Backroom Errata

[Montmorency]

This, right here, is you not listening. You accuse me of abusing language, and yet you insist that churl is the only "whole number" between slaves and nobles.

I insisted that there is only one whole number between 1 and 3: that number is 2. There is nothing precious about an ability to convince yourself otherwise.

Clearly, as your own sources indicate, the Geburs were a legally-defined sub-class among the Churls present in Wessex (but not in all regions) and they were the ones directly butting up against slaves.

Beside the point, but to be accurate none of the sources I quoted describes a legal definition of "gebur". Building Anglo-Saxon England speculates that the group known as geburs in Wessex possibly arose out of freed slaves (as opposed to free men sinking into subjection).

Now, you've done everything up to and including character assassination just to try to prove that your initial point against me was correct, despite which you claim that the historiography doesn't matter, which gives you a double out.

The historiography reinforces the intermediate status of churls between slaves and nobility, which you don't contest. I don't know of what character assassination you speak with regard to churls, but since you engaged in character assassination to troll me I can't respect this whinging.

I think this is really about your defence of the thesis that the wealthy in modern America form an aristocratic class,

It has nothing to do about whether the wealthy form an "aristocratic" class. The analogy is valid whether or not that word applies. You have been hung up on the historical definitions of classes (e.g. stratified legal standing vs. theoretical equality under the law) rather than observing the cross-sectional relationship in practice, which latter is the point.

I'd argue that they don't because as a class they aren't cohesive.

What does it mean for a class to be cohesive?

The fact is for every Donald Trump you also have a Michael Bloomberg.

If by this you mean that most super-wealthy individuals were not born into wealth, you are correct - especially as concerns people outside the US or Europe. But the growth opportunities of the globalizing age have always been vanishingly few and predicated on criminality and political access at that level, and the good times have given way to secular stagnation. Below the masters, the petite bourgeois are much better at staying affluent or getting more so than those below are at breaking into their ranks.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But this has always been so. Most wealth is inherited, and what is inherited is mostly passed between the upper ramparts of society. in America this is especially a foundational racial problem, where as we see black families pass on almost no accumulated wealth whatsoever, even compared to middle class whites.

The difference is, with a real aristocracy if you take away all their money, it doesn't matter. This has remained true in the UK to the extent that up until 1997 every titled aristocrat in the UK automatically got a seat in the legislature, regardless of wealth. This was also true in many other countries at the start of the 20th Century.

Wealthy Americans wish they had that, and they wish they had the social access that real aristocrats have world-wide. This is the crucial difference, and this is why any critique of modern American society based on a comparison to medieval class structures is inherently faulty and needs to be challenged.

You are making two mistakes:

First, modern oligarchs and plutocrats, and their families, do have special access despite a lack of formally-specified status. This is still called privilege.

Second, even if the above were not the case it would not be relevant to instigating analogy, which is explicitly about the substantive inherent capacities of common people, and implicitly of their relationship to the ruling classes.

Again, this is the point. Your contrarian posture here is as misguided as if you said we cannot refer to modern military servicepeople as soldiers because they do not form in blocks or carry spears.

[Viking]

A long-delayed reply for @Montmorency.

I wonder if the variation in faces trends greater the larger in population the ethnic group

I would say necessarily. The larger the population, the stronger the evolutionary pressure needs to be to enforce homogeneity for a given trait. As far as human faces go, that sounds most relevant for sexual selection, and I am not sure it would be up to the task.

Size in numbers also correlates with size in area, so you can have founder effects and other phenomena that push for the branching off of new, distinct ethnic groups.

It didn't jump out at you that he is a Korean-American who basically became a Mexican-American (chicano)? Hence opening a Mexican restaurant.

Adoptees that are adequately young tend to adopt the culture they are adopted into. He would have a much easier time passing as a Mexican than a European where he grew up, so it's not the most surprising cultural identity he adopted.

I get the impression that he has a bit of a conservative personality (cf. the Action facet of the Openness to experience dimension in the NEO PI-R model); he does not seem very interested in trying out new things in general. He was set in his ways before he got to Korea.

If he had ended up in Mexico instead, I don't think he would be very interested in exploring aspects of Mexican culture that he does not already have some familiarity with, because that's how his personality works.

[Montmorency]

I would say necessarily. The larger the population, the stronger the evolutionary pressure needs to be to enforce homogeneity for a given trait. As far as human faces go, that sounds most relevant for sexual selection, and I am not sure it would be up to the task.

Size in numbers also correlates with size in area, so you can have founder effects and other phenomena that push for the branching off of new, distinct ethnic groups.

Pretty much all ethnic groups grow by outright absorbing/assimilating disparate ethnic groups as well as by intragroup sexual reproduction. But there's two ways to interpret what I said about facial variation, first in terms of variability in particular measurements within a group (e.g. interocular distance, ear height), second in terms of how the population can be divided into something like facial archetypes. These are obviously not unrelated but I would guess the former has prompted more research.

Adoptees that are adequately young tend to adopt the culture they are adopted into. He would have a much easier time passing as a Mexican than a European where he grew up, so it's not the most surprising cultural identity he adopted.

He mentioned that kids at school or in the gang identified him as Asian, so there's more to it than a scale of appearance (particularly as perceived from without).

I get the impression that he has a bit of a conservative personality (cf. the Action facet of the Openness to experience dimension in the NEO PI-R model); he does not seem very interested in trying out new things in general. He was set in his ways before he got to Korea.

If he had ended up in Mexico instead, I don't think he would be very interested in exploring aspects of Mexican culture that he does not already have some familiarity with, because that's how his personality works.

I don't know how to evaluate your impression of his personality. I would say he comes across as insecure or defensive (stemming from trauma), but that's not the same as what you're describing.

