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We've abandoned the concept of hereditary titles, that
is,
the concept that you're born into a social rank and are
given special consideration or respect without doing
anything other than being born to the right parents.
However, the idea of an impressive sounding title is kind
of
nice,
so give them to everybody. Now hold your bones!
Of
course you're thinking "If everybody has them they're
worthless." and of course you'd be right. So here's what
makes them special: You can lose your title. Criminals,
people who don't take care of their kids, people who
chose
to sponge off of welfare when they're perfectly healthy
and capable of work but just chose not to get stripped of
their rank just get
called Mr and Ms. And if the reason you were stripped of
your title was minor, an error of youth for instance, the
title can be earned back with service to the community
or otherwise showing worthiness.
I think the most noble thing a person can do is to mind
their own business, work hard, take care of their family
and pay their taxes. I have much more respect for a
person
like that than some spoiled debutante that never worked
a
day in their life. I think it would be great to have the
unsung heroes of society, those who do the work and
take
care of their families and communities be celebrated by
their very title. Every time their name is mentioned,
they
get a little tip of the hat from society.
Give kids a message: "You are precious aristocracy if you
do
the right things with your life, but you can lose it if you
don't."
Plus it kind of gives an f-you to the current "nobility", a
group that doesn't much impress me.
Highland Titles
https://loveandgarb...and-titles-selling/
Well baked in Scotland. [pocmloc, Jan 27 2016]
an article by GeneralWashington
http://harpers.org/...le-cast-of-thought/
[calum, Jan 28 2016]
[link]
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// Plus it kind of gives an f-you to the current "nobility", a group that doesn't much impress me. // |
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Your opinion may be forcibly revised when the Buchanan tribe hear about your views .... |
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Gee, I'm really afraid of loyalists supporters of the
king and the aristocracy. |
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Said no American ever. ;) |
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Well, perhaps Wallis Simpson... |
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Ah! For the 'landed gentry' when the land is 1/4 acre? |
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//Your opinion may be forcibly revised when the Buchanan
tribe hear about your views // |
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Au contraire. We are frequently appalled by the behaviour of
some of our titled acquaintances. Only last week, we
discovered that Lady Clundaugh has been involved with sheep
_again_. Our bloody sheep, mind you! I just knew that we
shouldn't have moved next to her back in the 1400's. It's
people like her who give Earls a bad name. |
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And, for the record, we haven't been a recognized //tribe//
since some time back in the 700's. |
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What's so noble about working hard? |
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Also, I didn't realised you'd only lived there since the 1400s. "nouveaux riche" then? |
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I wonder if the etymology of 'nobility' originated as a
shortened form of 'no ability...' |
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My only link to the "no-ability" class from the old country
is William Wallace who I'm supposedly related to
somehow. I mention this full knowing it sounds like
bragging but I was told since I was a kid about the
Wallace clan that we come from and its illustrious main
man. When the movie was announced it was like "Hey,
they're making a movie about Uncle Bill!". Suddenly the
brand name went up in value, deserved or not. |
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Anyway, he wasn't exactly a peasant like the movie would
have you believe so that's about as close to a title as I
come, which is not even remotely close at all. In fact, my
cousin traveled to Scotland to research our relationship
and all he found was some documentation from our area
about the relative that was some relation to William that
said "He had many children". Not exactly definitive. |
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Anyway, the main point of pride my dad and uncles
shared with me wasn't that we were related to some
historical figure, it was that Scotsmen were great
engineers. |
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//What's so noble about working hard?// |
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Hard work elevated man from an ignorant animal
shivering in the dark, living and dying at the whim of
nature to what he is now. The summit of creation itself,
setting foot on the moon and beyond. Man, through his
efforts may be the ultimate achievement of the Universe,
the first spark of intellect in a cold dead cosmos. |
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You don't get that by sitting around eating government
cheese. |
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//you'd only lived there since the 1400s. "nouveaux
riche" then?// Not really; but in the 1400s we
decided to downsize. East Anglia was a bit of a tight
squeeze, but it's worked out well. |
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//What's so noble about working hard?// Hear hear! |
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//Hard work elevated man bla bla bla.....// |
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Eh, who am I kidding? Work sucks. |
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Re: link to titles for sale: //“Buy land in Scotland & you
may style yourself as Lord or Lady of Glencoe! From
£29.99.”// |
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I'll grant any man or woman the title of "Undisputed
Grand Imperial
Ruler Of The Universe" for less than half that. For only
£9.99, you will receive a link to a handsome certificate
that may be printed and framed. Ignore traffic laws, slap
people for looking at you funny, do whatever you want!
