Eso’s Chronicles 264 / 4
The King & I
© Eso A.B.
All comments
appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin. This blog begins a new series.
INTRODUCTION
In blogs 262 & 263, I discussed role of the King and
Parliamentary governments. It was discovered that the King was important as the
“irrational moment” in the formation of a community, while Parliamentary
‘democracy’ results, for various reasons, in “bureaucratic totalitarianism”.
Perhaps ‘the King’ is on my mind, because as a child I heard a lot
of fairy tales, which included stories about kings. From that time on, I have
thought about governments as originating with a King. Though kings are long out
of fashion, they still play a notable role in my imagination, and though
governments and the media have abandoned the office as politically unviable, I
suspect that he-she still resides in many imaginations and would be viable
enough—it the opportunity arose.
The “irrational moment” of a King is necessary, because a
community cannot form until there arises a moment of trust. Such a moment
cannot arise with a Parliament, because it is, so to say, a ‘democratic’ form
of government; and a democracy will not be trusted by any member of any
proto-community because it is never ‘democratic’ a priori, but is such only as
a result of being so declared by ‘law’, which—because of the necessity of such
a declaration—is ‘democratic’ only for those who constitute the will of a
‘majority’ (whatever that may be).
The rest of the body-‘democratic’ is in opposition to the
‘democracy’, but has agreed not to contest it for the sake of avoiding
bloodshed, even while it has not conceded being wrong in its views or opinions.
Examples of the ‘irrational moment’ abound in James Frazer’s
famous work on myth and religion called “The Golden Bough”. While an
indispensible read for any anthropologist, the work has been for various
reasons pushed into the background. The most notable reason is that most all of
our modern political societies associate themselves with ‘democracy’, which
according to theory ought not to have ‘irrational’ or ‘charismatic’ moments.
Still, ‘irrational moments’ do occur; and when they occur, they
are usually resolved through an act of violence, in which the alleged
‘majority’ (generally associated with the ‘victors’) kills the leader of the
opposition and, if possible, most of his-her supporters. Most recently such
killings occurred in Iraq
and Libya
The ‘irrational moment’ (falsely ‘charismatic’) in our times has
more often to do with the institutionalization or demise of a community rather
than its creation. One such instance occurs in Aztec mythology, when the God
Nanauatzin sacrifices himself by jumping into a pit of fire and impels the Sun
to rise at dawn http://www.lakelandschools.us/lh/rjamin/AztecCreationMyth.htm
.
In the religion and myth of the West, self-sacrifice is renamed
‘self-directed violence’, in effect allowing ONE self-sacrifice only, i.e.,
that of Jesus. This myth makes all governments, no matter how illegitimate,
after Jesus legitimate, because any government that comes into existence
thereafter as a result of a self-sacrifice may be claimed by ‘legal’ authority
to have no sanction, which makes such a community illegitimate in spite of the
fact that it may be of and have the trust of the people.
The adaptation of this myth as the ultimate authority of
legitimacy is what has kept my loyalty for the King. As far as I am concerned,
trust and not power is the most important factor in determining who rules.
Though one may argue that ‘trust’ may be misdirected, the fact that it is
gained as a result of someone’s self-sacrifice assures that all subsequent
governments will have to legitimate themselves through self-sacrifice as well.
Because such legitimization has fallen away and has no legal
recognition in our time, from the point of view of a King most modern
governments have no legitimacy as ‘trust’ needs to be periodically renewed and
cannot be forwarded to the future automatically as allegedly occurs through ‘democratic’ elections today.
It must be noted that while self-sacrifice today may be interpreted
as an act of violence in a strictly legalistic sense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_terrorism
, in a psychological sense, it retains its persuasive hold on the human psyche.
This writer rejects philosopher Derrida’s definition of self-sacrifice as
self-directed violence http://www.zora.uzh.ch/41846/
, but agrees with the argument at the preceding link that self-sacrifice
constitutes a not-violent act of terror by impressing on the observer the fact
that death as a voluntary act is not to be slighted or abjured in favor of the law
as determined by the written word, which likely transgresses against justice
more often than when one puts in escrow (as an assurance) one’s life.
At the present time, however, Derrida’s interpretation of
self-sacrifice has the upper hand for the simple reason that presently it is
the ‘power’ of the government elite that writes ‘the law’, which, at the same
time, has earned most governments the distrust of the populace at large. The
distrust is because the law in economic matters is invariably written in favor
of the elite. Given the enormous gaps in income levels (popularly described
as1% vs 99%), it may not be long before the agreement not to test ‘democracy’ will
be challenged. Incidentally, the consequences of what happens when
institutionalized self-sacrifice is ignored or avoided is dealt with in my ‘rewrite’
of OedipusRex Rewritten at http://oedipusrexrewritten.blogspot.com
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