I have written my fill about Prince Harry, here and here and here, but the latest chapter in the story, Harry's release of his "tell all" memoir Spare needs addressing. What we are seeing here is a major threat to the Royal Family, who, in the lurid revelations of Harry (no doubt prompted by Meghan at his elbow) are presented as a bunch of rather shitty, ordinary people. Basically it's a bumfight.
This sort of thing is really a function of our modern age, which, through the "Attention Economy," is a relentless driver of logic, which is itself highly toxic to the idea of Royalty.
There is a lot to unpack here, so let's tread carefully.
The conventional definition of the "Attention Economy" is an internal company organisational theory, but what I mean by the term is more akin to the idea of the "Click Economy," namely the gaining of attention to sell things, but I prefer the term "Attention Economy" for this phenomenon, as it is about more than clicking a mouse. Anyway, Harry and Meghan's book and global brand definitely fall into this category: the more attention they get the more power and money they can kick up.
In an odd way, this is their attempt to be "Royal," as the nature of Royalty is to garner as much attention as possible, but attention is also a medium for logic, which, in its most basic sense, is simply having ideas and joining them up with the nearest most obvious and adjacent ideas. Individuals are capable of this, but so too are cultures and societies. Occasionally such chains of logic can turn into dangerous and destructive revolutionary tendencies. Hence the Latin expression: "Reductio ad absurdum," which essentially means destroying a premise by taking it to its logical conclusion.
The truth is that logic is no guarantee of sanity. Even with all the correct premises in place to start from, there is no certainty that a society developed on the rigorous application of logic would avoid some insane hell world at some point. But it is clearly worse if you start with the wrong premises.
This sort of thing is really a function of our modern age, which, through the "Attention Economy," is a relentless driver of logic, which is itself highly toxic to the idea of Royalty.
There is a lot to unpack here, so let's tread carefully.
The conventional definition of the "Attention Economy" is an internal company organisational theory, but what I mean by the term is more akin to the idea of the "Click Economy," namely the gaining of attention to sell things, but I prefer the term "Attention Economy" for this phenomenon, as it is about more than clicking a mouse. Anyway, Harry and Meghan's book and global brand definitely fall into this category: the more attention they get the more power and money they can kick up.
In an odd way, this is their attempt to be "Royal," as the nature of Royalty is to garner as much attention as possible, but attention is also a medium for logic, which, in its most basic sense, is simply having ideas and joining them up with the nearest most obvious and adjacent ideas. Individuals are capable of this, but so too are cultures and societies. Occasionally such chains of logic can turn into dangerous and destructive revolutionary tendencies. Hence the Latin expression: "Reductio ad absurdum," which essentially means destroying a premise by taking it to its logical conclusion.
The truth is that logic is no guarantee of sanity. Even with all the correct premises in place to start from, there is no certainty that a society developed on the rigorous application of logic would avoid some insane hell world at some point. But it is clearly worse if you start with the wrong premises.
By giving everyone a nominal value of "1" to begin with, a whole host of spiritual and social organisational processes became smoother, easier, and more efficient in the past. Objective inequality could then be added in later to stimulate talent and quality, through unequal outcomes (money, power, sex, heaven/hell, etc.). Going ahead, this might not be such an optimum system as we supposed.
But, returning to the present case, this premise of "total equality" is directly detrimental to a "historically sheltered," inegalitarian British institution like Royalty, where high status is simply down to appearing in the right birth canal at the right moment.
Going back to Edmund Burke, one of the main arguments deployed to defend monarchy has been to emphasise the dangers of relentless logic, and to use this to stop "Monarchy" coming into direct contact with our civilisational premise of "total equality." In short, the British monarchy exists in a state of pragmatic logical incoherence and relies on the "false consciousness" that is represented in our civilisation by conservatism, a mind-set that is literally out of sync with the premises on which the "House of the West" is built. The only way Monarchy can really survive is to slow down or derail the logic train, or to take a more radical approach and change the fundamental premise of "absolute equality."
We see similar problems with race (not to mention sex):
"If we're all equal, why are Whites (as a group) still much richer than Blacks (as a group), etc., etc.?"
The only answer to this, based on the premise of absolute equality, is, "Sorry, this is undoubtedly due to racism, invisible racism, legacy racism, etc., and, yes, I'm a bad White person."
Meghan's racial ressentiment has joined with Harry's primogenetive ressentiment
Before the rise of the internet and the attention economy that it facilitated, it was easier to keep the logical dominoes apart, and thus to maintain the mystique of an institution like the British Royal Family.
Harry Windsor's book -- let's dispense with his "Royal" title -- is not just a grubby exposé. It also greases the rails for the train of egalitarian logic to roll right over his fellow Windsors and to make them contemptible nobodies, like all the other contemptible nobodies who are reading about their lives.
The outcome of this is that the Monarchy, which was still able to wow us with its pageantry during the late Queen's funeral, will look increasingly hollow, empty, and fake.
Rather than selling itself on bling and mystique to a bedazzled multicultural Britain, its best chance of prolonging its rather pointless existence will be to keep an ever-lower profile -- the Swedish approach -- and to try to become too boring even to be mentioned in the press or anywhere else. A hard ask for the Windsors.
Harry Windsor's book -- let's dispense with his "Royal" title -- is not just a grubby exposé. It also greases the rails for the train of egalitarian logic to roll right over his fellow Windsors and to make them contemptible nobodies, like all the other contemptible nobodies who are reading about their lives.
The outcome of this is that the Monarchy, which was still able to wow us with its pageantry during the late Queen's funeral, will look increasingly hollow, empty, and fake.
Rather than selling itself on bling and mystique to a bedazzled multicultural Britain, its best chance of prolonging its rather pointless existence will be to keep an ever-lower profile -- the Swedish approach -- and to try to become too boring even to be mentioned in the press or anywhere else. A hard ask for the Windsors.
___________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment
All Comments MUST include a name (either real or sock). Also don't give us an easy excuse to ignore your brilliant comment by using "shitposty" language.