You're Ruler of the Universe!"* |
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*Slapping people or running traffic lights is not
recommended. Shipping extra. All sales are final. |
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//Hard work elevated man// |
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No no no. Hard work kept man fed. What elevated
him (and her) was a series of inspired ideas by people
who were either rich enough to lounge around
thinking, or who worked flat out because they were
driven - in which case it wasn't hard. |
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With all human achievement hard work is involved.
Somebody had to empty Aristotle's shit bucket. |
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Yep, and I bet it wasn't Aristotle. |
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Nobility: people who marry their distant cousins... |
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I'm not being sarcastic Ray, if you made up: "Nobility = no-
ability" that really is very brilliant. I know I bust balls but I
also know to give praise when praise is due. |
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I wonder what's going to happen to estate taxes as
meaningful youth treatments become available within 20
years or so. |
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I knew you weren't being sarcastic. I didn't think it
was that great... |
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I'm distantly related to crazy Mary Todd Lincoln. |
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And it seems we're all related to Charlemagne. |
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//I wonder what's going to happen to estate taxes as
meaningful youth treatments become available within 20
years or so// |
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I assume you're referring to the "Aging cured in ten years"
article that's out there. |
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A drug that "cures death?" I smell a zombie apocalypse.
"Warning: Eternalife may cause some zombification in
certain patients." |
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Not me, more likely Genghis Khan. And possibly King
David
:) |
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Actually funny enough I did the 23andme thing some years
ago and did get some pretty bizarre surprises. |
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Yes, said article but I had assumed it's coming soon
regardless. SF usually trades those treatments for
infertility, but how would you enforce that? Genes are
just information. So even the typical distopian "only the
very rich can get it" is not really possible. |
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I suspect Elon better hurry up with his spaceships |
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//I wonder what's going to happen to estate taxes as meaningful youth treatments become available within 20 years or so// |
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Well, you'll be stuck with the same bunch of useless mouth-breathing dolts as politicians forever. |
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We predict a significant rise in the number of assassinations. |
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//estate taxes// that's easy. Annualise them, rather than rolling them over until death. |
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This idea is a neat encapsulation of the American attitude to the social structures of Old Europe: proclaimed disdain coupled with a desire to recapitulate those structures. In this, the American attitude is akin to that of the surly, spiky teenager who left home in a righteous huff, sure in his knowledge of the world and of his parents' folly, but now finds life more complicated and yearns, from his cold room above a kebab shop, for a return to the flawed but comforting certainties of Home, but is so crippled by shame of admitting error, of having to confess that his rigid internalised view of The World was utterly jejune, that he will not, cannot go back. Not to that. Not to their love and their forgiveness. His parents, meanwhile, do their best to ignore the reports from semi-well-meaning friends of their son's progress ("he's actually working in the kebab shop yes oh dear what would his grandmother say and after you spent so much money on his schooling") and instead drowning their failure-guilt in a lake of fine French wines, Gevrey-Chambertin, Sancerre, oh dash it why not just open that beaujolais nouveau? |
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Actually, "nobility" is closely related etymologically to
"knowability". That is to say, nobility and celebrity are kinda
cognate, and one of the great regressive movements of the
twentieth century was the restoration of nobility in the form
of celebrity. |
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+ Kind of sensible Sir Doctor! |
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Baked, sort of. The man who invented the safety razor blade was named King Camp Gillette. |
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And the King of Beers. No wait, what? |
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As a slight but related aside, speaking of nobility and how
one treats people culturally
and how language influences it, I recall when I first was
studying English, the emphasis on "you" being the
equivalent of the Russian "you" which is both plural and
the proper way to address those that you're not familiar
with, as opposed to "thee", which (in Russian) is how you
greet those you know well, and how strange it was. |
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By contrast, there is no way to call someone "you" in
Hebrew, there's only a "thee", everyone's always on the
same footing of familiarity and disrespect :) |
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//+ Kind of sensible Sir Doctor!// |
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//Baked, sort of. The man who invented the
safety razor blade was named King Camp Gillette.// |
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Plus we've got Duke Ellington, Prince and Lady Gaga. |
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Wow Calum, that was actually kind of emotional and
poetic. I think there's some writing talent in there. |
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TC, so I'm some languages the pronoun that you
address somebody as changes as your relationship
changes? I'm not sure I'm grasping the concept. Is that
like calling somebody "Bro" instead of "Sir"? I only
speak one language and I'm embarrassed when
somebody I know well runs into somebody from
another country and starts a long conversation in
their language, especially when they start laughing
and connecting. I just sort of sit there like a big
dummy. If I were to learn another language it might
be the one that has the most word concepts that
english
doesn't cover. Like German's "schadenfreude". |
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When I was taking Russian, as my Russian prof told me that
the language was a bit awkward with the concept of
ownership with the whole 'by me there is transliteration of
'oo menya yest,' if they had a phrase that was equivalent to
'I
totally owned that race.' |
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Doc, [calum] is arguably our most talented writer. I've seen
some of his work. |
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That true C? Do you have other stuff online that we
can see? |
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//concept of ownership// maybe that's why they
went for collectivism :) |
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Yes, possessive attributions in Russian are
something akin to proper English spelling for those
accustomed to phonetic spelling, nearly
incomprehensible |
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Dr effectively like sir. In aristocratic homes, e.g.
