Summary: Ok, when we last left off, we were talking about a new class of elites in sub-roman Britain. A group of individuals we identify as anglo saxons and kings, and we also mentioned the class of nobles that was growing up around them. We also talked about how that change, the increase in social stratification, might have come about. This week, we are going to talk about the impact that the stratification would have had on the culture that was growing in Eastern Britain. And as a way of opening this discussion, I thought we could talk about what we've been speaking about on Facebook. I posed to the community a question that I was certain would result in a pretty large debate. Essentially, "do the wealthy members of our society have a disproportionately large impact on our culture, relative to their numbers?" To my surprise, there wasn't much debate. A lot of people responded, but the vast majority of them seemed to agree that yes, the wealthy have a disproportionate impact. Now naturally, I agreed... but I'm a dirty Portland hippy so of course I think that the cultural influence of the wealthy is supersized. What surprised me, though, was the level of broad agreement from people from all over the place.
