Basis for Aristocratic Entitlement

It is counterintuitive to consider, but the entrenchment of feudalism during the 9th and 10th centuries AD as the dominant and enduring social order in Europe might have actually signaled the conclusion of knighthood’s practical relevance in society. After the fall of Rome, the device of nobility was introduced by the Germanic tribal leaders as a means of stabilizing military allegiance, and later, under the Carolingians, a system for delegating governmental power. Title was awarded to those who kept the peace and assisted with the leadership of the empire. Once the Frankish throne had dissolved, there was no longer any central authority to validate noble title and to employ individuals to military and administrative office. Nonetheless, the noblemen retained their titles as emblems of prestige. Just as the 5th century Frankish chieftains derived legitimacy and license to rule from their foederati pacts with Rome long after the empire’s collapse, the medieval lords continued using their titles to assert their proprietary rights over the land. But beyond justification for one’s privilege, noble title ceased to fulfill any practical purpose. Title became strictly ceremonial. It ceased to be a position within the apparatus of power—due to the fact that that apparatus had gone defunct—and persisted instead as a social role, a pattern of behaviors and relationships that denoted power, and by denoting power also substantiated it. Auerbach, in his chapter on the courtly romance, explains the growing irrelevance of nobility and how this contrasted paradoxically with its enduring centrality in the European social life:

“The ethics of feudalism, the ideal conception of the perfect knight, thus attained a very considerable and very long-lived influence. Concepts associated with it—courage, honor, loyalty, mutual respect, refined manners, service to women—continued to cast their spell on the contemporaries of completely changed cultural periods. Social strata of later urban and bourgeois provenance adopted this ideal, although it is not only class-conditioned and exclusive but also completely devoid of reality. As soon as it transcends the sphere of mere conventions of intercourse and has to do with the practical business of the world, it proves inadequate and needs to be supplemented, often in a manner most unpleasantly in contrast to it. But precisely because it is so removed from reality, it could—as and ideal—adapt itself to any and every situation, at least as long as there were ruling classes at all.” (Mimesis, 137)
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Auerbach implies here that nobility remains a potent force in Europe precisely because it became divorced from its operative meaning and was re-established as a signifier of importance and proper conduct. So, though a count may no longer carry out a ministerial roles in the county of a kingdom, he is still viewed as a figure of authority in his particular precinct and is treated deferentially. A marquis may no longer govern the eastern march, but it is agreed by all that he and his progeny should be allowed to sit in court and that he is entitled to favors from the king. The code of chivalrous conduct was adopted by the European aristocracy to moderate power and aggression between military adversaries, but it also provides a protocol of behavior and ethics that distinguishes the noble classes from the common folk. In modern life we rely on laws to secure our rights to property and liberty; but rule of law was faint and only intermittent in medieval Europe. State power was not uniformly obeyed under the Ancien Régime. Only rule of god was respected, which was made manifest by hereditary history and fortune.

City Life

I watched a documentary film recently about urban planning titled Urbanized. It had an empowering though not altogether accurate message that a lot of design-minded people subscribe to: that systemic problems can be at least temporarily fixed with cunning and experimentation. The film showcases a half dozen or so urban projects taking place in cities throughout the world that are supposed to be solving problems specific to their place and time and that are being shaped in ways that are responsive to the people they are supposed to benefit. The designers and architects interviewed are people of remarkable vision and will, very smart, heroically competent. But I find that many of them appear to lack a sense of history. It seems appropriate, I think, because design is a prospective endeavor. Designers will look into the past for inspiration, but usually not out of precaution. Most of the designers I’ve met don’t appreciate their work being repudiated, and it’s a timid and ineffectual practitioner who’s inclined to look around for reasons to doubt his own work. That said, I’ve seen design people aligning themselves with false ideology, and it’s due to their neglect of history. Example: In Urbanized, there is a professor of urban planning from Columbia University who makes the assertion that most cities are founded in locations that are conducive to trade. This is false. Almost any city founded before the industrial era exists where it does because the terrain upon which it sits is easily defensible. One might make an exception for coastal cities, which are normally built where there is a natural harbor or protection from weather. But most of the world’s major capitals are not port cities, despite the obvious advantages of trade and travel; and if you go back 500 years ago, this is almost exclusively the case. Old cities are built inland, on high ground. They begin as fortresses housing a king or a lord. Commerce grows up around the spot due to security and stability offered by the regent. I think this was the case all the way up until the end of the 18th century when artillery bombardment became a formidable tactic of siege warfare, at which point it didn’t matter if a city was high or low, had thick walls or no wall. For the rest of human history, people emigrated to cities to conduct their business in safety and peace.

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Trade and culture are not the roots of a city’s greatness. The city is mighty because it is the seat of power. There is an authority that moderates interactions between citizens, controls the environment, regulates occurrences. To be a denizen of the city is to obey and to expect the obedience of others. Trade and culture are just by-products of uniform compliance. This hasn’t changed in the modern era.