[Viking]

Pretty much all ethnic groups grow by outright absorbing/assimilating disparate ethnic groups as well as by intragroup sexual reproduction. But there's two ways to interpret what I said about facial variation, first in terms of variability in particular measurements within a group (e.g. interocular distance, ear height), second in terms of how the population can be divided into something like facial archetypes. These are obviously not unrelated but I would guess the former has prompted more research.

I don't recall hearing about facial archetypes in a scientific context like this. Skull shapes, on the other hand..

By the way, I generally wouldn't take large-scale assimilation for granted. Newcomers or expanding groups could displace or outcompete existing groups. It would be interesting to find out how common the different scenarios have been throughout history.

He mentioned that kids at school or in the gang identified him as Asian, so there's more to it than a scale of appearance (particularly as perceived from without).

If there were no social groups for "bad" (his word) Asian kids, then it is not difficult to see his choice as the second-best option.

I don't know how to evaluate your impression of his personality. I would say he comes across as insecure or defensive (stemming from trauma), but that's not the same as what you're describing.

The scientific underpinnings of the five-factor model (which NEO PI-R is based on) I haven't read much about, but I have listened to tens of episodes of a podcast where celebrities have their personalities broken down according to the 30 facets of the NEO PI-R (with both hosts and guests taking the endeavour seriously). From these episodes, for any of the 30 facets, it seems clear to me that the two extreme ends of a facet describe very different people.

For the facet in question, based on the episodes of this podcast, I would informally describe the people that score the lowest on "openness to actions" this way: when they book a holiday, they book the same destination as always, the same hotel at that destination as always, the same hotel room in that hotel as always; and when at the destination, they eat the same meals at the same nearby restaurant. People who score high on this facet, in contrast, like to travel to new destinations and try new things.

In other words, I think this guy, if he goes on holidays, prefers to go to the same old destination(s).

Perhaps insecurity, caused by trauma or otherwise, could indirectly lead to conservative choices as a means of keeping things stable and under control, but I can't immediately see that applying here.

Another facet where it seems that his score comes through clearly (much clearer, really) is achievement striving. He comes across as very ambitious, making sure that his restaurant has the highest standards. He focuses a lot on that his restaurant is the best, not just to boast; and emphasizes that it took "hard work" to get there (i.e. he doesn't take it for granted simply because of his background, he had to want to get there).

Nah, I think his underlying personality is coming through well enough. Maybe with a significantly rougher edge than it would have had with a different childhood and youth.

[Montmorency]

What does "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of" mean?

I don't recall hearing about facial archetypes in a scientific context like this. Skull shapes, on the other hand..

By the way, I generally wouldn't take large-scale assimilation for granted. Newcomers or expanding groups could displace or outcompete existing groups. It would be interesting to find out how common the different scenarios have been throughout history.

Skull shape in itself creates much of the face shape, and craniofacial bones and tissues are made up of multiple segments with distinct genetic and developmental processes. How that biologically comes together is not the point right now.

What I'm saying is, haven't you ever looked at people's faces and found that sometimes people from a given nationality or ethnic group will often have what looks like the same facial model but with slight variations? Like: 'that face looks like a face I'd often see on a French person,' or 'that's a distinctly Chinese (as opposed to Japanese or Korean) face.' It's not to say that a handful of facial models typify entire ethnic groups, but that particular basic facial models are particularly associated.

Unfortunately I can't clearly illustrate what I mean, since I don't make a habit of collecting prosopography from whatever visual media I encounter. If I can't collate examples of the kinds of trend I have in mind, I can at least give examples of what look like archetypes to me.

HP Lovecraft epitomizes the WASPy physiognomy in my mind.

This protester is easily identifiable as Jewish (aside from it being a Jewish-led protest).

If there were no social groups for "bad" (his word) Asian kids, then it is not difficult to see his choice as the second-best option.

Certainly the context-specific interrelationships between groups matter. A white/European-American child in that position would have barriers to assimilation due to the wider societal racial hierarchy. A (dark) black/African-American child could indeed grow up much like our subject D, though there would be an additional layer of influence from the prevalent African-American representation (not to say whether it's good or bad) in TV, film, and music that would be very difficult to conceal from a child even if living in a location with no other black people around.

I don't understand your framing of "second-best."

In other words, I think this guy, if he goes on holidays, prefers to go to the same old destination(s).

I can't really argue with a gut feeling, but why? I have read people who live through poverty often display this kind of behavioral/psychological tendency, but what did you see in the video that left you with this judgement? Making and persisting with a risky business investment in a foreign country seems like contrary evidence.

[Viking]

What I'm saying is, haven't you ever looked at people's faces and found that sometimes people from a given nationality or ethnic group will often have what looks like the same facial model but with slight variations? Like: 'that face looks like a face I'd often see on a French person,' or 'that's a distinctly Chinese (as opposed to Japanese or Korean) face.' It's not to say that a handful of facial models typify entire ethnic groups, but that particular basic facial models are particularly associated.

I think I get what you mean.

Certainly the context-specific interrelationships between groups matter. A white/European-American child in that position would have barriers to assimilation due to the wider societal racial hierarchy. A (dark) black/African-American child could indeed grow up much like our subject D, though there would be an additional layer of influence from the prevalent African-American representation (not to say whether it's good or bad) in TV, film, and music that would be very difficult to conceal from a child even if living in a location with no other black people around.

I don't understand your framing of "second-best."

Koreans and Latin Americans can have similar skin tones, so in the absence of any relevant groups of Asians to join, a group of Latin Americans (or natives) would in practice be the group where his physical appearance would be the most similar to the other members.

