Elitism in Atlantis

Atlantis, socioculturally speaking, is metaphorically a lot like Australia. It is a huge island with civilisation on its margins and a vast desert inland. Occasionally, in that vast desert, you come across desert-adapted humans and animals.

This is what leads people to look at Atlantis and say, pseudo-knowingly, "Ah, I know what makes Atlantis tick! Its governance proceeds entirely from two kinds of elite cultures — the green and black edge of civilisation inherited from a colonial past, and the aboriginal desert in shades of brown. After all, these places are where all their most powerful officials come from, and there is nothing else."

This is the consequence of not drilling deeper into the history and sociocultural underpinnings of a particular society. The elite cultures (or sources of the elite, just as bacterial cultures are sources of bacteria) of Atlantis actually are three in number, for things do tend to come in threes. It is something many academic observers overlook, even while they are mouthing their reasonable and extensive conjectures about what makes Atlantis run.

You see, like Australia, the land (whether the green and black edge or the brown desert vastness) is illuminated and made magical by blue sea and sky, golden sunlight, and the rich and peculiar red rocks of the depths. It is a foolhardy academic who looks only at the land, and not at what makes that land come alive.

Why am I saying all this? Well, over the weekend, I was re-reading a few books written by some Australian academics (or journalists, or other people with a propensity for writing). They looked at the statistics on Atlantean scholarhoods (no, one should not abuse the word 'scholarships') and came to the conclusion that 95% or so of the ruling elite came from either the green and black edge or the brown desert. They then raised examples of the ruling elite, especially in the areas of education, culture and finance, the administrative service, the military, and so on.

At which point, I keeled over laughing, because the only persons they mentioned who were actually from those two large kinds of elites were the Thunderer and his get; the rest either were immigrants (well, one was) or were proud children of the blue, gold and red. (And even the Thunderer's brothers and some of his descendants fall into this group.) These researchers had used a statistical probability to assume (incorrectly) that there was a 95% chance that all these examples should come from the two 'main' elites'.

What they hadn't taken into account was that the true elite in this huge Atlantean population are very rare: they are occur with a statistical frequency of about 1 in 20,000. And the most powerful network within this true elite, the source of what makes this whole place sing with life, is from the third elite source. All you have to do is open the Scroll of the Priesthood, whose every edition lists the places of power (about 500-600) and who controls them (about 250-300), and you will see that this is true.

So how does one develop that kind of rare but extremely powerful influence? It is quite simple, like most things of this kind. You are born to it, you buy into it (increasingly popular and not to be denigrated), or you serve faithfully for a while until you become eligible for membership (easier than you think). You can also study really hard and try not to be tempted by the sheer quantitative dominance of the other elites.