Interregnum

In my youth, there was a wise ruler who was treated harshly. Yet he had a successor, and he praised his successor, who took on the burden in a hard time, to his own ill, and was not fully rewarded in the bearing of it. And for both men, the people above and below gave thanks for firm rulership in times of struggle. The wise ruler was taken into a larger kingdom, though he never forgot his own, and in time, he became the keeper of the past in the house of his youth.

In my middle years, there was a kind ruler who was treated harshly. And he had a successor, whom he had treated well and whose career he had advanced. But this successor was ungrateful, and conspired mightily, and brought a poisoned dagger to the table. And yet, those who valued silver and gold and the wisdom of the world valued this successor greatly, and the kind ruler was forgotten for his goodness, while the evil of the successor was equally forgotten by many.

Yet there are times when there is enough time, and both the evil and good that men do live long enough to return upon them. This too I have seen.

As the Preacher said, "Cast your bread upon the waters, and you shall receive it again after many days." I have cast my bread away for years, and I am thankful that it has returned to me in measure greater than I could ever have expected. There is now enough to keep me going a long while.

I never was in it for the bread though. I remember that ever since I taught my first batch, I knew that leaving this life would be easy if only I could be sure that I had made some lives better, and made more lives better than worse. That has been my goal.

Non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Traditional Jestice

It was the Hierophant who reminded me of the work of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo. The two men are (were, Milgram died in 1984) both New Yorkers, born in 1933 and schoolmates from an interesting era.

More relevantly, the two are (were) psychologists who examined the psychology behind the way the exercise of power corrupts authority. Authority by itself is a neutral given. It is conferred by position and status in human societies; the Greeks called it kratos, and that word is still in common English usage, as the suffixes -crat and -cracy. 'Aristocracy', for example, means 'the ruling authority of the highborn', while 'democracy' of course means 'the ruling authority of the population at large'.

I've posted several times about power, and I continue to believe that it comes in three forms: kratos, dünamis and bia. An English equivalent would be to call them 'authority', 'inspiring motivation' and 'coercive force'. It's not possible, as far as I can tell, for humans to use just one or two; all three tend to come in together eventually. This tripartite division of power is thus a somewhat common motif (and a problematic one) in human societies.

The problem really is that they undermine while magnifying each other. If you have authority, real authority, people would do things because they accept that authority. But one is often tempted to add the suasion of personal motivation and/or the application of force in order to get things done faster. One is often tempted to add titles and honours to one's resumé in order to justify one's use of superior physical or numerical force. And so on. The three thus tend to form an unholy constellation even when they start off pure and unsullied. This is what I mean by 'undermine' (in the sense of 'erode the moral and ethical basis of') and 'magnify' (in these sense of 'increase the perceived importance or necessity of').

Conventionally, the idea is that powers should be separated (e.g. 'Church and State', or 'Legislative, Executive and Judicial'). This separation of powers thus reduces the quantities of power (kratos, dünamis and bia) to manageable little pieces, thus preventing abuse. Or so the theory goes. The problem is that in many states, it's really not possible to separate the powers; power tends to agglomerate, to agglutinate, to clump together in big and dangerous masses which then go critical to everyone's confused dismay.

The solution really is therefore not so much that they should balance each other, but be balanced by something else. In old and historically messy countries like the United Kingdom, you have so many competing traditions that even the law draws upon at least three main strands (Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Hebrew) and many others. In some places, hierarchy is so dispersed that it's hard to know who is really boss, so everyone is (like some small states or autonomous entities). In some places, like Vatican City, everyone is an employee of a higher authority and that is supposed to diffuse power while concentrating it.

Different balancing solutions thus exist. But I think two of them tend to be more successful than most, based on their longevity and their ubiquity.

The first is tradition (although some might say it comes later than the other). The force of tradition tends to keep new powers from consolidating, and it tends to check uncultured power with a cultural authority of its own. Tradition alone cannot stop a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao from abusing their authority and consolidating their power, but it can keep some things alive, and it can create a viable alternative, counterculture, or resistance. It hasn't always worked that way, but it keeps cropping up. Of course, 'bad' tradition can resist 'good' power; but power tends to corrupt anyway, so it doesn't remain good for long.

