***
THE OTTOMON CURIOSITY: FIGHT-TO-THE-DEATH SUCCESSION
The Ottoman Empire lasted over 600 years in some of the most hostile and fraught geography in any place of the world. The Ottomans were surrounded by potential enemies, and yet, their empire went six centuries.
A large part of it was that the Ottoman style of succession wasn’t based on primogeniture, but based on, quite literally, a fight to the death –
“In the early period (from the 14th through the late 16th centuries), the Ottomans practiced open succession, or what historian Donald Quataert has described as "survival of the fittest, not eldest, son." During their father's lifetime, all of the adult sons of the reigning sultan obtained provincial governorships. Accompanied and mentored by their mothers, they would gather supporters while ostensibly following a Ghazi ethos. Upon the death of their father, the sons would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant. How remote a province the son governed was of great significance. The closer the region that a particular son was in charge of the better the chances were of that son's succeeding, simply because he would be told of the news of his father's death and be able to get to Constantinople first and declare himself Sultan. Thus a father could hint at whom he preferred by giving his favourite son a closer governorship.”
To be clear, this unsurprisingly sometimes went poorly –
“Occasionally, the half-brothers would even begin the struggle before the death of their father. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), strife among his sons Selim and Mustafa caused enough internal turmoil that Suleiman ordered the death of Mustafa and Bayezid, leaving Selim II the sole heir.”
And yet, in one of the harshest and most perilous areas of the world, at the crossroads of a half-dozen powerful and warlike civilizations, the Ottoman Empire lasted over 600 years. The Ottoman style of succession certainly had its own flaws and pitfalls, but it avoided the fossilization of rank and it largely avoided selecting Sultans were slow-witted, slow-footed, naive, or disorganized.
***
A STROLL THROUGH THE MINEFIELD: SUPERIORITY
There is one last complicated point to be made about aristocracy, one that would be normally be very complicated to untangle – but which we have the tools to understand after our past chapters in Dubious Battle.
“Excellent” and “superior” aren’t synonyms – there can be something average that is superior to something downright bad.
But excellence is usually contrasted against not excellent. If, in 2016, Apple makes excellent computers and HP makes not excellent computers, you could say that Apple makes superior computers. The leap from that to Apple is a superior company is not automatic – but many people will make the leap.
But, oh! This depends on the value system you live under.
In Dubious Battle #3: The Burden of Proof, we talked about the different organzing principles of society. In most societies across history, there was a concept of superior – and it wasn’t a particularly big deal, nor particularly controversial. But in that chapter, we noted Walter Truett Anderon’s idea that there’s four typical worldviews –
“(a) Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed, (b) Scientific-rational, in which truth is found through methodical, disciplined inquiry, (c) Social-traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization, or (d) Neo-Romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self.”
In Dubious Battle #2: Ordinal and Cardinal Inclinations, we discussed how most people are ordinally inclined – they see the world in terms of first, second, third, fourth… they measure themselves against their reference group, and want to be doing better than those in their reference group.
A society that adopts a postmodern-ironist outlook becomes hyper-sensitive to a bunch of things. Particularly, that society might fail to notice that rank begins in commissioned duties (as we discussed last chapter, in Dubious Battle #4: Rank).
Instead, they see only the fossilized prestige and officeholders failing to discharge their duties, and they say – “hey, this is all just constructed, and it is garbage.” This also often results in throwing the baby out with the bathwater by not acknowledging there are real needs for cohesion and coordination which is the origin of rank… the problem is self-correcting eventually, albeit in a painful way – the society that does it is almost always ruined in the process.
Which brings us back to superiority – and some pretty odd things in language.
***
WHITHER SUPERIORITY?
Most Americans will rank Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest American Presidents – in the most common rankings of American Presidents, people will rank George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt as #1-3 in some order.
If I said Abraham Lincoln was a more effective President than James Buchanan, most people would not disagree.
But if I said Abraham Lincoln was a superior President to James Buchanan, the gears of cognitive dissonance might just grind in the listener’s head.
“Wait! How can you say he’s superior? What’s superior, anyways?”
