A New Age of Enlightenment

by Justin Foster

In my “Freedom isn’t Feudal” essay, I stirred up a much-needed shit storm. There was much agreement but a lot of well-written and passionate pushback came from economic progressives—because I dared to say that entrepreneurism wasn’t just a byproduct of historical change but a key driver in the collapse of feudalism. And, even more heretically, that it will be just as essential in dismantling corporate feudalism today.

EconProgs and I are in aligned on this: we need to deal with oppressive systems - especially the kind that produce the 3-head monster that is modern authoritarianism. But my observations that free enterprise—actual decentralized, bottom-up economic power—is part of the solution was met with, shall we say, righteous objection. 

Thankfully, real history doesn’t give a damn about ideology, no matter where it is on the spectrum. The old feudalism didn’t fall because people demanded more regulations or stronger state control—it fell because merchants, artisans, and innovators built a parallel economy that made the old system irrelevant. That’s what needs to happen again, and the discomfort around that fact only proves how necessary this conversation is.

As I pointed out in the many comments (thank you, readers!), entrepreneurism wasn’t the only factor then and it is not the only factor now. The final blow back then came from the Enlightenment—the intellectual wrecking ball that shattered feudalism’s ideological foundation. If the merchants and artisans built the scaffolding for a new world, Enlightenment thinkers lit the fire that burned the old one down.

These two forces—entrepreneurism and enlightenment—weren’t just historical coincidences; they were the twin pillars that made real change possible. One reshaped the economy, the other rewired how people thought about power, agency, and legitimacy. And today, these are the same two pillars that will dismantle corporate feudalism.

These two forces don’t compete; they reinforce each other. That’s why history keeps repeating itself: every time power tries to consolidate, these twin forces rise to shatter it. 

A Quick History Lesson

Feudalism wasn’t just about who owned what. It was about belief—about convincing people that the hierarchy was natural, inevitable, and even divinely ordained. The Church preached obedience to authority. The nobles claimed their power was God-given. And the peasants, for the most part, accepted it.

But the Enlightenment wasn’t just a spontaneous intellectual awakening. It was an explosion of science, art, invention, and religious heresy that all collided to dismantle the feudal worldview.

• Science cracked the foundation of religious dogma. Galileo and Copernicus proved that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, challenging the Church’s monopoly on truth. Newton’s laws of motion replaced superstition with logic, shifting power away from theologians and toward rational thinkers.
• Art changed how people saw themselves. The Renaissance, which directly fueled the Enlightenment, produced works that celebrated human potential—Da Vinci’s sketches of the human body, Michelangelo’s David, and Shakespeare’s plays that explored the full complexity of human nature. These weren’t just aesthetic masterpieces; they were challenges to the idea that people were merely subjects of kings and God.
• Inventions accelerated economic and intellectual independence. Gutenberg’s printing press made books widely available, allowing radical ideas to spread like wildfire. Literacy rates climbed, and for the first time, ordinary people could read and interpret ideas without priests acting as gatekeepers.
• Religious heresy kicked open the door to political revolution. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses shattered the Catholic Church’s control, proving that religious authority could be challenged. His rebellion wasn’t just theological—it was a blueprint for questioning all power structures. If the Pope could be wrong, why not the king? Why not the entire feudal order?

These forces combined to create a world where people no longer accepted power just because someone in a robe or a crown told them to. The old order collapsed under the weight of its own irrelevance.

The original Enlightenment wasn’t an overnight event—it unfolded over roughly 300 years, from the Renaissance in the 15th century to the late 18th century revolutions that finally shattered the old feudal order. Ideas had to spread slowly, by word of mouth, handwritten manuscripts, and printed pamphlets. Mass literacy wasn’t the norm. Most people never traveled beyond their villages. Change moved at the speed of sailboats and horse-drawn carriages.

But today? The tools available to us compress that timeline dramatically. The internet has replaced the printing press, making radical ideas instantly accessible. Digital platforms enable real-time discourse and organization across the world. AI can process and analyze complex systems in ways Enlightenment thinkers could only dream of. Decentralized networks are rendering traditional gatekeepers obsolete. The same forces—science, art, invention, and spiritual rebellion—that fueled the first Enlightenment are now supercharged.