The second is humour (although some might say it comes first). The force of humour seems to sustain people even when power is being used on them. It is a common thread of humanity which by its nature ameliorates and alleviates the heaviness and awe of myth and tradition. It is the reason why rulers need jesters; rulers can't (don't, or won't) do self-criticism because to do so would be to undermine the effect of power (to which they must be beholden). A self-critical ruler, if such a creature exists, must subvert himself by laughing at himself; but in these times, such a ruler runs the risk of looking ridiculous — if he can laugh at himself, surely someone else can laugh at him.

I live in a state where to make jokes about judges (or to mock the Magistratum, haha) is to commit the offence of trivialising, scandalising, or undermining the judiciary. If you make a politician or judge look like a figure of fun, it is a problem for the Internal Security Act. After all, if you undermine the sources of power, doesn't it weaken the security of the realm? This key argument is what runs many states the way they're run. It is just that some states and institutions are better at hiding it than others.

The sad corollary to all of this is that almost all rulers can't actually have a real sense of humour. If they do, it is 'humour lite' or 'humour without slapstick' or some other dignified (and here I use the word in a similar way to 'gentrified' or 'bowdlerised') form of it. It is as if a ruler's humour is something from ancient philosophy, and not something which alleviates the gloom and ameliorates bitterness.

The good corollary to all of this is that power can be balanced by mechanical (or at least, procedural) means. If you enforce a rotation of authority, which itself cannot be undermined by authority (good luck there!) then rulers have a chance to recover their sense of humour and become human once more. Some other poor sap can have the job. You can also insert a professional subversion agency: a jester, or as Frank Herbert suggested, a 'Bureau of Sabotage'.

In the end, it boils down to this. An institution or a state cannot thrive morally, aesthetically or creatively unless power is subvertible. Humour, for this purpose, is more flexible and useful than tradition. If the king will not have a jester, he should be adjested. That way, jestice will be served.

Nuking

The people of Israel were an interesting lot, as the account given in the first book of Samuel shows. Not liking the idea of having God-appointed judges over them, they asked for a secular king. God told Samuel, the last judge of Israel, to tell them what a bad deal they would be getting; the people of Israel said, yeah, yeah, and asked for one anyway.

So God told Samuel to find one and give them a new king.

That king was Saul: impressive in his own way, extremely secular in many ways, and prone to interpreting God any way he felt like doing so. Saul was also the sort who liked to gain praise from other people's actions. And that kind of thing.

It did not end well.

Notes From A Battlefield 003

There is a cast of characters which you find in many 'entertainments' ostensibly with the theme of War. You might be watching Hogan's Heroes or Dad's Army or 'Allo, 'Allo and some of the stereotypes remain the same.

But the main theme is the use of humour as something which undermines the ridiculously authoritarian regimes under which the characters live out their hopeful existence. In Hogan's Heroes, the dastardly and incompetent Colonel Klink is continually being chivvied around with good humour by Colonel Hogan and his men, although he is the commandant of their POW camp. In Dad's Army, the infamous theme song lays out a determined resistance, despite the fact that the Home Guard platoon in the show would never have survived a German attack (or so they thought). And in 'Allo, 'Allo, the French just carry on making their living (or is that make their living carrying on?) around the café while the Germans attempt to loot everything and destroy their culture.

All that reminds us that despite the purges, shootings (and other live firing), and general chaos (or major, corporal or private chaos) which make muck of the countryside, those who resist may someday survive to make a better world. The wounds (as in the scouring of the Shire from Tolkien's Return of the King) may never really heal in the short term, but a new age may be around the corner. If there is still a king with all the powers, nature and instruments of true kingship, that new age may yet be blessed for all who live in it.

A Cunning Plan

Oh yes, there are already those of you who are thinking of Baldrick and Blackadder when you see the phrase 'a cunning plan'. It is no accident, however, that these three words are associated with power and the promulgation of perilous plans.

That's because the words 'king' and 'cunning' come from the same root. The qualities of a king are, taken as one group, something called 'cunning' or 'kingship'. This is probably why the Bible as a whole is not too keen on human kings, since these tend to display the more venal side of kingship.

