English 83

This musing is neither substantive nor particularly well-thought out, but today’s presentation and the resulting discussion of modern day forms of chivalry made me wonder about the current state of chivalry. The consensus seemed to be that class-based chivalry was dead and buried. I’m not so sure, however.

Admittedly the Victorian sort of imperialist/colonialist idea of the enlightened and powerful bringing civilization and order to the underprivileged has largely disappeared, but the underlying notion of power and responsibility that underlay chivalry remains on both national and personal levels, for good and ill. The environmental movement assumes that those who are economically privileged have the obligation to protect the environment both in their own territories and to aid developing nations in doing so. If one considers receiving a diploma to be the new tapping with the sword, then we could analogize the Peace Corps and similar programs in which educated individuals serve depressed or struggling communities at home and abroad. Consider also the noblesse oblige of recent persons of the year Bill Gates and Bono (the latter explicitly knighted, if one wants a another connection) and others who believe that their financial success (the new societal power: the bank account rather than the lance) compel them to promote the welfare of the less privileged. Basically, I would posit that the notion of chivalry is alive and well, only it has been modified to take into account the modern redefinition of nobility as resulting from merit (measured either by education or wealth) rather than birth or piety.

Am I way out here?