SC - Adjustments, ethical or otherwise

[Catherine Deville]

At 9:04 PM -0400 9/27/00, Catherine Deville wrote:

>as for feastcrat.  if/when i become active again, i expect that i will use
>whatever is common in my local group or what is most prevalent within
>Meridies as per the dominant Kingdom custom.  as for past usage, we *were*
>all feastcrats... and not only was that what was used *historically* within
>our Kingdom in the SCA

I have long described the West Kingdom attitude to historical 
authenticity as "of course it's authentic--we've been doing it for 
years." I intended that as a (critical) joke, but apparently you 
regard the equivalent as a legitimate defense of the practice.

The SCA doesn't claim to be about recreating the history of the SCA 
but about recreating the history of the middle ages and the 
renaissance. So the fact that a historical error has been made in the 
past doesn't provide a "historical" argument for continuing to make 
it.


>(which is relevant to the SCA's internal historical
>context) but the term was appropos regardless of it's historocity based on
>it's etymology.

Perhaps you could expand on the etymological argument. Are you using 
"feastocrat" to mean someone who believes that the feast ought to 
rule, in parallel with a "democrat"--someone who believes that the 
people ("Demos") ought to rule? Or are you using it to mean a feast 
that does rule in a political system ruled by feasts, in parallel 
with an "aristocrat"--one of the rulers in a system where the best 
("Aristos") rule (at least, that's the theory).

I can see something to be said for the idea that feasts ought to 
rule, but I don't think that is what most people mean by "feastocrat."

Try reversing the direction of the argument. If a feastocrat is 
someone who rules a feast then an autocrat is someone who rules 
himself. But that isn't what "autocrat" means, either in the SCA or 
elsewhere.
- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/