Take for example the duties of a king as set out provisionally in Deuteronomy 17. It's very clear; do not set up as king one who is not your brother, make sure he is not imperialistic or grasping in any sense. These are all restrictions on human kingship, designed to pave the way for an ideal which was the plan from the first Adam.

But the consequences of not keeping within these restrictions are interesting. God tells Samuel what will happen in I Samuel 8. A king whose prowess is not fettered will make use of the state to further his goals. Such a king is no servant, but a tyrant. The ideal vision is quite different; it can be found in Isaiah 32; here is a king who reigns in justice and is a shelter, a nurturer, the source of good things and the greener of a barren land.

Sometimes I think that the limitation of reading tiny bits of the Bible each day is that one doesn't see the whole picture. Once in a while, many small bits should be put together to give the overall picture. Simple logic can be used in hermeneutic context. For example: a) the eagle is an unclean bird, b) you should not put up graven images of any kinds of animals... oops, but I've said enough about such things in other posts.

To summarise, cunning is kingship; kingship is cunning. But when you engineer your cunning plans, O leaders of this world, make sure that they are plans worthy of a King.

Statehood

A state is a description of all the elements in a specific set, sufficiently complete for the purposes of its informational context. My definition is deliberately broad in order to include such diverse entities as 'nation-state', 'state of matter', 'halting state', 'state of chaos', and 'state of mind'.

The thing to note, I suppose, is that informational context is the limiting factor in all our communications. This is because it is that context which determines how much data is sufficient for the purposes of effective communication, and hence how low a signal-to-noise ratio is minimally necessary for efficient communication.

For example, to convey a state of mind from one person to another is incredibly complex. My mental state, simply put, is the description of all the neurons in my brain: their number, individual characteristics and condition, possible combined effects, and probabilities of those effects. Yet, given another person whose mind is mostly able to interface with my own (i.e. we have some kind of understanding, or more specifically, a rapport), much of this description is superfluous or would generate too much noise in the process of transmission. A simple, "ARGHHHHH!!!!" might suffice, and additional data might lower the efficiency without increasing the effectiveness.

It is the same with any kind of state; a full description of state is the atomist's dream. Some speculate that a sufficiently complete description of state would change the universe; these are the people who think the world is nothing but information. This may be true, as countless books and movies have attempted to convince us. But at the same time, there may not be enough time for a complete description of state, since any sufficiently complete description of state is dependent on its context — a condition which might imply the necessity of describing the describer as well as the description itself.

No matter how impossible such things might be, they are interesting to think about. They are practical problems mixed with large-scale conceptual ideas. The difficulty in many communities of ostensibly thinking people is that they are intent on solving practical problems without dealing with the informational context at the larger scale. Solving problems without looking at the big concepts woven into and around them is like polishing gemstones in a crown without considering the importance of that crown as a whole.

Shakespeare was a master at describing the problems of kingship, a situation often obsessed about to the detriment of the state as a whole. In Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar and scores of other plays, a common theme is present: uneasy lies the head which wears the crown; how much worse the head which obsesses about the practical details of kingship (how to get it, how to keep it, how to use it) — forgetting that the king is the chief servant and key element of the state.

Seven

Over the last seven weeks, I have been thinking about this year and the number seven. No, this is not a paean to numerology or some sort of alchemical code. But I have been thinking about an eternal city founded on seven hills, seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, and seven brothers who bicker but who each have a power that will help the rest.

It was last year that the head of my order in the Family said that we were seven brothers, seven scholae, seven pillars of an ancient mission in a dark and weary land. He intimated that the pillars should bear an equal burden, that no one pillar, no matter how central, should act as if the rest were less worthy. There are always main pillars, but no single pillar can bear the burden alone.

It put me in mind of an old Chinese tale, as usual set in that semi-mythical age of Qin Shi Huang, the mighty unifier and autocrat of China. The tale I refer to is that of a number of brothers, commonly five, sometimes seven. The theme of seven brothers can be found in Finland, Britain, Eastern Europe, Africa, and other places far afield. Each brother has a special ability, a superhuman power such as the capacity to drink up the sea or to be as hard as iron. The powers vary from place to place, but the story often revolves around a threat which attempts to eliminate the 'weaker brothers'. The strongest brother feels immune to this threat, and this makes him remain aloof while the rest get into difficulties. Fortunately, he himself gets into trouble, and it is only a combined effort by the rest, with the proper use of his own considerable power, which saves the whole bunch.

