Opinion 51

He who knows the past can guess the future

Health care is, in addition to being absurdly expensive, popularly non-existent. The crisis that will break the charismatic authority will be health care.

The political-military instability and insecurity in Europe gave way to fiefdoms as a social, legal and economic system during the Middle Ages (476-1453). The kingdom was decentralized and ceded to the walled castles, legislation, taxes and justice. They were the center around which everything that happened in a territory revolved. Feudal power rested on swords, diplomatic qualities, religion or who dominated the hottest gossip of the ruling houses. The feudal lords swore loyalty to the king and undertook to take care of the weak, whether they were vassals (military) or servants (peasants). Their protégés, in the face of any threat, took refuge behind the feudal walls.

During this time economic strength returned to the countryside, cities lost importance, and loyalty, in exchange for protection, generated a personal dependence between individuals. With the Roman Empire, the citizen had a bond with the State, with the written laws, with the system. In the fiefdoms, gratitude was misunderstood and turned into servility. The notion of a solid army with well-paid and professional soldiers was lost to give way to the feudal lords with their vassals. Justice depended on the mood of each feudal lord, as well as his common sense and personal goals. On the one hand, the feudal lords accumulated money and power; on the other, the population hit rock bottom and rose from the ashes. Despite the distancing of social classes, what maintained a certain equity was health care and religious faith. Medical knowledge was magical (not so in other parts of the world) and religion, the salvation of bodies and souls, so for everyone, whoever they were.

With the passage of time, agricultural techniques and the good climate allowed for surplus production. Free trade was reactivated and the artisans joined forces to strengthen their economic sector. Changing circumstances and continuous wars, the flourishing of the economy and the Black Death pandemic (1347-1352) weakened feudalism. Religion mixed faith with physiology and the natural history of disease was justified by sin and lack of tithing. Medical ignorance, despite its presence, was not a determining factor when it came to understanding why more than 30% of the population died from the Black Death. People felt betrayed by their religion and by God in the face of the crude pandemic. People lost the bond and faith in prayers, detentes and religious figures. This health situation generated a strong crisis of faith that ended up disenchanting loyalties to the feudal lords.

Feudalism based its authority and legitimized its domination through charismatic authority (popular leader) and/or traditional authority (lineage). When the charisma and tradition weakened, when the people and the economy became stronger, authority began to return to the rational, with a legitimacy based on law and norms. Then, with multiple revolutions, the State returns as a political system.

Sprinkle this text with "welfare", "transformation", "organized crime", "poor first", "it is an honor", "narco-States", "high approval", "Covid-19" and it could read current and localized in Mexico. Politics has changed little. We are far from the State as it was known in the Roman Empire, although there have also been advances. In general, religion has learned to cohabit with knowledge. Communication has changed from carrier pigeons to bluebirds (Twitter), from letters that burned to hacked mail. Public health, biomedicine and knowledge of the microscopic world have advanced and what was once equitable today makes an important differentiation: access to health is very different for the upper echelons of power than for their sympathizers. Today, it is the health system that cruelly and inhumanely separates the social classes. In addition to being absurdly expensive, health care is popularly non-existent.

The crisis that will break the charismatic authority will be the health crisis.