While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[das]

Well, inasmuch as nations do exist, the royal courts did have a lot to do with the cultural consolidation that made this possible - as nobles from all over the country were pressured to attend, those courts became the basic cultural centres for kingdoms, and so helped develop a supraregional identity and culture among the political elite.

Not sure if absolute monarchy was necessarily the only way to get there though. (And frankly, French-style absolute monarchy strikes me as something of a step down from the medieval estates-representative arrangement - fewer protoconstitutional elements, more arbitrary rule and inclination towards tyranny.)

It's possible that you are dismissing nations as imaginary ideological constructs, but in that case you still need a word to call those supraregional socio-cultural units such as French, Danish, etc. in a context other than "citizens of France/Denmark"

 

[Angst]

Whether something is an imaginary ideological construct or not bothers me very little; even though I must point out that they are.

As I said, I'm an aspiring musicologist myself. It would be hubris if I claimed cultural constructs were inherently bad merely on the grounds of having a property of being constructs. Because most of art and culture is like that. On the other hand, I find cultural constructs arbitrary and oftentimes easily replacable. I don't find one particular construct of eg aesthetic beauty better than others (which imo very easily translates into nationalisms merely by being constructs: Whether you think that Mendelssohn or Munch is "truer" to "art" is similar to discussing whether champagne or the Eiffel Tower is "truer" to "France". Note how inherent properties in the discourse are naturally assumed in either debate).

I do, on the other hand, have a quite true disdain for sweepingly biased, overtly simplified and perspectiveless constructs. Such as this "France". If you hold "France" to have a select # of arbitrary properties, inherent, natural and afraid of change. The fear of having the properties of France change is silly as it is just constructs being replaced by other constructs. The same happens every hour within the art world. That this silly fear in the name of the particular field of nationalism apparently leads certain people to believe violence, murder, impeachment and surpression are legitimate as solutions, however, that is disgusting.

I like "Denmark". But I have no issue with its properties being exchanged. And I have no need to have roots of nationalism grow into the Danish tree. And if monarchy is to thank for Danish nationalism, I will like it as a governing form even less.

And I think thanking monarchy for the glory of modern European wealth and happiness is like thanking tuberculosis for forcing us to develop antibiotics against it.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Well, inasmuch as nations do exist, the royal courts did have a lot to do with the cultural consolidation that made this possible - as nobles from all over the country were pressured to attend, those courts became the basic cultural centres for kingdoms, and so helped develop a supraregional identity and culture among the political elite.

Not sure if absolute monarchy was necessarily the only way to get there though. (And frankly, French-style absolute monarchy strikes me as something of a step down from the medieval estates-representative arrangement - fewer protoconstitutional elements, more arbitrary rule and inclination towards tyranny.

Recently I've been reading a bit about the post-roman and early medieval period. I'd be interested in how you see nations emerging through other means - and/or can we have any meaningful democracy among a patchwork of tiny, squabbling city-states?

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Recently I've been reading a bit about the post-roman and early medieval period. I'd be interested in how you see nations emerging through other means - and/or can we have any meaningful democracy among a patchwork of tiny, squabbling city-states?

The Swiss seem to have managed it.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Hmm. If so, how exportable is that, knowing the Swiss situation is somewhat special?

 

[Terrance888]

Just watch.

 

[Thlayli]

We still operate under a fundamental monarchical principle in that people like leaders who have power as the face of the government. I can't think of a country that truly associates its government with an amorphous demos ahead of associating it with, for example, François Hollande or Stephen Harper.

Nor do governments function that way; a true participatory democracy (with no monarchical or Platonically republican elements) would have something like faceless civil servants chosen at random exercising the will of a mass of people constantly giving input on government decisions via referendum, not election. But Plato was right in that people do need, or crave, the idea of the guardians; though that manifests more strongly in a parliamentary system than a presidential one, I think it is present in both.

The only significant change in our monarchical tendencies is that it's not hereditary monarchy as much anymore, though in a lot of countries it still partially is.

 

[Kraznaya]

We still operate under a fundamental monarchical principle in that people like leaders who have power as the face of the government. I can't think of a country that truly associates its government with an amorphous demos ahead of associating it with, for example, Francois Hollande or Stephen Harper.