I can't really argue with a gut feeling, but why? I have read people who live through poverty often display this kind of behavioral/psychological tendency, but what did you see in the video that left you with this judgement? Making and persisting with a risky business investment in a foreign country seems like contrary evidence.

I would like to emphasize that in the five-factor model, the starting point is not that the aspects of a person's personality that it describes tend to be heavily affected by a person's background (the model is not supposed to describe a person's personality exhaustively, at any rate). In theory, a preference for the same holiday destination every year is independent of your current and past wealth; though I suppose greater wealth could lead to more expensive habits. If you are very rich, maybe you'll take a cruise in your personal yacht to the same five destinations every year instead of sticking to just one destination. The key is a preference for doing the same rather than trying something new.

I also want to emphasize that the five-factor model does not operate with dichotomies; for every facet, most people fall somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, but it is easier to understand the facets by looking at the extremes.

Now for why I think he has that personality trait: one thing that really stood out, is the language. It is possible he has difficulty learning Korean, but my theory is that he doesn't really care to learn Korean, which would be consistent with a low score on this facet. His personal style, like the way he dresses, also seems a bit like he is stilling living his old life. Granted, if a person has been forced to live a very different life, they could try to hold onto something from their old life because it relates to their identity, even if they have a general preference for trying out new things.

He did say that he was a "little bit" excited to get out of his old lifestyle; but it also seems that this excitement was about leaving behind a life he didn't really enjoy rather than being excited at the prospect of moving to a new country and integrating into a new culture.

In personality theory, I think success is generally associated with the dimension of conscientiousness. The facet of ambition, which I mentioned above, belongs to this dimension. He could have scores that are average or above on some other facets of that dimension as well, such as self-discipline (cf. his reference to "hard work").

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I insisted that there is only one whole number between 1 and 3: that number is 2. There is nothing precious about an ability to convince yourself otherwise.

It's not a scale between one and three, it's a scale between something like one and seven.

You have the nobility, broken down into the Royal family, containing the Cyning and the Æthelings, his sons, brothers, nephews etc., then the mass of the þeȝns from whom the king selected his Æorldormon and from which class came most of the non-monastic bishops. Then, below them, you have the mass of the ceorles, who were themselves subdivided into a, the geneats - the "peasant aristocracy" distinguished from the lower Þeȝns by being primarily landholders and farmers as opposed to warriors, the mass of men - the kotsetlas - and the bottom rung, just hanging on, the geburs who were tenant farmers often economically tied to a given estate.

Then you have slaves, mostly non-Saxons.

You'r just engaging in reductio ad absurdem - a geneat would be indistinguishable from a less affluent Þeȝn in the street or in the shieldwall - both mean "follower" or "retainer", the distinction is not one of wealth or even necessarily practical function, both could serve as landlords, the distinction is that one has access to the royal family in a direct way (in theory) and the other does not.In Anglo-Saxon England its all about personal relationship - status is defined (formally) by who you owe your loyalty to and in what context. Þeȝns are warriors first and foremost and it is from this that they derive their status and their privileged access to the royal court, not wealth, not even necessarily birth. Oh, I know you're going to mention Huscarls next - so let me preempt you by pointing out that huscarls are not self-supporting, they're professional paid soldiers as opposed to simply being retainers. Þeȝns were also farmers with their own lands who equipped themselves out of their own pockets. Incidentally, both þeȝns and ceorles fought in the Fyrd together as mounted infantry, in addition to weapons and armour they had to provide their own horses. That's why the property qualification for a þeȝn was five hides, or the equivalent of five small-holdings, because every hundred was required to provide one man for every five hides - þeȝns were that man for their own landholdings, ceorles might send someone else.

Beside the point, but to be accurate none of the sources I quoted describes a legal definition of "gebur". Building Anglo-Saxon England speculates that the group known as geburs in Wessex possibly arose out of freed slaves (as opposed to free men sinking into subjection).

The fact they're described in a charter regarding a manor owned by the king indicates a certain legal status. The problem is we can't be certain what that status is, something life slaves, like serfs? We don't know, exactly, what we do know is that they represented a different kind of status to that enjoyed by other ceorles.

The historiography reinforces the intermediate status of churls between slaves and nobility, which you don't contest. I don't know of what character assassination you speak with regard to churls, but since you engaged in character assassination to troll me I can't respect this whinging.

"You've lost credibility" was what you said.

You don't like it when people call you out for your bad behaviour, well suck it up - you once told Furnunculus his "caution [was] not respectable."

It has nothing to do about whether the wealthy form an "aristocratic" class. The analogy is valid whether or not that word applies. You have been hung up on the historical definitions of classes (e.g. stratified legal standing vs. theoretical equality under the law) rather than observing the cross-sectional relationship in practice, which latter is the point.

Outside the US class is inherited regardless of wealth. Go re-watch Downton Abbey, it's a study in class relationships, right down to the perpetually awkward position of the Early's American wife and brother-in-law.

What does it mean for a class to be cohesive?

It means they form a cohesive group with similar social standards, goals, tastes, etc. - a community with an in-group and out-group.

If by this you mean that most super-wealthy individuals were not born into wealth, you are correct - especially as concerns people outside the US or Europe. But the growth opportunities of the globalizing age have always been vanishingly few and predicated on criminality and political access at that level, and the good times have given way to secular stagnation. Below the masters, the petite bourgeois are much better at staying affluent or getting more so than those below are at breaking into their ranks.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But this has always been so. Most wealth is inherited, and what is inherited is mostly passed between the upper ramparts of society. in America this is especially a foundational racial problem, where as we see black families pass on almost no accumulated wealth whatsoever, even compared to middle class whites.

So you acknowledge that the most wealthy in America, those "holding the reigns" so to speak were not born into it. Do you understand how different this is to a class-system where people are born into a certain class and that defines their social standing? Do you understand that the only was to access a higher class in those circumstances is through personal patronage of the person at the top of that class (the monarch) and no amount of money will ever get you in?

