“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The peasant was poor because he was basically brutish as a result of his parentage. The gentleman was accomplished because a certain refinement came into his blood because of his royal—or nearly—parentage. The ownership of land of itself provided not only built-in social status, but an entire built-in world of privileged beliefs. A man of property, whether he be a scoundrel or a fool, was first and foremost a man of worth.

God made the wealthy and the poor, the privileged and the non-privileged, and therefore it was obviously up to man to continue that status quo. If a man had wanted—I am sorry: if God had wanted all men to be rich, he would have them all born in castles. That was more or less the reasoning.

When all that was changed, as indeed it should have been (pause), the world underwent great changes. It may not have been much, but a yeoman’s son in the past would always be a yeoman’s son. He would follow in his father’s footsteps. He was not of equal value with a prince, either of church or state. His position was a poor one, yet its freedoms and limitations were known, and his value, whatever it was, was accepted as his station in life. He might be a good yeoman or a poor one, but a yeoman he was.

A person’s sense of worth became connected with the acquisition of land, though to a lesser extent, even as it had in Europe. Later the acquisition of technology’s objects became an added embellishment. A man proved his worth as he moved through the new society’s levels—an exhilarating experience after centuries of a stratified society.

A man’s purpose seemed to be no more than to put bolts together to make an automobile, to spend hours in a factory, working on an end product that he might never see—and because many such people felt that there was little intrinsic value to their lives, spent in such a fashion, they began to demand greater and greater compensation. They could then buy more and more products, purchase a house and show through their possessions that their statuses meant that they must be the men of worth that they wanted to be.

In many past societies, soothsayers, dream experts, poets and artists were the most revered members, for they constantly replenished man’s creative abilities, allowed him to see his position within society and in the natural world with fresh eyes. He, or she, helped form the pattern for the society’s future developments, for its growth, for its give-and-take with nature.

I do not know if I am expressing this clearly. Ruburt tried in the family to express independence, to show that he was (underlined) a writer, and at the same time he tried to express dependence, to show that he was a good wife, and this applied to many social relationships as well. If he succeeded as a writer, it seemed he was less the loyal wife, and sometimes in the past—the distant past—you felt the same when you tried to be “the male provider,” and take a job to satisfy that narrow role.

Now you can drop such nonsense, and realize that often both of you have fought paper dragons. The same applies to Ruburt’s bouts with “work,” sometimes directly opposed to his ideas of creativity. He has to be “working” all the time, so people will see he is not just a dumb housewife. (I laughed.)