The nature of aristocracy

[Gori the Grey]

For all of our warranted distaste for aristocracy, America's founders* wisely found a place for them in our mixed constitution. It's probably salutary for a society to have a check on tyrants short of the full rabble.

*many of them the aristocrats of their day

 

[Smellincoffee]

For all of our warranted distaste for aristocracy, America's founders* wisely found a place for them in our mixed constitution. It's probably salutary for a society to have a check on tyrants short of the full rabble.

*many of them the aristocrats of their day

That was John Adams' reasoning behind his support for the Senate: there's going to be an aristocracy, so stick them into a powerless but seemingly impressive house and leave the real work with the more egalitarian representatives. He'd love the House of Lords..

 

[Borachio]

Yet the House of Lords isn't full of the aristocracy. There's also criminals, and the Church of England, in there.

 

[gay_Aleks]

The English sure don't like the Church of England, eh?

I guess the same could be said for any church, though. They've sure changed in the last milenium, don't you think.

 

[Borachio]

It's very hard to dislike the Church of England, as it's so totally bland most of the time.

Nevertheless, it's perfectly possible to dislike it, provided you pay attention and keep your wits about you.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Ah. I might've felt some nonexistent negative connotations.

For the most part, current churches chime on when popstars move by or gay parades are passing by. Sad, really, considering the role my church played for the preservation of my nation.

 

[Tahuti]

That was John Adams' reasoning behind his support for the Senate: there's going to be an aristocracy, so stick them into a powerless but seemingly impressive house and leave the real work with the more egalitarian representatives. He'd love the House of Lords..

AFAIK, US states are forbidden to give titles of nobility. Instead, the US has an elite based on money.

I'm blaming all those fantasy TV series. Times are bad, escapism is rife...

I hardly watch TV. If anything, TV is way to promote hypercommercialist ideology.

As far as I can see the only portion of Noblesse Oblige that was ever real was the socially expected obligation of the noble to protect his own direct, household servants. It's the clientele system of old Rome, or the modern Mafia system as someone else commented. Also the system that supports every modern corrupt political institution. So Aristocracy in that way would be no better than modern politics with a lot of corruption and patronage thrown in.
Of course, you can find economists arguing that corruption is good because id "leads to a better allocation of resources to those capable of paying for them". Same old defense of power and greed with new trappings.

I have already mentioned that because the French aristocracy failed to perform duties in proportion to their privileges, it eventually collapsed - though naturally, I wouldn't consider the French revolution a good thing. Aristocracy is more or less a military thing. As someone already noted, aristocrats were originally expected to embark on certain death military actions. Eventually, aristocrats became increasingly so because "they always were" aristocrats, and not because they performed any duties.

 

[Traitorfish]

Equality before the law is well and good, but the idea that people are equal otherwise is complete fiction. There are many people manifestly superior to most of us, and many more greatly worse than us.

Social and political equality is not usually taken to imply actual sameness.

 

[Borachio]

Ah. I might've felt some nonexistent negative connotations.

For the most part, current churches chime on when popstars move by or gay parades are passing by. Sad, really, considering the role my church played for the preservation of my nation.

Really? You're Bulgarian, right?

What role did your church play?

(I know practically nothing about Bulgaria, btw.)

 

[Smellincoffee]

Social and political equality is not usually taken to imply actual sameness.

Social equality? Even in chimpanzees some are more socially powerful than others, because of their strength, their ambition, their cleverness, or their ability to work with others. That dynamic will manifest itself in any and every group of people. Reason and ideals are no match for a million years of evolutionary social behavior.

 

[Traitorfish]

God isn't dead, he just changed his name to "Darwin".

 

[berkut]

Aristocracies were usually not closed, in that a lowborn individual could aspire to join the aristocracy, by performing feats of great heroism on the battlefield for royalty, to name just one example. Aside from a status gained by birth, it thus usually had a meritocratic aspect to it as well, in the form of being recognition for a rendered service.

My personal perspective was that while aristocracies are a highly desirable social institution, most historical aristocracies have collapsed because aristocracies failed to perform their duties in the face of adversity. For all the privileges the status conferred, it also entailed duties - primarily military ones - that were simply shirked at, culminating in its end at the hands of quite a few revolutions.

Exactly. Ancient martial societies had an aristocratic ethic of courage where the value of men to society, and hence his hierarchical place, were measured on the battlefield. If we see war as a representation of life like shown in Tolstoy's book war and peace, we can identify cowards as those who lie often, run from their responsibilities, claim glories that are not their own, betray their friends, and act in bad faith. Even thou those ancient societies are no longer, their ethic still live and is the doom of the political correctness, for it reveals the worst of the human being: That in the end we are all, frightened animals prone to collaborate with Nazis and the like for survival out of cowardice. The democratic sensibility hates this truth, that men are not equal, and the better few carries the world on their back.