You are making two mistakes:

First, modern oligarchs and plutocrats, and their families, do have special access despite a lack of formally-specified status. This is still called privilege.

Privilege of wealth is not privilege of class. They aren't the same and your insistence on trying to equate them demonstrates that a refusal to believe that class works differently outside a Republic like the US. Compare the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans.

Second, even if the above were not the case it would not be relevant to instigating analogy, which is explicitly about the substantive inherent capacities of common people, and implicitly of their relationship to the ruling classes.

Again, this is the point. Your contrarian posture here is as misguided as if you said we cannot refer to modern military servicepeople as soldiers because they do not form in blocks or carry spears.

And this is the part you refuse to accept, Anglo-Saxon society doesn't work like that'. Status is conferred by access to the King, he decides if you're a þeȝn or a ceorl - and then everyone else agrees with him. So how do you make the change? Pretty simple really, you demonstrate loyalty to the king and an ability to kill his enemies. Anglo-Saxon society is totally militarised, all free men serve, and even priests and bishops can be found in the shield wall. If you don't have the requisite five hides, well, the king will just give you land.

In this society deeds grant access and access grants wealth. Wealth does not, by itself, grant access.

You're engaging in Marxist historiography again, insisting on seeing other times and places in the context of your own society. In this case you're comparing an absolute monarchy with a completely militarised (free) population against a largely demilitarised republic. Apples and oranges.

[Montmorency]

I think I get what you mean.

I think I've found a good comparison to illustrate: HP Lovecraft (colonial Anglo) and TE Lawrence (British Anglo).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._June_1934.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_lawrence.jpg

Tell me you don't see it? Now the next step if my notion has any validity would be to identify any systematic proportion among the general population of this facial model - maybe it's just a weird coincidence. (Well, the proper first step would be to parametrize the putative facial model but...)

Koreans and Latin Americans can have similar skin tones, so in the absence of any relevant groups of Asians to join, a group of Latin Americans (or natives) would in practice be the group where his physical appearance would be the most similar to the other members.

Considering the great variation in appearance within the groups "Asian" and "Latin American" (of whom the latter comprise everything from overwhelmingly European-ancestry countries like Argentina and overwhelmingly Amerindian (and minimally-admixed mestizo) countries like Bolivia), that's too sweeping an assessment. At any rate, it isn't helpful to dignify sorting by appearance or color.

I would like to emphasize that in the five-factor model, the starting point is not that the aspects of a person's personality that it describes tend to be heavily affected by a person's background (the model is not supposed to describe a person's personality exhaustively, at any rate). In theory, a preference for the same holiday destination every year is independent of your current and past wealth; though I suppose greater wealth could lead to more expensive habits. If you are very rich, maybe you'll take a cruise in your personal yacht to the same five destinations every year instead of sticking to just one destination. The key is a preference for doing the same rather than trying something new.

I also want to emphasize that the five-factor model does not operate with dichotomies; for every facet, most people fall somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, but it is easier to understand the facets by looking at the extremes.

Now for why I think he has that personality trait: one thing that really stood out, is the language. It is possible he has difficulty learning Korean, but my theory is that he doesn't really care to learn Korean, which would be consistent with a low score on this facet. His personal style, like the way he dresses, also seems a bit like he is stilling living his old life. Granted, if a person has been forced to live a very different life, they could try to hold onto something from their old life because it relates to their identity, even if they have a general preference for trying out new things.

He did say that he was a "little bit" excited to get out of his old lifestyle; but it also seems that this excitement was about leaving behind a life he didn't really enjoy rather than being excited at the prospect of moving to a new country and integrating into a new culture.

In personality theory, I think success is generally associated with the dimension of conscientiousness. The facet of ambition, which I mentioned above, belongs to this dimension. He could have scores that are average or above on some other facets of that dimension as well, such as self-discipline (cf. his reference to "hard work").

OK, like any model of personality insight more data (interview material, professional examination) is better, but I understand where you're coming from.

It's not a scale between one and three, it's a scale between something like one and seven.

You have the nobility, broken down into the Royal family, containing the Cyning and the Æthelings, his sons, brothers, nephews etc., then the mass of the þeȝns from whom the king selected his Æorldormon and from which class came most of the non-monastic bishops. Then, below them, you have the mass of the ceorles, who were themselves subdivided into a, the geneats - the "peasant aristocracy" distinguished from the lower Þeȝns by being primarily landholders and farmers as opposed to warriors, the mass of men - the kotsetlas - and the bottom rung, just hanging on, the geburs who were tenant farmers often economically tied to a given estate.

Then you have slaves, mostly non-Saxons.

You'r just engaging in reductio ad absurdem - a geneat would be indistinguishable from a less affluent Þeȝn in the street or in the shieldwall - both mean "follower" or "retainer", the distinction is not one of wealth or even necessarily practical function, both could serve as landlords, the distinction is that one has access to the royal family in a direct way (in theory) and the other does not.In Anglo-Saxon England its all about personal relationship - status is defined (formally) by who you owe your loyalty to and in what context. Þeȝns are warriors first and foremost and it is from this that they derive their status and their privileged access to the royal court, not wealth, not even necessarily birth. Oh, I know you're going to mention Huscarls next - so let me preempt you by pointing out that huscarls are not self-supporting, they're professional paid soldiers as opposed to simply being retainers. Þeȝns were also farmers with their own lands who equipped themselves out of their own pockets. Incidentally, both þeȝns and ceorles fought in the Fyrd together as mounted infantry, in addition to weapons and armour they had to provide their own horses. That's why the property qualification for a þeȝn was five hides, or the equivalent of five small-holdings, because every hundred was required to provide one man for every five hides - þeȝns were that man for their own landholdings, ceorles might send someone else.

