A Death Of Chivalry

 This is a hard post to write – as hard, I think, as any I have written. 

 Because it represents a change in thinking.  And it makes me sad.

Growing up, I was raised with a life full of the love of Chivalry. I originally loved the High Middle Ages, and this ended up extending not only to my historical reading but to my fantasy reading as well: Conan the Barbarian, John Carter of Barsoom and his almost clones, David Innes of Pellucidar and Carson Napier of Venus.

Among the many qualities I interpreted from these epics– honor, loyalty, fair play, charity – was the especial quality of chivalry towards service, of standing in the gap for those who were less able to defend themselves. The honor and glory of being of service, of protecting and defending and (if necessary) dying, was ingrained in my soul.

By my freshman year of high school, I was a hopeless romantic. Wolframm von Eschenbach, author of Parzival, could not have been more so.

I was that hopeless romantic for almost 8 years until my heart and spirit were sufficiently destroyed in a relationship such that it never, ever came back again. Done. Finished. With nary a whisper going forward. In that way, things became (perhaps sadly) much more pragmatic.

But the chivalry remained, at least as a principal and a code to live by. Even if the romanticism that had accompanied it had gone, the stain was deeply ingrained in my soul.

That over 30 years ago now.

And then, one day rather recently, I looked up. And looked around. And discovered that the world had changed.

There was, it seemed, no-one left to want defending. People would happily accept service, of course – but service in their causes, not service in sake of another. And everyone had become a bland melange of intermingled anger and rage. The general cast of things – the debasement of language and culture in how we spoke of ourselves and to each other, the greater willingness to engage in verbal violence or actual violence, the almost complete abandonment of anything involving a generally agreed upon societal code of conduct – had become the new operating paradigm. No matter how much I buried myself away or tried to see the best in things, the reality was that things had significantly changed – and were not coming back.

This belief system I held – of service, protection, honor,  loyalty, fair play, charity  – was dead. To all but me.

And so, I have to change.

I have a model, of course: Strength sports.

Strength sports is unique in the sense that while you can be jovial and collegial with your fellow athletes, when it comes to competition the iron, as they say, does not lie. 300 lbs is 300 lbs no matter who you are. Your ability to lift depends not on your sex (real or preferred), your opinions, your education, or beliefs. It dictated solely by your strength and skill. There is no illusion, no pretending, no kindness, no moving the curve that will change the fact that 300 lbs is 300 lbs. You can do it or you can not. And in that sense, there are no prisoners taken. If in throwing in Weight Above Bar and you fail to clear 14 feet, no one sheds a tear - nor do you.

Want to do better in Highland Athletics? Throw farther. Be less bad. Practice more.  

Want to lift heavier weights? Get stronger. Train more. 

Those are the only solutions that are offered or frankly even matter.

And so, this turning.

Nothing inherent or designed about you matters. Your results do. Cannot do what you think you should be able to do? Try harder, train more. Invoke someone’s wrath upon you by your words or actions? I will will not countenance physical harm, but will quietly let you make a mess of your life without intervening.

You own the actions, you own the consequences. And I judge on results and accomplishments: nothing more, nothing less.

Does this obliterate the need for kindness? Not at all. But kindness is extended equally, not more to some and not less to others based on any perceived old fashioned notion of who needs defending and who does not. And there is a limit to it – kindness is not another name for a suicide pact carefully described as “doing the right thing”.

My code of chivalry – honor, glory, service, fair play, charity – I now hold close to my heart and practice only to myself or a select group of others whom I choose to extend to instead of feeling obligated to. They remain my ideals and objectives, but there is no longer any obligation to extend them; that society has died.

You have desired a new world. You now have it. You will, I think, find it a cold and barren place (because results and accomplishments are as unyielding taskmasters as 300 lbs of iron) but that is now your business, not mine.

I will move on with my life in this new paradigm: sadder for certain, slightly colder and more distant to protect myself. I will keep my books and my memories of them and read them and think on happier times and how, in reality, this sort of thing now only exists in the imagination.