On the English Civil War
Although trivial in its dynamics, the English Civil War has some rather interesting aspects.
In the old day it was considerably more important than today that people had no way to escape their trade, since many trades were hard, but necessary. However, lack of social mobility brings it with itself that any power, which arises from an administrative function, lies with the executor of that function and thus forms an obstacle to the concentration of power.
Taking a broader view here, one might also say that it takes more than one man to reduce a people to serfdom, unless of course you had autonomous fighting robots, which were however not available to Charles I.
So the King of England relied on the co-operation of the gentry, who, to put it in Anthony Quinn's words, served him for “its pleasure”, or, looking at this now more closely, at least increasingly so.
For this we need a little context. Military might, the power to destroy, of which the king is supposed to be the head, is only one of the three fundamental forms of might. The other two are financial might, the power to build, and ideological might, the power to direct.
The Catholic Church let king run their respective countries - as long as they stayed the general course. In case one took a wrong turn, the Catholic Church could do two things to rectify the situation:
And this did of course constitute a thundercloud over the pleasure of the gentry: any overly hedonistic conduct on its part could be answered by an open revolt of the unwashed masses against it, Catholic Church so willing.
Regarding this however, a correction must be made and its outcome considered. I said that the Catholic Church let king run their respective countries, but this is not entirely true, since there is an area in Europe in which the Catholic Church botched the job, namely in the former Holy Roman Empire. If you want to nitpick, there were also two areas that the Catholic Church ran directly, namely Livonia and the Papal States, but the historical significance of that seems lesser.
In Germany and Northern Italy the Catholic Church first allowed a political union of different princes and then the deterioration of the situation by the re-iterated breaking-up of their principalities. The situation was not like in France or England, since there were only local dynasties in the Holy Roman Empire, who chose the head of state, that is “The King is dead, long live The King!” was never heard within its borders.
Differently put, the Catholic Church forgot to put a central controller in. And because of this the situation in Germany had become towards the Pope, what it had later become towards Charles I, that is German princes started to increasingly consider their pleasure vis-à-vis the Pope.
The fault lies with that the Catholic control scheme requires a minimum size of the countries concerned, sufficient meat to cut from, if you so will.
If you have like 30 countries not much larger than the church bell of the main church of the country can be heard, which are in close economic co-operation with each other, it becomes difficult to stage a coup against a prince for lack of neglected regions or to move capital far enough away from him by putting pressure on the Jews in his country only.
The result was the same as in the English Civil War as well, the man in the middle found himself deserted. Only that this meant the birth of Protestantism in Germany.
And by the time of the English Civil War Protestantism had already grown into an international force, not least because of the Dutch Revolt. And it was precisely this, which thinned the thundercloud over the pleasure of the English gentry, except in some backwards provinces like Ireland.
There's nothing more to say about the historical part of it, but let us consider two philosophical points.
The first is a paradox of oppression. Rigid oppression limits concentration of power, because of the need for cohesion amongst the oppressors, flexible oppression (as far as its target group is concerned) can outsource the actual oppression and thus be much more directed. Setting an objective turns into a conference, devising an office (which is sufficiently open to contenders) into a concert.
The second point concerns the advantage that the English gained as a result of making the king formally accountable to the gentry, until other powers (the United States, France, Prussia) overtook Britain by installing bureaucracies in its place, which is of course what all the equal rights are about, that is employing the first point we've considered here.
The English King had already cut ties with the Catholic Church, so the advantage the English gained in the English Civil War was not greater independence from Rome. The advantage was primarily a moral one. By being formally acknowledged, the English gentry started to concern itself more with the future of the possible developments that Britain might undergo. The result was that one stratum of society started to take full charge of its life, dragging the king along as opposed to being dragged along by the king.
The thing to really learn from this is that life allows true happiness only during the course of taking one step. The next step will already be cumbersome again, unless you learn how to forget about the previous one.