This is well-worn ground by now, and it reinforces the logical necessity of the proposition that churls are the lowest class of freemen. The internal structure of the churl class does not change the external hierarchy!

"You've lost credibility" was what you said.

You don't like it when people call you out for your bad behaviour, well suck it up - you once told Furnunculus his "caution [was] not respectable."

Your bad behavior was the problem here!

Outside the US class is inherited regardless of wealth. Go re-watch Downton Abbey, it's a study in class relationships, right down to the perpetually awkward position of the Early's American wife and brother-in-law.

All class at all times is a matter of networking above wealth. Formal title applies to very few humans today, and it's not the meaningful thing.

So you acknowledge that the most wealthy in America, those "holding the reigns" so to speak were not born into it. Do you understand how different this is to a class-system where people are born into a certain class and that defines their social standing? Do you understand that the only was to access a higher class in those circumstances is through personal patronage of the person at the top of that class (the monarch) and no amount of money will ever get you in?

Almost all megamillionaires and billionaires have been created in the past two or three generations, because of contingencies in the global economy that are fluid. Even adjusted for inflation there were almost no such people a hundred years ago. You're born into it after the first generation, similar to how an immigrant family in America will always give birth to lifelong Americans regardless of their own original status.

But before that, it's applicable at all points in modern history. If, for instance, you've read anything about early America you'll notice that people from wealthy, landed, educated families were falling into destitution all the time. Some even died penniless or in debtor's prison. Yet even so they were typically able to maintain access to capital, professional opportunities, other influential bourgeois people, political power, etc. Why? Because they were from the "right" families! Ain't you ever heard of the Boston Brahmins? And that's just New England, it was all over the country like that. The Southern slavers, who were in any sense an aristocratic throwback, had almost all their wealth destroyed in the Civil War. Guess what happened in the aftermath? Most of those slavers picked up and re-enslaved the blacks and rebuilt their wealth and political power. With the invention of sharecropping where planters could not rely on slaves they literally transformed the blacks into serf-like tenant farmers, who could leave or demand remuneration at the risk of their lives.

To this day descendants of the aristocratic families are disproportionately represented in Southern business and politics.

Privilege of wealth is not privilege of class. They aren't the same and your insistence on trying to equate them demonstrates that a refusal to believe that class works differently outside a Republic like the US. Compare the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans.

You don't understand how class works today.

And this is the part you refuse to accept, Anglo-Saxon society doesn't work like that'. Status is conferred by access to the King, he decides if you're a þeȝn or a ceorl - and then everyone else agrees with him. So how do you make the change? Pretty simple really, you demonstrate loyalty to the king and an ability to kill his enemies. Anglo-Saxon society is totally militarised, all free men serve, and even priests and bishops can be found in the shield wall. If you don't have the requisite five hides, well, the king will just [I]give you land.

Again, this doesn't affect the analogy because the analogy does not depend on these specific relationships.

In this society deeds grant access and access grants wealth. Wealth does not, by itself, grant access.

A wealthy enough landowner will always have access to the king, unless it's war. Obviously.

You're engaging in Marxist historiography again, insisting on seeing other times and places in the context of your own society. In this case you're comparing an absolute monarchy with a completely militarised (free) population against a largely demilitarised republic. Apples and oranges.

Wrong. This is because you fundamentally don't understand the comparison. I don't think I can help you.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

This is well-worn ground by now, and it reinforces the logical necessity of the proposition that churls are the lowest class of freemen. The internal structure of the churl class does not change the external hierarchy!

OK, so... what?

"There's always been a 1%"?

Your bad behavior was the problem here!

If by bad behaviour you mean "trolling" that's just slanderous.

I'm not trolling you, I'm reflecting you, I tried being polite and you ignored me, so now I'm deliberately being antagonistic because it's all you respond to. You don't value good manners or compassion, so I refuse to avail you of those things. It is a waste of my time.

All class at all times is a matter of networking above wealth. Formal title applies to very few humans today, and it's not the meaningful thing.

Formal title has never applied to many humans. In England only a few hundred people at any one time have ever held formal title, excepting baronets and knights. You're avoiding the core point here - in this case it's not about "networking" but about access to one specific person, a person who in all instances claimed decent from a pagan God, Woden. This was true for all Anglo-Saxon Kings from all seven kingdoms, excepting possibly the last, Harold II.

Almost all megamillionaires and billionaires have been created in the past two or three generations, because of contingencies in the global economy that are fluid. Even adjusted for inflation there were almost no such people a hundred years ago. You're born into it after the first generation, similar to how an immigrant family in America will always give birth to lifelong Americans regardless of their own original status.

Debatable - the globalised economy has had certain perverse effects on human society. The landed aristocracy held a strangle hold on the lives of all people prior to the French Revolution. It's difficult to quantify their wealth in today's terms, or the extent of their political power.

But before that, it's applicable at all points in modern history. If, for instance, you've read anything about early America you'll notice that people from wealthy, landed, educated families were falling into destitution all the time. Some even died penniless or in debtor's prison. Yet even so they were typically able to maintain access to capital, professional opportunities, other influential bourgeois people, political power, etc. Why? Because they were from the "right" families! Ain't you ever heard of the Boston Brahmins? And that's just New England, it was all over the country like that. The Southern slavers, who were in any sense an aristocratic throwback, had almost all their wealth destroyed in the Civil War. Guess what happened in the aftermath? Most of those slavers picked up and re-enslaved the blacks and rebuilt their wealth and political power. With the invention of sharecropping where planters could not rely on slaves they literally transformed the blacks into serf-like tenant farmers, who could leave or demand remuneration at the risk of their lives.

