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domain:sotonye.substack.com

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

I'm starting with a ramble about historical city government

There's a tendency for fantasy settings(which is how most modern westerners are familiar with medieval operations) to portray everything as running according to very strict monarchy/feudalism- they're usually kinda confused as to the difference between the two things, but with enough oversimplifications as to make the distinction meaningless. But historically, that's not how any cities were governed- a hereditary lord just isn't how urbanites organize themselves. Instead, there's a largely-hereditary(but in the medieval case open to new admittance on a theoretically meritocratic but also super corrupt basis) social class which elects city leadership- usually a board of senior figures, a few magistrates doing specific tasks, and some generals. That class- which we call 'citizens' in Greece and Rome and 'burghers' in medieval free cities- makes up the military as citizen-soldiers who provide their own equipment(yes, even in the middle ages). The city might owe allegiance to some overlord, say an emperor, and might be in alliance with other similar cities, but it's probably not under the direct overlordship of a local noble.

It's the burghers that I want to focus on today. Entry into the burgher class required either guildsmanship or enough wealth to buy membership. Obtaining it practically guaranteed your sons full membership in a guild(acceptance as apprentices, not laborers). Their burgher status was tied to a specific town, and it was- by implication- tied to their service to a specific town. With the heretofore unprecedented pace of technological change beginning in the high middle ages, highly skilled work(and I do mean work, here- these people are largely technicians and skilled craftsmen, not engineers) becomes ever more important, and they naturally live in cities, which are ruled by corrupt political machines dominated by the guilds. Increasing technology and trade makes these cities more and more valuable, both economically and by enabling more effective military activity, giving the cities more bargaining power to wrangle special rights for their citizens. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time in history that it is prestigious to be meritocratic. There are roman accounts of wealthy freedman- invariably they are negative. But it seems that the medieval working class aspired to be guildmember burghers and not to be nobles. Now, you(maybe not you personally, but if you're an able-bodied twenty year old male reading this and you're not sure what to do with your life you should consider it- apply and take an aptitude test) can learn a trade today through a union which is functionally a guild, but nobody thinks of the IBEW or UA as aspirational, despite the high salaries. In non-european parts of the world at the same time as the middle ages skilled crafts/trades were passed down through clans, not guilds, and while artisans were often taxed differently from farmers there are straightforwards and obvious reasons for this in non-monetized societies rather than it being an expression of a special status.

Know your place. At the end of the day, society has to be made of lots of different members doing lots of different jobs, living in different ways. The high middle ages with its social classes- peasants who farm, nobles who fight, clerics who pray, study, and do white collar work, townsmen who do artisanal work, merchants who move things from point a to b, with wealthy and prestigious and respected examples of each(and there were wealthy peasants- the term 'yeoman' actually descends from one subcategory thereof). We have, as an urbanized and technological society, very similar roles in society that need filling. We need people to study and push the frontiers of theoretical knowledge. We need people to do white collar administrative work. We need people to move things around. We need people to physically make things and do things, many of them highly skilled. We need people to defend us. Etc, etc.

But increasingly, the only roles which are prestigious in modernity are those of white collar undefined-what-the-value-add-here-is jobs and those of pushing the bounds of theoretical knowledge(much of it actually more the philosophy of fartsniffing). UA HVAC techs make more than either(and that's assuming minimum payscales and no overtime), but it's nowhere near as lionized as the girlboss middle manager in an HR department at a startup that bills itself as Uber for cat psychics. I wonder if that's upstream of many of the motte's obsessions- let's take the fertility rate here. Having kids will not fuck up your career as a k-12 teacher, or accountant, or RN, or for the vanishingly few female long-haul truckers. 'Explain this gap in your resume' being met with 'I was a SAHM when my kids were in diapers' will not stop normal average jobs from hiring you. It's only awesome girlboss career track progression that will be derailed that way. Now, ideally, 'housewife' is a role that society lionizes the same way it does professor of queer fartsniffing or founding HR manager at uber for cat psychics. But it goes beyond just that- the motte fixates on admittance to very selective colleges. But society has far more unmet demand for electrical linemen than it does for another hotshot lawyer or Mackinsey consultant(I don't actually know what the latter does, except that it is pointless, well paid occupation for Ivy league grads). Now sure, whatever it is Mackinsey consultants actually do, it's probably more comfortable and easier than electrical linemen. But at a certain point, shouldn't we as a society go 'it takes all sorts to make the world go round, why don't we make the top of every field prestigious, give everyone someone to aspire to. In the words of country music, every sort of person should have something to be proud of(https://youtube.com/watch?v=PXg8E0kzF1c)'.

I remember when movies had a trope- I'm not defined by my work, I do x from 9-5, but all day long I'm a dad- one who happens to do x to pay the bills. The idea of an identity to be proud of, genuine pride in our differences and diversity, was singing its swan song. It's now dead. How many of the world's problems are actually downstream of that? I'm reminded of the several AAQC's about why South Koreans aren't having kids(my answer is pretty simple- it's not fun. Rednecks have kids because they look forwards to going to t-ball games. South Koreans don't because they don't look forwards to twelve hour study sessions).

Darnit, I wish I'd written this before trying to revive the user viewpoint focus series(@netstack how's yours coming?).