent to which one could mirror the socioeconomic class just above himself, was the extent to which he felt successful. We can see this very clearly in the keeping-up-with-the-Jonses aspect of the burial customs of the ancient Egyptians.

The king, at the very top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, was officially thought to be operating by divine authority, either he was divinely appointed or even the blood offspring of the chief god of the pantheon. As such he or the royal apparatus worked very hard to make his life on the terrestial plane a replica of that of the gods in their realm - so as to impress his subjects and foreigners alike with his glory, and so on and so forth.

The most significant expression of this was the tombs of the kings. As you know, the entire ritual apparatus and ceremonial framework was designed to ensure his continued existence in the afterlife, his immortality. Of course, all provisions were given to make sure that one could continue on just as he had on the terrestial plane.

To the extent that they were financially able, private individuals also had tombs built for themselves and their bodies preserved after death, so that their spirits could return to them after the individual had "passed on," and resume the life they had lived on the other side.

Certainly rich high officials did this, as well as other wealthy persons. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm sure that even the most humbe person did his best to arrange some kind of afterlife apparatus for himself. We might compare this to an airline trip. There's first class, second class, coach, business class. The king's and the royal family's, as well as the high officials might be classified as "first class" funerary arrangements.

Wealthy merchants and government bureaucrats were probably what we would call in the "second class." Artisans, shop keepers, landlords, big-scale farmers, and skilled workers might make up what we would call the "business class" section of the flight into immortality. Everybody else would fall into the "coach" class.

Of course there were those who could barely maintain their survival in this life much less make provision for the next.

Here's the point: the kings were striving reflect the way of life of the gods; high officials were striving to reflect the way of life of the royalty, who was striving for the gods; the merchants, government bureaucrats, were striving to reflect the way of life of the high officials, who were striving to mimic the royalty, who were striving to mimic the gods; the artisans, shop keepers, landlords, big-scale farmers, and skilled workers were striving to mimic the wealthy merchants and government bureaucrats who were striving to mimic the wealthy merchant class, who was trying to mimic the high officials; who was trying to mimic the gods.

We know this is so because the dynamic is perfectly in operation today, as I will discuss tomorrrow. But let me leave you with this: so said Jean-Paul Sartre "Man is the desire to become God."

Until next time,

wingedcentaur