To this day descendants of the aristocratic families are disproportionately represented in Southern business and politics.

Well, technically, modern history begins with the Renaissance, aka the Early Modern Period. The American South is certainly a fascinating culture, one which established a landed aristocracy and a slave-caste based on race whilst also managing to distinguish between that aristocracy and the mass of non-slaves. On the other hand, we have an untitled-aristocracy here too. When I visited the Trecarrell estate with my mother over the summer the owner, whom you would call a "country squire" was telling us about the time be managed to talk his way into Lambeth Palace library to see manuscripts relating to the manor house.

You don't understand how class works today.

On the contrary, I understand it works differently outside the US. One is reminded of the rather amusing story of when Her Majesty visited Normandy in the 1960's, I believe it was then. The local peasants lined the streets, doffed their caps and shouted "Viva la Duchess!" to the considerable embarrassment of her French hosts.

Again, this doesn't affect the analogy because the analogy does not depend on these specific relationships.

The blogger's analogy was between the modern American who is disenfranchised but doesn't realise it because he votes and the churl imagined to be disenfranchised but doesn't realise it because he's better than a slave. Well, the churl did realise it, and he was still better off than the modern American.

A wealthy enough landowner will always have access to the king, unless it's war. Obviously.

This ignores the point I referred to a while back, where the king owns all the land, so it's up to him if you're wealthy or not. This is true in early Anglo-Saxon society and later post-conquest. It's less true in late Anglo-Saxon society where landholding (as opposed to renting) has become much more prevalent but the central point stands. The only really practical way to get that wealthy that you have access by default is to get into the aristocracy because your ability to acquire land and wealth is dependent on the king or a powerful magnate.

A really good example of this in Early Modern times is Thomas Cromwell, a more enduring example is Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Brandon's father was a knight, Sir William, who was of sufficiently low standing that he was accused of raping a "gentlewoman" which isn't something that happens to genuinely noble people in late-medieval England as a rule. he got off. Cromwell, of course, was just a good lawyer who amassed fabulous wealth and titles under Henry VIII until he was offed by some actual aristocrats for basically being too common.

Wrong. This is because you fundamentally don't understand the comparison. I don't think I can help you.

There is no meaningful comparison, that's the point. Your view is no more applicable than Greyblades labelling Anglo-Saxon society "pre-feudal". In both cases you're drawing a false comparison that is based on common (and therefore shallow) modern understanding of the historical context.

We are not living in a post Anglo-Saxon society, we haven't been for centuries. We're living in a post-Roman society. Don't believe me, look up how votes for magistrates were conducted in the Roman Republic and compare it to the Primary process for selecting presidential candidates in the US, never mind the junk food (including pizza).

Remember, this started because you asked for my opinion. My opinion is, and was, that the point being made by the blogger is banal and the comparison is misconstrued. Don't like that opinion? well, you'll remember not to ask in future, then, won't you?

[Greyblades]

There is no meaningful comparison, that's the point. Your view is no more applicable than Greyblades labelling Anglo-Saxon society "pre-feudal". In both cases you're drawing a false comparison that is based on common (and therefore shallow) modern understanding of the historical context.

Elucidate, historian. Was the norman conquests not a substanstive enough societal change to consider a book mark in history to lable pre and post?

[Montmorency]

OK, so... what?

"There's always been a 1%"?

I don't like the application of the "1%" concept, which is just a slogan, but sure, whatever.

If by bad behaviour you mean "trolling" that's just slanderous.

I'm not trolling you, I'm reflecting you, I tried being polite and you ignored me, so now I'm deliberately being antagonistic because it's all you respond to. You don't value good manners or compassion, so I refuse to avail you of those things. It is a waste of my time.

There have been about two instances this year in which your thought process was so outrageously defective that I tried to unmistakably and compassionately impress on you the severity of your mistakes. I hoped you would take it to heart and check yourself. If from that you've learned only to double down and preemptively attack, well, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, won't get fooled again.

Formal title has never applied to many humans. In England only a few hundred people at any one time have ever held formal title, excepting baronets and knights. You're avoiding the core point here - in this case it's not about "networking" but about access to one specific person, a person who in all instances claimed decent from a pagan God, Woden. This was true for all Anglo-Saxon Kings from all seven kingdoms, excepting possibly the last, Harold II.

The way you speak makes it seems as though you think kings were the sole and unlimited sources of political power in pre-modern times. Who you knew and what you could do for each other has always been an organizing principle of complex societies.

Debatable - the globalised economy has had certain perverse effects on human society. The landed aristocracy held a strangle hold on the lives of all people prior to the French Revolution. It's difficult to quantify their wealth in today's terms, or the extent of their political power.

I don't know about Mansa Musa sprinkling gold here and there, but there was a coherent monetary framework in place in the 18th century. It's not debatable that there were relatively few megamillionaires and billionaires, adjusted for inflation, before the world wars and globalization.

Well, technically, modern history begins with the Renaissance, aka the Early Modern Period. The American South is certainly a fascinating culture, one which established a landed aristocracy and a slave-caste based on race whilst also managing to distinguish between that aristocracy and the mass of non-slaves. On the other hand, we have an untitled-aristocracy here too. When I visited the Trecarrell estate with my mother over the summer the owner, whom you would call a "country squire" was telling us about the time be managed to talk his way into Lambeth Palace library to see manuscripts relating to the manor house.

The important takeaway is that de facto hereditary class has been big throughout American history, it is cultivated and perpetuated through interrelationships among the elite as much as wealth per se, and wealth can always be obtained through mutual services and leveraging of prestige and privilege. As has been increasingly pointed out, even the entire American upper-middle-class looks ever more like a hereditary class in practice.

