If you have a chance, go read a poll I  posted at GenerationSit, about experiences that have made the biggest differences in one's life.  Feel free to leave a comment!

While my post was about postive life-affirming experiences, David Jon Peckinpaugh leaves a comment about negative experiences that make a juge difference.

Then this morning, I read a very good post from Jean that examines Abraham Lincoln, and how his brushes with depression actually enabled his strength, wisdom, and depth as a President.  (Go check it out, a great post.

Jean then examines the "happy people".

Now without ever having looked at this research, I have to suspect that the so called "happy" people from this research are not truly happy people. While they may not have been clinically depressed, they are probably what we think of as normal people - which means that deep down inside they are fearful and anxious people. And how typical of today's politicians, to forever express an optimism, and a reassurance to people that events can be controlled. And this is what most people want. It's what they demand: that next time, the levee won't break

Shiny happy people holding hands, to be sure. 

I saw this political analysis by a commited left winger - if you leave out the partisanship-ness, it still seems like a very good analysis of what happens when corporate power merges wholeheartedly with political power.  This follows up on the schoolhouse rock article I pointed to awhile back.

I especially like the analysis of the Italian political experience.

The truth is, a complete merging of political and corporate power as a "stable" political and economic structure is sustainable for quite a long time.  I would venture to say that if you view corporations as just another version of the class system, then this is the default organizational structure that the world has experienced, with brief forays into a mode with greater concern for social and economic justice.

In the United States, it may well be that the 40 years between the end of WW2 and Reagan's term, may be the one, never again achievable period of time, where the ruling class actually shared power with other interests - a true professional civic class, and labor, which represented a voice for the lower and middle class (as problematic as this voice can be).

How does this relate to the evolutionary structure of social organizations? 

Well, I'll throw out two possibilites -

a.  The United States has passed its moment, and is in the "end stages" of it's social and political hegemon.  Camelot is gone, after all. This "end stage" may take awhile, or it may not. 
b. Counter-intuitively, the political-corporate alliance  is the authentic expression of the Lower Right, and any progression of novelty in the social and political sphere has to start from taking this alliance as the practical and "right" expression of the will-to-power in a social and economic form.

Thoughts?