SC - Removes and Feastocrat
david friedman
ddfr at best.com
Wed Sep 27 20:49:40 PDT 2000
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/
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