The only significant difference is that it's not hereditary monarchy as much anymore, though a lot of countries it still partially is.

?

have u heard of china

 

[das]

Recently I've been reading a bit about the post-roman and early medieval period. I'd be interested in how you see nations emerging through other means - and/or can we have any meaningful democracy among a patchwork of tiny, squabbling city-states?

Depends on how broad your definition of democracy is. An oligarchic republic is perfectly workable on a city-state level or league of city-states level. The Swiss are special for having small, isolated cantons; it would be hard to replicate elsewhere. I am not sure if this model could have been plausibly expanded to any larger scale, though, in medieval conditions.

When I was talking about alternatives to absolute monarchy, I was thinking more along the lines of estates-representative, constitutional, decentralised monarchy - like a more coherent Holy Roman Empire, perhaps. It would be much less of an optimal path towards nation-states, but who's to say that nation-states are necessary or preferable?

Angst, we were talking about nations as broader, dynamic cultural commonalities, not about nationalism or nations as ideological constructs or nations as collections of certain traits (not sure why you moved to that particular tangent). European nations have historically evolved with absolute monarchy as one of the main driving factors behind it. It is not impossible to argue that without the Kingdom of Denmark the Danish nation as such would not exist, instead being replaced by smaller and narrower regional identities. Such a scenario is admittedly hard for me to imagine - I doubt something would have failed to take its place. And of course whether regional identities being suborned by broader and higher one is a good or bad thing is largely a matter of aesthetic and ideological preferences. It's the same basic thing that you can see, to some extent, in the idea of European integration and in globalism today. Basically though, the Danish nation as such, with its peculiar current traits and its ability to evolve, exists to a considerable extent because the monarchy has indirectly and unwittingly brought it into being.

The last bit is a rather flawed analogy: the prosperity of Europe was hardly developed to keep the monarchs away. If anything it is more like a product of symbiosis between state (in all of its different permutations) and population - states adapting policies to help their populations and thus themselves thrive and populations largely supporting their states and social orders.

 

[Lord of Elves]

All of you are bordering on Heresy to the Nation. USAmerica #1

 

[North King]

?

have u heard of china

The face of China is the preserved corpse of Mao.

 

[das]

All of you are bordering on Heresy to the Nation. USAmerica #1

Userica isn't even a real nation.

 

[Thlayli]

?

have u heard of china

The China where each new leader gets his very own society shaping catchphrase?

 

[Kraznaya]

The face of China is the preserved corpse of Mao.

whose leadership style was essentially the opposite of the current paradigm

The China where each new leader gets his very own society shaping catchphrase?

?

u think anyone actually pays attention to that

i dont even know what the current one is tbh

 

[das]

That's a fairly good point, actually, the Chinese have successfully suppressed the monarchic principle within their government, even as the democracies have steadily become increasingly personalistic in nature (both the American President and the British Prime Minister have gotten more and more powerful and more and more important to their respective systems over time). They're also cracking down on any potential charismatic leaders.

 

[North King]

whose leadership style was essentially the opposite of the current paradigm

That's as irrelevant as Jesus' teachings are to Christianity's current incarnation.

Try again.

 

[Kraznaya]

That's as irrelevant as Jesus' teachings are to Christianity's current incarnation.

Try again.

hows that even a valid comparison when modern chinese propaganda never brings mao up

 

[North King]

hows that even a valid comparison when modern chinese propaganda never brings mao up

Oh, I forgot how leaders of semi-mythic proportions clearly don't influence anyone unless they are continuously brought up by name.

 

[Kraznaya]

Oh, I forgot how leaders of semi-mythic proportions clearly don't influence anyone unless they are continuously brought up by name.

o there are definitely people influenced by mao

like bo xilai

that story had an interesting ending

 

[North King]

o there are definitely people influenced by mao

like bo xilai

that story had an interesting ending

Has the fake bad grammar influenced your reasoning, man?

People don't need to explicitly trumpet the policies of a dead leader to be using him as their "face" -- mostly because said leader is dead and can't really fight back.