 

[Old Hippy]

Is aristocracy nothing more than a naked sense of privilege, sacralised by certain rituals with nothing real to offer society? Or does it actually serve a social purpose? Why do people think it collapsed?

Aristocracies were usually not closed, in that a lowborn individual could aspire to join the aristocracy, by performing feats of great heroism on the battlefield for royalty, to name just one example. Aside from a status gained by birth, it thus usually had a meritocratic aspect to it as well, in the form of being recognition for a rendered service.

well considering they were mostly thugs who rob countries, from Alexander the great to William the Conquer, to Al Capone, of course you could rise to a higher position, provided you sold your self to their ideals, they paid well, was Genghis Khan an aristocrat , probally...

take the central Europeans they had a raiding season where the spoils were their own reward, The Normans own stories were meant to inspire that you did not want to meet this person in a dark ally, the only real question with the Aristocracy is are you the type to feather your own nest or just a lackey that will settle for some crumbs from your 'betters' table
Great feats of Heroism, humbug, can you butcher the enemy is all that counts, their kids and descendants might have brought the propaganda, but as soon as they made the mistake to teach the rest of us to read they were doomed for what they are 'parasites'
you only have to look at the generals and officers of WW1 (all the sirs) to see what a degenerate, incompetent, bunch of fools aristocracies breeds given enough time...

 

[Borachio]

Now, hang on. The lieutenants of WW1 bore the burden of leading men out the trenches. And suffered very high casualties as a result. They came from the upper-middle classes for the most part. A generation of them were almost annihilated.

 

[Old Hippy]

Now, hang on. The lieutenants of WW1 bore the burden of leading men out the trenches. And suffered very high casualties as a result. They came from the upper-middle classes for the most part. A generation of them were almost annihilated.

and just where were the aristocrats (colonels and majors and generals), sipping French wine and directing it all, stuff up after stuff up...
and when things finally went their way, it was an Australian/German jew who did most of the planning, so the king rushed out and Knighted him on the battle field, can't have a commoner leading men now can we...

 

[Wrymouth3]

If one is that fascinated with becoming an aristocrat, they should just buy whatever titles of nobility they can find on Ebay. Super strong desires to not only have a title of nobility but to actually live like one of the old aristocracy can be resolved by moving to the Philippines (You can not only have a noble rank, but also exploit your own serfs in a very antiquated manorial system).

 

[Hygro]

God of course

The Serpent is Karl Marx, and the apple is class consciousness.

Dude this not far from a reasonable reading of Transhistorical Genesis.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Really? You're Bulgarian, right?

What role did your church play?

(I know practically nothing about Bulgaria, btw.)

Sorry for the kinda late response. Now, a brief lecture of Bulgarian history will ensue upon the unsuspecting members of CFC. Bear with me..

In the year 1396, the last fortress of Bulgaria, and to be fair, most of the Balkans alongside it, fell. It was the end of Second Bulgarian Kingdom (not Empire. whoever labels every single pre-Renaissance or whatever state with "empire" is a bad and evil man). Also, the end of cultural life. Thousands of books, icons and other works of art have been lost/are presumed lost.

However, without the church and the monasteries, the amount of works lost would be infinitely much larger, to the point where we wouldn't know any Bulgarian sources for events that happened to other states (mostly battles with Byzantium/contacts/etc etc), and we would know history only from foreigners (not useful for fostering national identify, you see). Plus, there's many non-historical works that are amazing and enlightening. For the most part, church works about saints and other holy things. Might not be suited for modern audience.

Besides preservation of works of arts, the church had a role in educating to a very basic level, i.e writing and reading. This, of course had the tremendous effect of saving the Bulgarian language and people from slowly being assimilated into obedient Turkish servants.

And somewhere in St. Aton, in Anno Domini 1762, a certain monk called Paisius, in the
Hilendarski monastery, created the first history of Bulgarians chronicling the Medieval era of our country. Per se, it's not a completely historical works as we know them, as it has many historical mistakes, but it started one of the greatest events - the Bulgarian Enlightenment, in a manner of speaking.

tl;dr: the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, through it's churches and monasteries, it saved caches of books from the past, it saved the Bulgarian identify, and it created conditions for the Bulgarian National Revival.

Hopefully, this wall of text is read, or at least the tl;dr version of it. Also even more hopefully, this hasn't bored you.

 

[Hygro]

Bored? Naw that was tight.

 

[Traitorfish]

This, of course had the tremendous effect of saving the Bulgarian language and people from slowly being assimilated into obedient Turkish servants.

I'm a little dubious. My understanding is that most early attempts at Bulgarian linguistic revival were intended to establish Bulgarians as a distinct minority in the Ottoman Empire, as they were until that point considered "Greek" due to their Orthodox Christianity and so placed under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. It was more about conflicts between local elites than a really "national" movement as we'd understand it today.

Although, that said, you're right enough that the Church played a central role in preserving the Bulgarian literary heritage, which had the typically colossal impact on the nationalist movement when it did emerge. So consider the above a quibble.