Now, we need a New Enlightenment—one that integrates consciousness and complexity, the personal and the systemic, spirituality and strategy. Just like before, we need a fusion of intellectual rebellion, artistic transformation, technological disruption, and spiritual liberation to break corporate feudalism’s grip. 

It won’t take 300 years. With these modern tools, a New Enlightenment is already taking hold, at an exponential pace. It can be accelerated, but only if a decent percentage of us in the Opposition drop our binary pitchforks and torches.

Defining the New Enlightenment

The New Enlightenment isn’t just about tearing down outdated power structures; it’s about evolving beyond them. It fuses the wisdom of consciousness with the clarity of complexity science. This means recognizing that individual transformation (Intrinsic), social behavior and institutions (Extrinsic), and systemic structures (Systematic) are all interwoven and must evolve together.

The Old Enlightenment emphasized reason, science, and skepticism. The New Enlightenment builds on that but integrates consciousness—the understanding that reality is shaped by awareness, perception, and meaning. It also embraces complexity—the reality that systems are dynamic, interdependent, and nonlinear.

Where the Old Enlightenment relied on mechanistic thinking (the idea that systems can be controlled like machines), the New Enlightenment recognizes that systems emerge, evolve, and self-organize. It’s not about imposing order; it’s about understanding flow, leverage points, and systemic adaptation.

A New Code of Being

1. Liberation vs. Control – Every system, ideology, and institution either moves people toward freedom or keeps them under control. The New Enlightenment is about liberation in all forms—liberation from outdated dogma, economic servitude, algorithmic manipulation, and political coercion. If a system requires obedience instead of choice, it’s part of the problem.
2. Dignity vs. Dogma – People aren’t pawns in ideological battles. The New Enlightenment rejects rigid belief systems—whether religious, political, or economic—that strip people of their dignity and individuality. We replace dogma with honest inquiry, choosing reality over narrative and principles over tribal loyalty.
3. Autonomy vs. Compliance – The old world rewarded people for following the rules. The New Enlightenment is about thinking for yourself, owning your mind, and making choices based on critical thought—not pre-approved scripts. It means questioning authority, but also questioning yourself, breaking free from unconscious conditioning and learned helplessness.
4. Creativity vs. Consumption – Corporate feudalism thrives when people stay passive—mindlessly consuming entertainment, products, and ideologies. The New Enlightenment flips this. A free person is a creator—whether in business, art, problem-solving, or movement-building. Every act of independent creation weakens the system that wants you distracted and dependent.
5. Namaste vs. ‘I’m Gonna Get Mine’ – The old system runs on scarcity, extraction, and domination. The New Enlightenment is about radical interconnection—the understanding that your liberation is tied to everyone else’s. We replace the zero-sum mindset with one that recognizes collaboration, mutual benefit, and shared growth as the real keys to power.

Oneness

Connecting everything is Oneness. Not as a vague spiritual cliché, but as a fundamental truth about reality.

Oneness is the recognition that separation is an illusion. That the distinctions we cling to—between self and other, between human and nature, between mind and body—are constructs. Beneath the surface, everything is interconnected. Consciousness itself is not individual but shared, a vast and infinite field that manifests through countless forms.

This understanding of Oneness changes everything. It dissolves ego-driven pursuits, replacing them with a deeper sense of purpose. It shifts competition into a higher form collaboration, because the success of one is the success of all. It turns leadership into stewardship, because power is not something to be wielded over others but something to be used in service of the whole.

Oneness is not passivity or blind optimism. It is not an excuse to ignore power structures or systemic oppression. Oneness is clarity—seeing beyond the noise, recognizing the deeper truths at play, and aligning action with a higher order of intelligence.

When you operate from Oneness, strategy becomes intuitive. You don’t fight the system; you shift the underlying conditions that make the system obsolete. You don’t react out of fear; you respond from a place of grounded awareness. You don’t waste energy on illusions of control; you move with the flow of reality itself.

And all that is why the EconProgs and I need to have an uncomfortable conversation…

Why Repackaging Socialism Won’t Work

If you consider yourself an economic progressive, take a deep breath. This isn’t an attack; it’s an urgent reality check.

