Elites
Every society is stratified in some manner. The simplest definition of elites is the people who occupy the highest stratum, and who have the greatest and deepest influence on the shape of society and of events. Of course, that's a fairly bookish definition, and it is probably of no help in identifying who the world's elites, in fact, are.
If we think in terms of movie scenes, if we assume the dominance of Western nations and if we assume that "money talks", we can perhaps envision a scene in an office or penthouse atop a skyscraper, or perhaps a mountain chalet, or in a centuries-old palace and a meeting of the world's elites. Yet the place is probably not as important as the meeting, itself, the topic of conversation and the level of its content.
We can also presume a certain degree of meeting preparation. These elites have probably met with a variety of subject-matter experts covering situations and conditions of interest to the meeting. Financial, social, military, cultural, medical, technological and other trends will have been evaluated in varying depth. The preparation may have included computer modeling and situational analysis or gaming. These elites command "weapons" in all of these categories, and much of the discussion will center around which may be needed to control events. Nations, religions and ethnic groups are all potential chess pieces. No question, hard choices may have to be made, very hard choices if the stakes are high enough.
To what end? As Prince Hamlet said, "Aye. There's the rub."
History has shown that some of these elites can become criminally insane, exerting power purely for the sake of the thrill of wielding it (or perhaps, as a method of quelling fears or anxieties) and utterly heedless of the suffering that exercise produces. Their power grows to the degree that their particular obsessions are shared. Such obsessions are typically the residue of unresolved trauma, perhaps in childhood or in some other period of life or dramatic events characterized by powerlessness. In the process, they and their supporters can become, in effect, enemies of humanity. Such enemies almost always garner the attention of the masses, primarily because they relish it, and because narcissism is a major factor in their complex.
Like all human beings, the world's elites organize themselves for collective action. They also operate according to cultural norms, though these norms may or may not conform to the norms they have chosen to foster among the masses. (This website is primarily dedicated to an examination of the post-modern culture and its language, a culture that is fostered on a world-wide scale.) Whether or not their norms are shared, such norms are a natural precondition for collective action, and a key ingredient for lasting organization.
Cultural norms incorporate shared values. When power is wielded on a world-wide scale, even scenarios that involve major value trade-offs will be considered. Trade-off analysis presumes prognostication, and prognostication presumes a combination of mathematical modeling, experience and gut-level intuition. (In an effort to gain an edge, some may resort to "black arts". The histories of the Romanovs and of Nazi Germany provide examples.) A major question for those who study elites is this: under what, if any, conditions might the survival of humanity itself be considered fungible? For example, are there prognostications that involve the destruction of the entire biosphere? (Popular notions of the population bomb, nuclear/WMD Armageddon and global warming potentially involve just such questions.)
John Dalberg-Acton was such a student. One of his more pithy observations was "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." To put it another way, power and authority exercised by elites can give them delusions of divinity or of Messiahship. Such temptations distort the perception of human nature and human need. They inflate pride and erode humility. They put the very soul of a man or women in jeopardy. Of course, one of the major practical tenets of post-modern culture is that the classical notion of "soul" is nothing more than a convenient fiction, perhaps even the stuff of fairy tales. The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal regarded such an assumption as too risky to maintain with confidence. More than that, if such an assumption is true, the stakes of geopolitcal games are reduced to mere academic amusement or ego fulfillment, because no consequences can legitimately be viewed as having eternal implications.
From a more religious perspective, such elites ought not to be admired or envied, but, rather, pitied, even prayed for.