NR - Honor, Politics, and a Principality

[Jennifer Smith]

On 6 Sep 00, at 16:55, Samuel Walters wrote:
> I do know that almost every political
> bickering and pissing match that I have seen involves some sort of brass hat
> or titled person, somebody is always besmerching another on the basis of
> their own honor, etc.  Do any of you think that this reflects well on us as
> a society?

Starting with an AoA, everyone that has that and above is a titled person.  
That's quite a lot of people.

Assuming you meant "all those high-ranking folks", I don't entirely agree; I 
think that there can be conflicts at any and all levels -- just the folks with 
the bigger hats, so to speak, are more visible.  They're also, in general, 
inclined to stick around more, since they've been in the SCA longer than 
someone new.

> I personally don't and I tell you I know for a fact that outsiders tend to
> see the bad before the good when it comes in the form of personal attacks
> and politics on these lists.  Nobody wants to invest their hard earned
> dollars and personal time into something that causes extra stress.

Before I joined the SCA, I didn't see the personal attacks and politics -- I 
took for granted that some would exist, because in any large organization of 
*any* kind you're going to have some.  Big deal.  The "bad" that I saw were 
the stories of guys getting drunk and rampaging about a campsite.  And 
yeah, we do have the occasional example of those (more just drunk than 
drunk & rampaging, thankfully), but it's not as rampant as stories would 
have it.  

We'll never get rid of politics and personal attacks, as we are all human, 
and have failures.  We can, however, hope to minimize the occurance of 
such.

Someone (Sir Barn? well, I know I'm probably misquoting) said that the only 
real benefit they saw to a principality was that we could get more banners, 
heraldic displays, and other pomp & circumstance (and then said we could 
do that now).  I agree, and that's *why* I'm in favor of a principality in 
general.  

Perhaps the folks in baronies don't quite realize the irony of a statement 
such as "but the Crown would visit less".  How many shires & smaller 
groups have seen the Crown at their own events in the past several years?  I 
know Mooneschadowe saw the Crown for last year's King's College only 
because we hosted it.  Yes, it's a large kingdom, and it is a great burden on 
the Crown to have to travel to every end of it constantly; having a CP would 
relive some of that burden (financially too!).

I suspect that at a "little people" level, a Principality would mean essentially 
visits from the CP.  There may indeed be more issues to be resolved at 
higher levels.  I am sure that somehow, eventually, any and all issues *will* 
be resolved, if only for our own sanity as a region. :)

-Emma
Mooneschadowe


--
Jennifer Smith
jds-emma at operamail.com
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.