Such stories inspire me. There are some people who do not care for myth, for the power of symbol and the real working-out of symbolic forces in the world. They do not see beyond the limited walls and horizons of the immediate and quotidian. But these symbols and the forces they represent are real and potent. It is our duty to use them, to wield them, to demand the truth from them. As an article in today's newspapers pointed out, if you do not define yourself in all the dimensions of the world, the world will define you.

Yes, it will. And it will also force you to conform to its pattern, against the call of the higher things. By the time you realise that you have been twisted into its image, you will be playing its game as if it is the only one you can play. How, then, are the mighty fallen! Like Nebuchadnezzar, who lost his mind but retained his crown for a while, we must be careful about the gilded symbols that we elevate in stature, in favour with our gods and our men, but of specious value in all our life hereafter.

"What Bloody Man Is This?"

I cannot stop thinking of Joab, ever since Der Springer invoked his name. "Do not let his hoary head go down to the grave in peace," said David the King of him (I Kings 2:2-9). But as I read through the Old Testament, it struck me how Joab (who was David's nephew) and David had danced through a precarious and deadly measure for many years. Joab was always the General, the Enforcer, the autonomous and powerful Right Hand. He did things how he wanted, was adept at pushing blame to the King (which, to be honest, was sometimes deserved), and was a pretty effective general. For years, especially as David began to decline, he was Kingmaker, Godfather, Chancellor.

So wherefore David's angst? Joab was the bane of any man who was promoted to equal rank (or even looked like it). He took out his rivals with summary ruthlessness, no matter what their quality or value to the Kingdom. In this way, he cost the Kingdom the lives of the two generals Abner and Amasa. And as David found his own place in the grave, Joab was still trying to escape.

Sometimes, we're like that, I guess — too locked in internecine strife to see the bigger picture. I realise that Joab's guile and choleric nature are also traits that I can find in myself if I look deep enough and hard enough. It is a humiliating experience to see yourself that way. But having seen yourself that way, it is also possible to find it in others. And that is why the Good Book says, "There is none righteous, no, not one."

I am reminded of the theme of blood in Macbeth. At the beginning, a nameless soldier stumbles towards Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, with bloody injuries that make him seem a likely harbinger of news of battle. There's also the moment at which Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost at the table ("Shake not thy gory locks at me! Thy bones are marrowless; thy blood is cold!") In all the other incarnadine moments of that Scottish play, the appearance of blood presages doom and the intimations thereof. At the very end, it is the 'untimely-ripped' MacDuff who is the bane of the self-made king.

These are disturbing thoughts. I thrust them aside. I need to look after bees in Sussex, or at the very least, prune the hydrangeas. Cataloguing a library also helps. Hierophant, are you out there?

The Return Of The Jehudi

We all know that George Lucas is of German origin. Fewer of us know that the word Jedi so beloved of Lucasfilm fans comes from the German Jehudi, which means 'Jew' – and by extension, Israelite.

So, what of it? Why bring this up, a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away?

It's because of this passage which I was abruptly reminded of when it appeared on my screen just a short while ago. Deuternonomy 17:14-20 reads:

When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite.

The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.

In a sense, God appoints all those in dominion over us. But as Samuel found out, sometimes God allows us to appoint those who should be in power over us, and it is not always a happy thing. Free will can lead to disappointment. As I meditate on any passage of the Bible presented to me, I try to determine its relevance to my current situation.

This evening, the August Personage posed this question: "Do you love your country?" Reading the above passage and applying the appropriate transformation to the local situtation, it is hard to come to a definitive conclusion which would be politically acceptable. It is very difficult when people ask me questions like that.

How do you respond to, "Do you love your family?" or "Do you love your work?" or "Do you love your company?" The answer is normally one which might be instinctive, but not entirely truthful or exact.

So what level of clarity is demanded in the interpretation of the text? I choose to take careful note of the terms and conditions set out, a watching brief perhaps; but am I required to act on it? It is a hard path to travel, a difficult road to walk. It fills me with the ash of a long and bitter fire.