I love this, David. I would very much have liked to take your course, but I'm unfit for more computer time just now. These little windows in are very generous, and generative. Thank you.
I've been thinking about this series of yours, in relation to a conversation I had yesterday with a researcher who is working on a TV series about the British monarchy. (A long story – but the short version is that when I was twenty-five, I took part in a BBC debate as part of the Golden Jubilee coverage, and they came across the footage in the archives.) I found myself saying that, somewhat to my surprise, I find there's nothing in me that wants to abolish the monarchy. To my surprise because, in many ways, I think of myself as an anarchist. Yet the presence of something at the centre of public life that is so anachronistic, irrational, and indefensible by any modern logic – these things which, for many progressive friends of mine, would surely constitute the argument against the monarchy, seem to me to speak in its favour, at least compared to any conceivable result of a process to create a modern replacement for it. So I'm curious how this train of thought might resonate or jar with your own thinking, as someone who has been thinking about kingship in a longer perspective.
I'm thinking of the letter Tolkien wrote to his son, where he says his political beliefs move more towards anarchy as he goes. But rather than getting rid of everything he just sort of renames everything. The state should never have a capital 'S'. Let's not call them The Government.. let's just call them Winston's gang. And then he mentions an 'unconstitutional monarchy.'
The last part of this series goes under the heading No Caesar's, and certainly the concept of monarchy comes into view: the Samuel narrative, where the people's desire for a king is viewed as a lapse, and a concession to civilisation's deference to hierarchical power, and the need for figureheads to manage the world through violence and law.
And yet, I've never had straightforward feelings about monarchies, even as I've become a more decided anarchist. I think a helpful distinction for me is the difference between law and lore. I generally dislike the violence of the first and I'm rather fascinated by the second, by story and the witness of the past. I see both at work in all sorts of ways in monarchies of various kinds.
I feel similarly about progressive anti-monarchy fervour. I suspect that one power structure will be replaced by another that does all the same wrongs. No Caesars certainly applies to the connection between the British monarch and British militarism for example, but republican American power is just a rearrangement of the same and does the same sorts of things.
Perhaps Tolkien's 'unconstitutional monarchy' was his way of preserving the fertility of lore without the power structures and violence of law.
I just finished the Silmarillion and could say more! But I'll stop there for now..
"Law" and "lore" feels like a useful pairing. (I think Tyson uses it in Sand Talk?)
I'm thinking, too, of a pre-Canterbury Rowan Williams, in Lost Icons, wondering if monarchy took a wrong turning when kings began to be portrayed in military uniforms, or when the washing of the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday was replaced with the doling out of "Maundy money". (When I was little, I knew an old lady in Leeds who had received Maundy money, and she showed us her little purse with the one-, two-, three- and four-pence coins.)
I think coinage will be where the concepts of debts and Caesars converge to complete the circle, with the age old tradition of Caesar's (or whoever's) face on the coin, and the basic function of currency as debt. Still to write that part though.
I love this, David. I would very much have liked to take your course, but I'm unfit for more computer time just now. These little windows in are very generous, and generative. Thank you.
Thank you Adam!
I've been thinking about this series of yours, in relation to a conversation I had yesterday with a researcher who is working on a TV series about the British monarchy. (A long story – but the short version is that when I was twenty-five, I took part in a BBC debate as part of the Golden Jubilee coverage, and they came across the footage in the archives.) I found myself saying that, somewhat to my surprise, I find there's nothing in me that wants to abolish the monarchy. To my surprise because, in many ways, I think of myself as an anarchist. Yet the presence of something at the centre of public life that is so anachronistic, irrational, and indefensible by any modern logic – these things which, for many progressive friends of mine, would surely constitute the argument against the monarchy, seem to me to speak in its favour, at least compared to any conceivable result of a process to create a modern replacement for it. So I'm curious how this train of thought might resonate or jar with your own thinking, as someone who has been thinking about kingship in a longer perspective.
I'm thinking of the letter Tolkien wrote to his son, where he says his political beliefs move more towards anarchy as he goes. But rather than getting rid of everything he just sort of renames everything. The state should never have a capital 'S'. Let's not call them The Government.. let's just call them Winston's gang. And then he mentions an 'unconstitutional monarchy.'
The last part of this series goes under the heading No Caesar's, and certainly the concept of monarchy comes into view: the Samuel narrative, where the people's desire for a king is viewed as a lapse, and a concession to civilisation's deference to hierarchical power, and the need for figureheads to manage the world through violence and law.
And yet, I've never had straightforward feelings about monarchies, even as I've become a more decided anarchist. I think a helpful distinction for me is the difference between law and lore. I generally dislike the violence of the first and I'm rather fascinated by the second, by story and the witness of the past. I see both at work in all sorts of ways in monarchies of various kinds.
I feel similarly about progressive anti-monarchy fervour. I suspect that one power structure will be replaced by another that does all the same wrongs. No Caesars certainly applies to the connection between the British monarch and British militarism for example, but republican American power is just a rearrangement of the same and does the same sorts of things.
Perhaps Tolkien's 'unconstitutional monarchy' was his way of preserving the fertility of lore without the power structures and violence of law.
I just finished the Silmarillion and could say more! But I'll stop there for now..
"Law" and "lore" feels like a useful pairing. (I think Tyson uses it in Sand Talk?)
I'm thinking, too, of a pre-Canterbury Rowan Williams, in Lost Icons, wondering if monarchy took a wrong turning when kings began to be portrayed in military uniforms, or when the washing of the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday was replaced with the doling out of "Maundy money". (When I was little, I knew an old lady in Leeds who had received Maundy money, and she showed us her little purse with the one-, two-, three- and four-pence coins.)
I think coinage will be where the concepts of debts and Caesars converge to complete the circle, with the age old tradition of Caesar's (or whoever's) face on the coin, and the basic function of currency as debt. Still to write that part though.