On the contrary, I understand it works differently outside the US. One is reminded of the rather amusing story of when Her Majesty visited Normandy in the 1960's, I believe it was then. The local peasants lined the streets, doffed their caps and shouted "Viva la Duchess!" to the considerable embarrassment of her French hosts.

You always return to your understanding of modern English class. Without even engaging on those terms, you should realize that the world is bigger than England.

Though separately I would be interested if you can find any other examples of French "peasants" cheering Queen Elizabeth. She visits Normandy frequently enough, after all, usually to commemorate WW2 events. Come to think of it, I wonder if that has any relevance...

The blogger's analogy was between the modern American who is disenfranchised but doesn't realise it because he votes and the churl imagined to be disenfranchised but doesn't realise it because he's better than a slave. Well, the churl did realise it, and he was still better off than the modern American.

A certain kind of modern American doesn't realize it because he has access to consumer choice, and to tribal opiates like god and guns.

If you want to say the churl was better off than a modern American or Englishman, that's a separate topic, and it will have to admit much more information than just class theory. I would agree only on some very narrow constructions. Such as I already mentioned, that on some measures of inequality the churl could have been closer to his lord than the modern analogues.To the extent that you reacted against any subtext that the modern American is 'declining' or 'degenerating' into churlhood, I was and am willing to accommodate that.

This ignores the point I referred to a while back, where the king owns all the land, so it's up to him if you're wealthy or not. This is true in early Anglo-Saxon society and later post-conquest. It's less true in late Anglo-Saxon society where landholding (as opposed to renting) has become much more prevalent but the central point stands. The only really practical way to get that wealthy that you have access by default is to get into the aristocracy because your ability to acquire land and wealth is dependent on the king or a powerful magnate.

The king owning all land is a legal fiction, not an intrinsic power dynamic. The land is not a magical organism that responds to divinely-vested authority. Kingship is not a unit of power.

A really good example of this in Early Modern times is Thomas Cromwell, a more enduring example is Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Brandon's father was a knight, Sir William, who was of sufficiently low standing that he was accused of raping a "gentlewoman" which isn't something that happens to genuinely noble people in late-medieval England as a rule. he got off. Cromwell, of course, was just a good lawyer who amassed fabulous wealth and titles under Henry VIII until he was offed by some actual aristocrats for basically being too common.

Without refreshing my memory I believe there were some other conflicts ongoing beyond umbrage at Cromwell being a commoner.

Speaking of rape, elites, and the South, here's a wonderful little story:

Wade Hampton II was one of the big names among the Southern elite of the antebellum period. Hampton had four daughters. I'm just going to post something from Wiki without further comment.

Hampton's sister-in-law Catherine Fitzsimmons, a shy girl, at age 17 married James Henry Hammond, making him a wealthy man with her large dowry. He eventually owned more than 20 square miles of property and hundreds of slaves through wealth gained by this marriage. The families saw each other socially because of this relationship.

In 1843 Hampton learned that Hammond had sexually abused his daughters (Hammond's nieces) as teenagers and accused him when he was still governor, although nothing was written publicly.[2][3] As rumors of Hammond's behavior spread, he was socially ostracized[4] and his political career was derailed for a decade.[3] But, he recovered sufficient political standing to be elected in 1856 by the South Carolina legislature as US senator from the state. The Hampton daughters' reputations were irrevocably tarnished. None of the daughters ever married.[3]

Hammond's Secret and Sacred Diaries (not published until 1989) reveal that his sexual appetites were varied. He described, without embarrassment, his "familiarities and dalliances"[1] over two years with four teenage nieces, daughters of his sister-in-law Ann Fitzsimmons and her husband Wade Hampton II.[1][11] He blamed his behavior on what he described as the seductiveness of the "extremely affectionate" young women.[1] The scandal "derailed his political career" for a decade to come after Wade Hampton III publicly accused him in 1843, when Hammond was governor.[12] He was "ostracized by polite society" for some time, but in the late 1850s, he was nonetheless elected by the state legislature as US senator.[13]

Hammond's damage to the girls was far-reaching. Their social prospects were destroyed. Considered to have tarnished social reputations by his behavior, none of the four ever married.[1]

Hammond was also known to have repeatedly raped two female slaves, one of whom may have been his own daughter. He raped the first slave, Sally Johnson, when she was 18 years old.[1] Such behavior was not uncommon among white men of power at the time; their mixed-race children were born into slavery and remained there unless the fathers took action to free them.[13] Later, Hammond raped Sally Johnson's daughter, Louisa, who was a year old baby when he bought her mother; the first rape apparently occurred when Louisa was 12; she also bore several of his children.

His wife left him for a few years, after he repeatedly raped the enslaved girl, taking their own children with her. She later returned to her husband.[1]

There is no meaningful comparison, that's the point.

If you think it's not insightful, that's fine. I offered you that. But it's not a false comparison.

We are not living in a post Anglo-Saxon society, we haven't been for centuries. We're living in a post-Roman society. Don't believe me, look up how votes for magistrates were conducted in the Roman Republic and compare it to the Primary process for selecting presidential candidates in the US, never mind the junk food (including pizza).

If there is a sense that Russia is "post-Soviet," that is not the sense in which any part of the world is "post-Roman." It's the height of banality to repeat the fact that Roman civilization has influenced subsequent civilizations.

Remember, this started because you asked for my opinion. My opinion is, and was, that the point being made by the blogger is banal and the comparison is misconstrued. Don't like that opinion? well, you'll remember not to ask in future, then, won't you?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I don't like the application of the "1%" concept, which is just a slogan, but sure, whatever.

Well, thanes might have been a bit more than 1%, but the top, the people who might become earls, they were probably less than 1%. Probably less than 100 people.