Historically, socialism was a response to corporate capitalism but it was not a contributor to the end of the era of feudalism. This is where many economic progressives misread history, creating a 'solution bias'—the assumption that because socialism arose as a response to capitalist exploitation, it must therefore be the inevitable remedy. But feudalism didn’t end because of state-controlled economies or collectivized industries. It ended because new economic forces and enlightenment ideals blended to create alternatives that rendered the old structures obsolete.

The mistake is assuming that just because a system creates an injustice, socialism is automatically the best fix for it. In reality, the most effective revolutions are not those that simply replace one form of centralized control with another but those that create new models of power distribution that make the old ones irrelevant. 

Socialism also has a severe branding problem in the US. Like it or not, the moment you say “socialism,” half the country stops listening. And even among those who do listen, there’s often a fundamental misunderstanding of what socialism actually means in both theory and practice.

But the branding problem runs even deeper than that—it’s not just about historical baggage, it’s about how Americans emotionally engage with economic ideas. Socialism, as a concept, often comes across as an intellectual exercise disconnected from human instincts like agency, ambition, and self-determination. It assumes that people will prioritize collective well-being over personal opportunity when, in reality, most individuals first care about their own sense of control over their lives.

When people hear “socialism,” they don’t think of thriving worker cooperatives or innovative mutualist economic models. They think of state control, bureaucratic inefficiency, and forced collectivism. They imagine trade-offs that sound worse than the system they’re already stuck in, even if that system is failing them. This isn’t just a PR problem—it’s a failure to design a solution that feels intuitive, empowering, and personal to Americans.

Consciousness and socialism aren’t interchangeable, and assuming they are is a fundamental misunderstanding of both. Consciousness is about awareness, agency, and personal evolution—it’s the ability to see beyond conditioning, question narratives, and expand one’s understanding of reality. Socialism, on the other hand, is an economic system centered around collective ownership and redistribution. While higher consciousness can lead to more empathy, collaboration, and a rejection of exploitative systems, it doesn’t inherently align with state control, centralized planning, or forced collectivism.

The Three Levels of Consciousness: Intrinsic, Extrinsic, Systemic

To evolve from corporate feudalism, the New Enlightenment requires change at three levels:

• Intrinsic (Personal Consciousness): Breaking free from inherited trauma, social conditioning, and the illusion of separation. This means cultivating self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the ability to see beyond propaganda and ideological narratives.
• Extrinsic (Social Consciousness): How we interact with one another—our relationships, our communication, and the collective norms we reinforce. This is where movements, branding, and activism operate. The New Enlightenment disrupts the feudal mindset by shifting collective narratives toward empowerment, cooperation, and systemic literacy.
• Systemic (Institutional and Structural Evolution): The level where entrenched power is held, whether through economic monopolies, political institutions, or technological infrastructures. The New Enlightenment isn’t about just critiquing these systems; it’s about designing new ones that are decentralized, participatory, and aligned with human well-being rather than extraction and exploitation.

I will be breaking these down in future articles but if you need to start now, start with your own consciousness. 

Bottom Line

Yes, there is a new feudalism—this time with billionaires instead of kings, monopolies instead of manors, AI-driven serfdom instead of land-based bondage, and Christian nationalism standing in for the old priesthood. Musk, Trump, and their ilk are playing the same game the aristocrats played centuries ago, using ideology and hierarchy to keep the masses in check.

The bad news? They’re damn good at it.

The good news? This isn’t just a crisis. It’s an opportunity. Feudalism was never sustainable. It always collapses under its own weight, and when it does, the people who are ready—who see the shift coming—are the ones who get to build what comes next. This is not a moment for despair; it’s a moment for strategy, for boldness, for outthinking the dinosaurs clinging to the crumbling throne. 

It is important to remember that this: possibility is the antidote to panic. We need to see the possibility of a world where power isn’t hoarded but distributed. Where intelligence isn’t measured by credentials but by adaptability, creativity, and wisdom. Where value isn’t dictated by markets alone but by the contributions we make to each other and the world.

Revolutions often end in disappointment because they focus only on what they’re against. The New Enlightenment must focus on what it’s for. This isn’t about burning down the system and hoping something better rises from the ashes. It’s about deliberately, intelligently, and courageously designing what comes next.