Well, I've spent quite a bit of time simply trying to come up with a name for this blog and I finally settled on "When Sheep Eat Men" (as you can see). As I don't have any other posts ready, the reasons that I chose this particular gem seem adequate enough for now.
The phrase "sheep eat men" was in reference to the enclosure of the commons by the landed upper classes and, to a lesser extent, the yeomen during the period leading up the the English Civil War for the sake of profitting of the sale of wool (which by then had grown into a booming industry),
The main victims of progress were as usual the ordinary peasants. This happened not because the English peasants were peculiarly stubborn and conservative or clung to precapitalist and preindivualist habits out of sheer ignorance and stupidity, much as this seemed to be the case to contemporaries. Persistence of old habits no doubt played a part; but in this instance . . . it is necessary to ask why the old habits persisted. The reason is fairly easy to perceive. The medieval system of agriculture in England, as in many other parts of the world, was one where each peasant's holdings took the form of a series of narrow strips scattered helter-skelter amid those of his fellows in unfenced or open fields. Since cattle grazed on these fields after harvesting, the harvest had to come in about the same time for all concerned, and the operations of the agricultural cycle had to be more or less coordinated. Within these arrangements, there was some leeway for individual variation, but mainly there was strong need for cooperative organization that could easily harden into custom as the easiest way to settle matters. To rearrange the use of the strips each season, though this did happen, would obviously be quite an undertaking. The peasants' interests in the common as a source of extra pasture and fuel is obvious. More generally, since the English peasants had won for themselves a relatively envious position under the protection of the custom of the manor, it is no wonder that they looked to the protection of custom and tradition as the dike that might defend them against the invading capitalist flood from which the were scarcely in a position to profit.
Despite some help, now and then, from the monarchy, the dike began to crumble. In the language of the day, sheep ate men. The peasants were driven off the land; ploughed strips and commons alike were turned into pastures. A single shepard could manage flocks grazing over land that had once fed many humans.
- Excerpt from Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington More, Jr
This was, in effect, the most basic seeds of capitalism being planted. It was a very ghastly affair, and has onlt grown more ghastly as the seeds have begun to mature. Another more modern connotation of the title is that a wave of conformity is permeating throughout our culture, and the conformists are (figuratively or literally?) consuming everyone else.