War and peace, you might say you to your parents
or even husband or wife, thee to your kid or bar
buddy |
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[Jutta] ok submit button dissapears on large annos
on mobile chrome |
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Thanks folks for the entirely unwarranted compliments - I'll take them, still. I can confirm that I am not the halfbakery's most talented writer: that honour imo goes to GeneralWashington, who wrote The Exchange Rate Between Love & Money, an actual novel which is actually good. I say this having not read pertinax's book, which might be better. |
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My internet writings are lost now to the collapse of various ill-starred social networks. |
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//My internet writings are lost now to the collapse of various ill-starred social networks// - correlation does not imply causation, but sometimes it does. |
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That would be the lowest rank before "prisoner".
We can dispense with "comrade" all together. |
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So here's what I learned about peerage rankings.
From top to bottom they are: |
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Life Peer - an appointed peerage program that
started in 1958 |
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I'm still looking for the job descriptions and resume
skill requirements to get these titles. Wasn't
mentioned on the page I was looking at so further
research is required. |
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Then you've got the citizens that aren't as good as all
the people above. They're just called taxpayers.
Their job in life is threefold: |
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1- Pay taxes,
2- Fuck off,
3- Die. |
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Anyway, not sure how you'd adopt these various titles
to the proposed idea. Still a work in progress. |
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I once filled out an online form, and it asked for my title, but instead of a text input there was a drop down box. Whoever designed the form must have been exceedingly bored, or taking the piss, as they had listed every possible title, including King, and right at the bottom was Emperor. I can't remember what I actually selected. |
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If it had a dropdown for "Imperial Wizard" or "Grand
Dragon" I'd suggest not joining whatever club offered
those options. |
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//I'm still looking for the job descriptions and resume
skill requirements to get these titles// |
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While you're at it, you should also check out the
associated salaries, many of which are between zero
and zero. |
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I remember viscount - the green foil was especially exciting to a young boy! |
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Has anyone mentioned the obvious? |
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Might be a pretty challenging title to live up to. |
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//With all human achievement hard work is involved.
Somebody had to empty Aristotle's shit bucket.// |
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//Yep, and I bet it wasn't Aristotle.// |
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Remember, "The society which scorns excellence in
plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates
shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good
philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold
water." |
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John W. Gardner (some guy) |
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I don't want to be god "of" something. That sounds a bit second-rate. |
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All philosophy is shoddy. At best, it's an amusing
diversion for those who do it. And don't go telling
me that "philosophy" used to be synonymous with
"science" - that was a few centuries ago. |
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//All philosophy is shoddy.// |
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There's truth to that but I'd be more inclined to say
all philosophers are shoddy. |
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Invoking plumbers vs philosophers might sound silly at
first until you consider how many people philosophers
have killed and how many lives plumbers (including
anybody who's engaged in keeping our drinking water
separated from out toilet water) have saved. |
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I don't know if it's safe to say plumbers have saved
more lives that doctors but it's certainly safe to say
they've done more for civilization than philosophers. |
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Philosophers just get better press. Plus you've never
heard of "philosopher's crack", togas not being prone
to that particular clothing malfunction. |
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Isn't that known as cannibis? |
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I know it can certainly turn some into instant
philosophers. |
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