In the old day it was considerably more important than today that people had no way to escape their trade, since many trades were hard, but necessary. However, lack of social mobility brings it with itself that any power, which arises from an administrative function, lies with the executor of that function and thus forms an obstacle to the concentration of power.
Taking a broader view here, one might also say that it takes more than one man to reduce a people to serfdom, unless of course you had autonomous fighting robots, which were however not available to Charles I.
So the King of England relied on the co-operation of the gentry, who, to put it in Anthony Quinn's words, served him for “its pleasure”, or, looking at this now more closely, at least increasingly so.
For this we need a little context. Military might, the power to destroy, of which the king is supposed to be the head, is only one of the three fundamental forms of might. The other two are financial might, the power to build, and ideological might, the power to direct.
The Catholic Church let king run their respective countries - as long as they stayed the general course. In case one took a wrong turn, the Catholic Church could do two things to rectify the situation:
- put pressure on the Jews to move capital out of the country (economical sanction)
- support other military leaders in open war against the king of the country (military sanction).
And this did of course constitute a thundercloud over the pleasure of the gentry: any overly hedonistic conduct on its part could be answered by an open revolt of the unwashed masses against it, Catholic Church so willing.
Regarding this however, a correction must be made and its outcome considered. I said that the Catholic Church let king run their respective countries, but this is not entirely true, since there is an area in Europe in which the Catholic Church botched the job, namely in the former Holy Roman Empire. If you want to nitpick, there were also two areas that the Catholic Church ran directly, namely Livonia and the Papal States, but the historical significance of that seems lesser.
In Germany and Northern Italy the Catholic Church first allowed a political union of different princes and then the deterioration of the situation by the re-iterated breaking-up of their principalities. The situation was not like in France or England, since there were only local dynasties in the Holy Roman Empire, who chose the head of state, that is “The King is dead, long live The King!” was never heard within its borders.
Differently put, the Catholic Church forgot to put a central controller in. And because of this the situation in Germany had become towards the Pope, what it had later become towards Charles I, that is German princes started to increasingly consider their pleasure vis-à-vis the Pope.
The fault lies with that the Catholic control scheme requires a minimum size of the countries concerned, sufficient meat to cut from, if you so will.
If you have like 30 countries not much larger than the church bell of the main church of the country can be heard, which are in close economic co-operation with each other, it becomes difficult to stage a coup against a prince for lack of neglected regions or to move capital far enough away from him by putting pressure on the Jews in his country only.
The result was the same as in the English Civil War as well, the man in the middle found himself deserted. Only that this meant the birth of Protestantism in Germany.
And by the time of the English Civil War Protestantism had already grown into an international force, not least because of the Dutch Revolt. And it was precisely this, which thinned the thundercloud over the pleasure of the English gentry, except in some backwards provinces like Ireland.
There's nothing more to say about the historical part of it, but let us consider two philosophical points.
The first is a paradox of oppression. Rigid oppression limits concentration of power, because of the need for cohesion amongst the oppressors, flexible oppression (as far as its target group is concerned) can outsource the actual oppression and thus be much more directed. Setting an objective turns into a conference, devising an office (which is sufficiently open to contenders) into a concert.
The second point concerns the advantage that the English gained as a result of making the king formally accountable to the gentry, until other powers (the United States, France, Prussia) overtook Britain by installing bureaucracies in its place, which is of course what all the equal rights are about, that is employing the first point we've considered here.
The English King had already cut ties with the Catholic Church, so the advantage the English gained in the English Civil War was not greater independence from Rome. The advantage was primarily a moral one. By being formally acknowledged, the English gentry started to concern itself more with the future of the possible developments that Britain might undergo. The result was that one stratum of society started to take full charge of its life, dragging the king along as opposed to being dragged along by the king.
The thing to really learn from this is that life allows true happiness only during the course of taking one step. The next step will already be cumbersome again, unless you learn how to forget about the previous one.
Labels: 13, formalisierung, geschichte, gesetze, institutionen, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
Eingetragen Am/um
11:33
