Opinion/Editorial
NOBLESSE OBLIGE
There was a time, not so far back there, that the English nobility actually spoke French instead of English. While that time was going on in the early 1800s a sort of renaissance in thought was occurring among the wealthiest land and officeholders. The phrase, as it was created in those days, has been modified in western cultures to include only the sharing of ideas and special gifts and talents. The concept of sharing assets or income or finance of any sort disappeared into the overshadowing strength of capitalism.
What of today, and what all of us see around us? What of the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk’s who have amassed liquid fortunes worth more than two hundred billion dollars each? Elon Musk was quoted only days ago stating that he did not believe it was fair for him to pay more taxes (he pays almost none on his vast income and worth) because the president was pushing to have the wealthiest pay more for the coming (not here yet, by any means) infrastructure bill. Elon was almost broke when he had come to a full stop with both Tesla and SpaceX, by the way. The U.S. government stepped in with hundreds of millions in cash incentives and tax breaks to save him.
What happened to the true concept of noblesse oblige, and what it was supposed to mean. Some have taken the expression, and its original application (it applied to all the nobility owned or controlled) to mean that the very act of performing distributions to the less fortunate indicated that the expression was imbuing the wealthy automatically with a superiority that was and is not deserved. The expression fell out of use, as did the potential results of following such a well-conceived philosophy.
That philosophy was founded only partially on a developed feeling of largesse or generosity. The remainder of the thought process that created the practice was based upon self-worth and self-survival. Humans are tribal and social by nature, and the intensity of that is significant, as has been proven by the difficulties experienced by every culture exposed to the pandemic. That intensity can very easily manifest itself to make giant moats of money, like those surrounding the 654 billionaires of the world, which can disappear in an instant if the rest of the tribe or social gathering decides that such action must be taken.
The concept of “noblesse oblige” most probably came out of the fact that the English aristocracy of the times had begun building and then attending centers and universities of higher education where the professors and students considered the social results of cultural history. Societies where elite aristocracies reigned, taking, and controlling everything, did not survive for long as societies at all. Writers like Dumas and Dickens wrote of the kind of attitude and circumstance that led directly from the taking of everything by a very few and the misery that eventually cascaded down upon everyone, eventually the takers too. Time passes, however, and history is either ignored or forgotten.
Today’s American culture, in spite of such tremendous technical advances in communications, computerization, and the enormous output of written and visual messages, is indicative of a failure to look back, a failure to believe in scientific results, a belief that mean-spirited exercise of power can somehow change things for the better. With the continuing steep angle of financial distribution pointing ever upward then the concept of noblesse oblige will either be revisited and returned in full flower or the course of events that have occurred to preceding cultures will be a result.
This is not a prediction made by the writer, it’s simply the result of the study of historic results. The Roman Empire, the Aztecs, the Mayans, The Indus, The Sumerians, and even the Soviet Union, all went down the same way, although the process for each was almost entirely different. The great wealth of our own time, embodied by people like Musk, Soros, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Ellison, Arnault and so many more, will not bring the world to its knees, except temporarily. The world will eventually bring those wealthy individuals to their knees, or their survivors. Only noblesse oblige can save them and slow (but not completely stop) the process of a cultural/tribal/social return to economic balance.
Today, the rich of the world (and note that most of the richest men in the world are from America), control the voice of the world. They own almost all forms of media, and they quietly control most of the information available over the Internet, but they do not control the future, nor can they stop the continuing balance that takes place in every culture as things get too far out of shape. Without noblesse oblige becoming a part of their life expression and fabric then the fact that misery is a contagious disease will eventually reach them too. There is a vaccine for the great economic imbalance going on in the world around us all today and the likely result of that hugely divisive situation. That vaccine is called noblesse oblige, but will they take it?
