Great essay, but hasn't it always been this way? Don't all of us inherit our foundations as children, through stories whose evolution is long and complicated and largely unseen, even by the adults who tell them to their kids?

I'm not sure it isn't another logical contradiction to maintain some deliberate human agency to these foundations, though. The people who seem most keenly aware of our ideas and themes and histories are by and large academics and writers, but somehow I don't think the world would be the one we live in if these folks actually invented the foundations. Writers and academics reveal histories that are already moving us. It just feels like invention because no human put it into language yet. Newton didn't invent gravity, nor did Smith create Capitalism, but the equations they revealed were already moving through mankind through new technologies that were themselves birthed out of evolved ideas and narratives. Not arguing for a deity here. Point being there's never some Elite holder of Power manipulating all the poor saps for their own benefit, any more than a parent telling his daughter about the Easter Bunny is keenly aware of the history and motive and deepest signifigance of the tale. (I suspect those who are aware don't tell the story to their children!)

I suspect that elites don't invent ideas any more than philosphers invent them. But where the academic explains the forces moving us, the elites use them for personal gain.

If a lustful academic was sitting next to your expensive phone guy, I'd put my money on Mr. 'I don't believe in Monogamy' getting laid first.