“Well, he was more effective, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but does that make him superior?”
“You agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest American Presidents, and Buchanan was not?”
“Well, okay, yes.”
“Thus, Lincoln was superior to Buchanan, no?”
Bzzt, short-circuit. The mental gears grind to a halt.
Due to the default American worldview, the word superior is vaguely unpalatable.
This comes from both the postmodern outlook that’s been on the ascent since World War I, and the Faith-based view that goodness and betterness only come from one’s faith and “inner world” (as we discussed in Dubious Battle #1: Faith vs Works).
We enter into a strange sort of world where there can be universal agreement that someone was more effective, more far-sighted, even that someone was truly great and the other wasn’t, and yet, the near-synonym of superiority is rejected.
This has immense implications.
***
ON SUPERIORITY, OR NOT
Aristocracy literally translates to “rule of the best” – but a faith-based worldview rejects the concept of being able to know what’s best; ordinal inclinations make people hate to see anyone as better than them; and a default postmodern-ironist worldview sees everything as “socially constructed” – perhaps missing the origins of rank in necessary commissioned duties and effective discharge of those duties.
Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias take us the rest of the way – someone steeped in these worldviews, the default worldviews of most of the Western world in 2016, reject the concept of “best” and “superior” entirely.
Which makes any and all aristocracy a hateful thing.
There remains a problem, though – there certainly are more effective leaders, governors, inventors, bakers, plumbers, and so forth. We become unable to say that they are superior leaders, governors, inventors, bakers, or plumbers, despite discharging their duties more effectively – which, after all, is the point of the whole thing.
At the end of the day, complex organizations will need coordination and cohesion, and the world is getting more complex all the time. The need for coordination and cohesion rises and falls across various disciplines and organizations, but some measure of it will always be needed. We need to ensure that two trains do not collide at the train station, which means someone needs to be given the clear and unambiguous authority and the relevant formal rank in order to tell train conductors which order to move into the station on the tracks, lest the trains collide.
Who should receive that formal rank?
I think it’s not so dramatic of a statement to say whoever can discharge the duties most effectively, or perhaps, in a superior way.
Which brings us back to a problem.
***
STASIS AND MOVEMENT
This brings us to our final point on Aristocracy, the last one we need to put it together.
It’s possible to believe that superiority is either an innate attribute of a person, or comes as a result of their actions over time.
Stasis would look something like this –
Abraham Lincoln is superior to James Buchanan.
Movement would look something like this –
Abraham Lincoln selected military commanders, promulgated laws, resolved crisis, and built a strong government in a superior way to James Buchanan.
If you’re unwilling to say “superior” at all, you could use a euphimism – but it might be worth reflecting on a potential gap in your thinking. If you want to say that a keeper of a train station who causes no crashes is not superior to one who does cause crashes, not much more can be said to you on the topic.
But most people would grant that no crashes is superior to trainwrecks, even if the word superior is a little awkward under their worldview.
But asking where that superiority comes from becomes very important.
If you see it as a result of daily doing the things needed to run the trains well, then movement creates superiority; if you think the keeper of the trains is just superior as a person then you’re believing in stasis, or superiority as an attribute.
***
STASIS AND DEGENERATE ARISTOCRACY
A degenerate aristocracy, then, sees itself as superior… but without actually doing anything superior.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche noted about the French aristocracy –
“When, for instance, an aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution, flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:--it was really only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries, by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a FUNCTION of royalty (in the end even to its decoration and parade-dress).”
Well, Nietzsche is hard-core; he has valuable things to say, but he’s like a medicine where the minimum effective dosage is only 10% lower than the level of fatal poison; he’s to be read very, very carefully if at all.
A more mainstream-recognized source is Thorstein Veblen, who wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class –
“In a stratified society, the division of labour inherent to the barbarian culture of conquest, domination, and exploitation featured labour-intensive occupations for the conquered people, and light-labour occupations for the conquerors, who thus became the leisure class. Moreover, it was socially unimportant that low-status, productive occupations (tinker, tailor, chandler) were of greater economic value to society than were high-status, unproductive occupations (the profession of arms, the clergy, banking, etc.); nonetheless, for the sake of social cohesion, the leisure class occasionally performed productive work that contributed to the functioning of society, yet, such work was more symbolic participation in the economy, than it was practical economic production.”