There have been about two instances this year in which your thought process was so outrageously defective that I tried to unmistakably and compassionately impress on you the severity of your mistakes. I hoped you would take it to heart and check yourself. If from that you've learned only to double down and preemptively attack, well, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, won't get fooled again.

There's been at least one instance where you've completely misconstrued my point to the extent you spent pages fighting me on a non-issue. You need to adjust your perspective on other people, generally.

I believe a wide range of things you consider insane and you likewise. You need to just accept that and stop worrying about it. If I worried about all the insane stuff you and Beskar said I'd actually go insane.

The way you speak makes it seems as though you think kings were the sole and unlimited sources of political power in pre-modern times. Who you knew and what you could do for each other has always been an organizing principle of complex societies.

The king was the exclusive font of power and law. This is still technically true in the UK (but not other modern European monarchies), hence all the recent contortions over the prorogation. I could go into all of the machinations of how this worked in practice but despite what you might call "political realities" it was also a reality that everything rested on one man, and it was exclusively a man in Anglo-Saxon England, from a royal family (not just a noble one).

I don't know about Mansa Musa sprinkling gold here and there, but there was a coherent monetary framework in place in the 18th century. It's not debatable that there were relatively few megamillionaires and billionaires, adjusted for inflation, before the world wars and globalization.

You mean when he destroyed the entire economy of Egypt (no mean feat) twice? we live in a highly monetised society, where wealth is very mobile. In the medieval world you had people with thousands of serfs, multiple massive castles, who controlled the lives of perhaps tens of thousands of people directly and through their vassals. Money's less of a thing when you have direct control of physical resources and people.

The important takeaway is that de facto hereditary class has been big throughout American history, it is cultivated and perpetuated through interrelationships among the elite as much as wealth per se, and wealth can always be obtained through mutual services and leveraging of prestige and privilege. As has been increasingly pointed out, even the entire American upper-middle-class looks ever more like a hereditary class in practice.

Ah, I see, you have confused "no upper class" with no class. I have s social class, I can't lose it, I inherited it from my father and I wear it all the time. It allows me to do things that perhaps someone of a lower class couldn't get away with - although that's probably less true today than ten years ago.

You always return to your understanding of modern English class. Without even engaging on those terms, you should realize that the world is bigger than England.

Though separately I would be interested if you can find any other examples of French "peasants" cheering Queen Elizabeth. She visits Normandy frequently enough, after all, usually to commemorate WW2 events. Come to think of it, I wonder if that has any relevance...

That anecdote was about French class - you know France - that place where all the wine is made by people living in castles? I mostly compare American class to English class because it is the closest point of contact for you.

A certain kind of modern American doesn't realize it because he has access to consumer choice, and to tribal opiates like god and guns.

You want to distance yourself from Marx you shouldn't use his language.

If you want to say the churl was better off than a modern American or Englishman, that's a separate topic, and it will have to admit much more information than just class theory. I would agree only on some very narrow constructions. Such as I already mentioned, that on some measures of inequality the churl could have been closer to his lord than the modern analogues.To the extent that you reacted against any subtext that the modern American is 'declining' or 'degenerating' into churlhood, I was and am willing to accommodate that.

That would have been a more interesting discussion, but instead you fixate on fixing the churl in an analogous position where he is "low class". In a slave-owning society slaves are low-class, free men tend to be an actual cut above.

The king owning all land is a legal fiction, not an intrinsic power dynamic. The land is not a magical organism that responds to divinely-vested authority. Kingship is not a unit of power.

There's very little evidence people saw it that way. Very few bad kings were openly defied or deposed - thing had to get really bad for that to happen. This is a society where the majority of people believe the King actually is anointed by God. I realsie that might be difficult to wrap your head around but there's really no evidence this was the upper class in cahoots to trick the poor people.

Indeed, the concept of a legal fiction isn't really a concept compaitible with the medieval worldview when the flawed "earthly" law is meant to be shaped by God's law.

Without refreshing my memory I believe there were some other conflicts ongoing beyond umbrage at Cromwell being a commoner.

There was a tug of war over reformist and traditionalist bishops and Cromwell was on the losing reformist side (it swung back the other way later) - there was also his failed marriage to Anne of Cleves. Overall, though, if Cromwell had been nobly born he probably would have been disgraced rather than executed.

Speaking of rape, elites, and the South, here's a wonderful little story:

Wade Hampton II was one of the big names among the Southern elite of the antebellum period. Hampton had four daughters. I'm just going to post something from Wiki without further comment.

Charming

If you think it's not insightful, that's fine. I offered you that. But it's not a false comparison.

I dissagree - I don't think there's a meaningful comparison here. Not beyond "some people are poor, some are rich."

If there is a sense that Russia is "post-Soviet," that is not the sense in which any part of the world is "post-Roman." It's the height of banality to repeat the fact that Roman civilization has influenced subsequent civilizations.

Seriously, look up the way the Tribal Assembly worked - then come back.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Elucidate, historian. Was the norman conquests not a substanstive enough societal change to consider a book mark in history to lable pre and post?

Oh, no it was, and it was catastrophic, the economy, the administration utterly collapsed under Norman incompetence. England's famed coinage which had been 95% pure silver (what became sterling silver) since probably the time of Offa of Mercia was debased.

However, when you describe it as "pre-feudal" you're perpetuating a post-medieval myth that before the Normans came we were living in some sort of Tolkienesque idyll. In reality, even before the Conquest every Englishman needed a liege lord and whilst it wasn't strict Norman feudalism it wasn't exactly "not feudal", though. It was terrible principally because the English became, to quote Robert Bartlett, a "subject people".

So, we should describe the period before the Normans as "pre-Norman" or "pre-Conquest" as opposed to "pre-feudal".