Noblesse Oblige
This article first appeared in the Minden Times on June 7, 2023.
Dorothea, in Middlemarch, (written by George Elliot, published 1871) fills a basket with food and other necessities and delivers them to tenants on her uncle’s holdings who are ill or needful. She is behaving as expected: she is one of ‘those who have’ giving of their bounty to ‘those who have not’. They pay with gratitude, which validates and perpetuates the hierarchy. This is noblesse oblige in action.
Dorothea’s Uncle Brooke of Tipton, a landowner of some wealth, intervenes unsuccessfully at the assizes where a sheep-stealer is to be hanged. On his own property, however, he is judge and jury: a youngster who has snared a young rabbit for his family’s supper, since his father has returned empty-handed and drunk from the market, is detained for a short while in the barn, until Brooke can instruct the father, whose sense of injustice is given tongue by alcohol, on the appropriate punishment. This, too, is noblesse oblige in action, the sharing of superior knowledge and judgement for the benefit of the less fortunate.
In modern days, ‘those who have’ are incentivized by public policy to share their bounty through taxes or philanthropy, which ‘those who have not’ aspire to share by jumping through whatever hoops are prescribed both to get and to account for the shared bounty. ‘Those who have’ expect to serve as Directors on Boards of for-profit corporations (usually with compensation) and non-profit corporations (by legislative decree, without compensation) to manage that bounty. Their roles, regardless of how they are acquired or how rewarded, is to make decisions on behalf of others.
We acknowledge the necessity to share decision-making in a complex world. The idea of having representatives speak and act on our behalf is as old as human society; it is the bedrock of democracy. And of patriarchy. And of capitalism.
The worm in the bud, the hidden thing that deforms a beautiful blossom, is the motivation of those who undertake to act on behalf of others. Capability, intelligence, awareness all play a part, but the pivotal element is motivation.
How can we measure motivation? It is invisible, unarguable, unprovable. How can you prove – or even know with certainty -- what is in a person’s mind or heart? You can’t. You make your best guess and take the risk. And when you’re wrong, you take the hit.
We are taking a few hits these days. The country is aflame. The health system we have insisted is universal in spite of decades of deterioration is in a shambles and guaranteed to get worse. Inequity is a chasm that is growing exponentially, both within and between countries, cultures and classes. War of every variety is ravaging the planet. People are on the move, looking for an Ark that will save them from the rising waters of whatever devastation surrounds them.
Where is the noblesse oblige that we need to show us the way through this extinction threat?
I think it must be within each of us. The Oxford dictionary says nobility can be of ‘character, mind, birth or rank’. I think we’ve gotten a bit heavy on the birth or rank route, and forgotten that each of us has character and mind that we can put to work for the greater good. We may have gotten a bit complacent, or maybe pre-occupied with other things, or maybe overly busy with acquiring the material things that are endlessly available and aggressively marketed.
Or maybe we’ve drunk the Kool-aid of hierarchy, bought the line that some people are born to lead and some are born to follow. Dorothea at 19 thought she could contribute to the well-being of the world by marrying the great-thinking 50-year-old Cassaubon, ‘that great bladder for dried peas to rattle in’, only to find him threatened by her independent assessment of how progress might be made. (And walked away from the fortune his death brought her, for love of a man dedicated to systemic change who welcomed her partnership.)
Mr. Brooke of Tipton was dissuaded from political representation when it became an elected rather than inherited role when the common people literally egged him (as well as a few other projectiles) off the stage when he failed to convince them that he knew or cared about their well-being.
Perhaps there is much to be learned from Middlemarch.