The leisure class would then engage in conspicuous consumption to show off how great they are –
“The term conspicuous consumption denotes the act of buying many things, especially expensive things, that are not necessary to one's life, done in a way that makes people notice the buyer's having bought the merchandise.”
In short, a degenerated aristocracy feels they have “made it” and begin to progressively start spending more time, income, and energy on increasing their ordinal position vis-a-vis others who have “made it,” showing off with ostentation while not discharging commissioned duties.
***
IS… ISN’T
The verb “to be” is useful – I just used it – but might also might result in more confusion and damaged thought than any other word.
Wikiedia: E-Prime –
“E-Prime (short for English-Prime) is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be, including all conjugations, contractions and archaic forms.
“Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing. For example, the sentence "the film was good" could not be expressed under the rules of E-Prime, and the speaker might instead say "I liked the film", "the film made me laugh”…”
“To be” can mean many different things in English –
“In the English language, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:
*identity, of the form "noun copula definite-noun" [The cat is my only pet]; [The cat is Garfield]
*class membership, of the form "definite-noun copula noun" [Garfield is a cat]
*class inclusion, of the form "noun copula noun" [A cat is an animal]
*predication, of the form "noun copula adjective" [The cat is furry]
*auxiliary, of the form "noun copula verb" [The cat is sleeping]; [The cat is being bitten by the dog]. The examples illustrate two different uses of 'be' as an auxiliary. In the first, 'be' is part of the progressive aspect, used with "-ing" on the verb; in the second, it is part of the passive, as indicated by the perfect participle of a transitive verb.
*existence, of the form "there copula noun" [There is a cat]
*location, of the form "noun copula place-phrase" [The cat is on the mat]; [The cat is here]
“Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious, but advocates eliminating all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form (and less idiomatically, the "location" form), one might (for example) simply substitute the verb "exists".”
And, hilariously –
“Kellogg and Bourland use the term "Deity mode of speech" to refer to misuse of the verb to be, which "allows even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things".”
We can see how this ties in with a stasis-view of superiority –
Something like, “I am an aristocrat. I am better than you.”
The contrasted movement-view of superiority would be like, “I hold the office of keeper of the trains; every day, I work to ensure the trains run smoothly.”
***
STASIS SUPERIORITY, ARISTOCRACY, OLIGARCHY, EQUILIBRIUM
On 16 April 1784, Jefferson wrote to Washington about the Society of the Cincinnati. Feel free to skim it, I’ll bold the relevant parts –
“The objections of those opposed to the institution shall be briefly sketched; you will readily fill them up. They urge that it is against the Confederation; against the letter of some of our constitutions; against the spirit of them all, that the foundation, on which all these are built, is the natural equality of man, the denial of every preeminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a preeminence by birth;--that however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline accepting honorary instalments into the order, a time may come when a change of dispositions would render these flattering; when a well directed distribution of them might draw into the order all the men of talents, of office and wealth; and in this case would probably procure an ingraftment into the government; that in this they will be supported by their foreign members, and the wishes and influence of foreign courts; that experience has shewn that the hereditary branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege and prerogative, and not of the natural rights of the people, whose oppressors they generally are; that besides these evils which are remote, others may take place more immediately; that a distinction is kept up between the civil and military which it is for the happiness of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble they will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstructions to enterprize will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character has proba
bly prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish; that he [Washington] is not immortal, and his successor or some one of his successors at the head of this institution may adopt a more mistaken road to glory.”
Jefferson, with a natural intuition for this sort of thing, was warning Washington that the Society of the Cincinnati could easily create an aristocracy which readily devolves into a damaging oligarchy.
As Michels noted about the Iron Law of Oligarchy, “democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty…”
Jefferson makes the same argument – that preeminence should only be attached to a formal offices (with commissions and duties to discharge), not to birth (stasis superiority).
MACHINA Page 50