Burden of Command

I once came across an old article printed in a business theory journal form 1965 while gathering materials for a presentation on some hollow, insipid topic like “teambuilding” or whatever. It was for a Management class I was taking as a core requirement for my librarians’ degree. The article was remarkably insightful and charged with Marxist thinking. I doubt people who are employed by business schools still write those sorts of things. The article was written by a man named Fred Katz. It is entitled “Explaining Informal Work Groups in Complex Organizations: The Case for Autonomy in Structure.” Its central thesis is that workers who occupy more subordinate roles within an organization will often have a very narrowly defined set of tasks and responsibilities but that because of their limited affiliation those workers are able to enjoy a greater degree autonomy outside of the work setting. More senior workers, on the other hand, and those who carry out administrative functions continue performing their work roles outside of the work setting due to the difficulty of escaping their relatively high level of affiliation to the organization. The trade off is that senior workers are given power and autonomy within the confines of the organization.

I think Katz was forming his conclusions about cultural autonomy of workers by observing power dynamics that take place in manufacturing. He draws distinctions between “blue-collar” and “white-collar” that labor theorists no longer make. He sees blue-collar employees as being slaves to the machinery of industry only while on the job. Outside of work, they pursue lives that are markedly separate and in many ways antithetical to their responsibilities in the workplace. The white-collar worker, then, is basically always his working self whether at work or at home, pursuing work-like pastimes in his leisure hours. For a management theorist I think he is presuming a lot about what people do outside of work. It is probably inaccurate to equate class behavior with one’s professional role. The two don’t always correlate. Nonetheless, one can admit that as the primary arena of our lives wherein we are exposed to naked expressions of power and subjected to the pressures of obedience, the workplace and our status within it has direct consequence on our behavior and feelings about ourselves.

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“Leisure, even pride and arrogance, have given the language of the upper classes a certain independence and self-discipline. It is thus brought into opposition to its own social sphere. It turns against the masters, who misuse it to command, by seeking to command them, and refuses to serve their interests.” (65)

I interpret this to mean that the performance of authority subordinates one to the role of figure of authority, and thus to the very same system of authority one employs against others. Possession and application of power does not make one free. Rather, he who is furnished power becomes a slave of that power. Autonomy is only attained by those who successfully evade power, whether it mean eluding those who wield it or refusing it when it is conferred to you.

Work speak

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When I first began working in business I found I had a very difficult time communicating with people. There is a language of action that one uses at work. If you are employed, as most people are, in a field that demands execution and accomplishment, it is necessary that you be brief, direct, and purposeful with your expressions. One must make assertive proposals, and mean them. It is expedient to use well-worn clichés as shorthand for more complex ideas. Always be attentive to details since each detail of a matter can be exploited as an opportunity to speak and to make people pay attention to you. Nobody in business writes in paragraphs: ideas are listed as bullet points. There is no expectation that one’s thoughts should cohere and should support one another when one is speaking. If you try to support a statement you have made and provide justification for your reasoning, people will get bored and become impatient with you. Business people use verbs more than nouns. Business people avoid using dependant clauses in their writing and their speech, except of course for relative clauses. Relative clauses are employed by business people to qualify things. Qualification is preferred over justification. Business are very good at foreseeing potential outcomes and planning for them. Time is constantly referenced. Individuals are assigned responsibility and made to report progress toward a goal. Reports of subordinates to their superiors usually need to be very detailed but also easy to follow. This is so the superior can appear knowledgeable when explaining the accomplishments of his or her team and, by extension, to take credit for them.

Business speak coalesces out of the intersection of pragmatism and opportunism. This is how one begins to think when one has dedicated his or her thinking to productivity. I struggled to imitate these customs with only occasional success when I was working in the corporation. After a period of about eight or nine months of resistance, I had to accept that given the circumstances, business speak was an effective means of putting matters in order and articulating shallow consequence. So I kind of acquiesced and began using it, but I never became adept. I am not a man of action. I am not troubled by problems of practical application and often do not see them when they exist. I stammered in phone conferences, included superfluous information in my presentations and sat paralyzed and useless in meetings about projects I actively avoided knowing anything about.

Ineluctable Might of the Way

Most of the stories passed down to us about Genghis Khan were recorded—or more likely invented—by the Chinese scribes who resided in the Khan’s court. Accounts of his meeting with Qui Chuji and discovery of the Tao come from the priest’s disciples. Qui Chuji left his home in Shandong with 18 of his students. They wandered the wastes of Central Asia with him and chronicled the entire journey with descriptions and drawings of the landscapes and the peoples they encountered.

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The White Cloud Temple

To lionize Qui Chuji and his sect, Genghis Khan granted him a quadrant of the old imperial palace grounds in Beijing to found a new temple. It still stands today: the Monastery of the White Clouds, named “The First Temple under Heaven” by the School of Taoism.