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How to Enter a City Like a King
- jerrybmarchant 1y ago[dead]
- rsyring 1y agoHow to enter a city like a king? Humbly, on a donkey. As one who comes to serve instead of one who comes to be served. What a difference from what we can expect from our current leaders, kings or king wannabees alike.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoYeah but they killed that guy later in the week, so one can understand why other kings declined to follow his example.
- xandrius 1y agoWhich guy?
- yeahwhatever10 1y agoI assume he’s talking about Jesus.
- waisbrot 1y agoOP was alluding to Jesus
- bombcar 1y agoIt's a reference to Jesus entering Jerusalem (Palm Sunday).
- rurban 1y agoBut Jesus was executed because he came armed with swords, after spending 2 years in the north building up his group in Lebanon, wanting to overthrow the local priestship. A pretty deviance of his previous pieceful principles.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoWhat? He came armed with swords? (I mean, yes, his followers had two "swords" - which may have been something far less than military swords. One of them used one when Jesus was arrested, and got rebuked for it.) No, he didn't come to militarily overthrow the priestship.
- rurban 1y agoWe don't know that exactly, because that was left out conveniently from the scripts. I rely solely on historians
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoOK, show me your historian source for "But Jesus was executed because he came armed with swords, after spending 2 years in the north building up his group in Lebanon, wanting to overthrow the local priestship."
- IAmBroom 1y agorurban, you aren't relying soley on historians, because there's precious little information about the historical Jeshua aside from biblican and non-canonical religious texts.
- helloworld4728 1y agoJesus and Omar bin Al Khattab entered Jerusalem like that.
- LiquidSky 1y agoJimmy King, "Pretzel King" of the South Bronx in the mid-70s. Weird guy, no one ever found out why he rode around town on a donkey.
- bombcar 1y agoHas someone run the numbers on how likely you are to be murdered/killed in war/assassinated as a King, historically?
- churchill 1y agoCan't say for all monarchs through human history (nor is it even possible to), but for the Roman emperors, 70% died violent deaths via assassination (actual and suspected), execution, suicide, or being KIA. You had some particularly colorful episodes like the year of the four emperors where Nero's regional governors revolted and he committed suicide. Galba, a general, was declared imperator by his troops, only to be overthrown and killed by the Praetorians 6 months later. Otho seized power, but died by suicide after he was defeated by Vitellius 3 months later. Vitellius was declared emperor by his troops after defeating Otho at Bedriacum; held onto power for 7-8 months before being defeated & executed by Vespasian at the 2nd battle of Bedriacum. Vespasian seized power and had himself proclaimed emperor by his legions, reigning for ~10 years.
- IAmBroom 1y ago> Can't say for all monarchs through human history (nor is it even possible to) Since human history is by definition what has been recorded, a small subset of what has happened, it is roughly possible. Granted, there exist records of monarchs whose deaths were not recorded, but we can still make pretty good estimates I think.
- churchill 1y ago>Since human history is by definition what has been recorded Isn't that just dabbling into semantics? There are numerous societies & cultures we can definitely prove existed, without having further info on specifics such as their monarchs, etc. Your statement on human history sounds like, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" It's still an instance in spacetime and our detailed knowledge of it doesn't delegitimize it.
- 1y ago
- WalterBright 1y agoYou can thank George Washington for rejecting the trappings of kings - "your Excellency", sceptres, crowns, robes, palaces, thrones, a chest full of medals, bowing and scraping, heredity succession, etc.
- seizethecheese 1y agoI just read a book on Washington and they were calling him Your Excellency a lot. Did he reject this later, or did you mean this more rhetorically?
- paddleon 1y agohe rejected it from the beginning. https://www.heritage.org/commentary/the-man-who-would-not-be-king https://www.heritage.org/commentary/the-man-who-would-not-be... After the [revolutionary] war, there were calls for Washington to claim formal political power. Indeed, seven months after the victory at Yorktown, one of his officers suggested what many thought only reasonable in the context of the 18th century: that America should establish a monarchy and that Washington should become king. A shocked Washington immediately rejected the offer out of hand as both inappropriate and dishonorable, and demanded the topic never be raised again.
- WalterBright 1y agoI forgot to mention Washington also established the convention of a 2-term Presidency and then retiring. We owe a lot to him.
- seizethecheese 1y agoYes, he rejected being king, but he was called “Your Excellency” during the revolutionary war. I just double checked. Frustrating to have such an authoritative sounding correction be wrong!
- nlitened 1y ago“If you want to become a philosopher king, first become a king, then a philosopher”
- tooheavy 1y agoDoes anyone know the literature on adding people or individuals to groups, even an individual to a city? And the implications or outcomes of adding individuals of differing characteristics, potential for power, wealth, success, status, displacement, influence, or any number of other qualities, etc. I suspect this highlights fundamental elements of our social nature, our culture and societies, their values and problems. Maybe certain of those with power and influence will never want an honest and revealing evaluation on the matter, especially on specific entities.
- dragontamer 1y agoWell this particular instance is about succession, the new king entered the city after the previous monarch died. London needed a new king so everyone was triumphant and celebrated the new replacement. This isn't quite what you are talking about at all. The number of rich people in this example decreased on a country wide scale, but simultaneously the Nobility system was basically founded upon familial-wealth / dynasty wealth, rather than any individual having wealth. So in the old system the haves-families always had wealth and the have-nots always will not have wealth.
- chuckadams 1y ago> everyone was triumphant and celebrated the new replacement. Well, except for the bakers dozen who tried to blow him up, but that was a couple years later.
- mmooss 1y agoCould you give us a concrete example of what you are referring to?
- tooheavy 1y agoThere are probably many ways to slice or unpack the topic, and it can probably be approached at least partially from many different perspectives in different disciplines, but it may be captured reasonably well under the study of social dynamics. I will leave specific scenarios to the imagination, experience, or history, however, but I did cite at least one example in the original comment.
- martythemaniak 1y agoQuaint. The modern answer is "in a fighter jet, dumping tons of diahrea on your subjects."
- quacked 1y agoI often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat food and run professional sports. And yet a great many of us are still alive, having continued to survive despite our countrymen spending all their available labor on frivolity. What percentage of that "available labor" is really truly usefully bound up in making sure we don't all starve to death, get violently invaded, or die of exposure? I wish I could see what kind of society would appear if that pool of "available labor" was turned toward purposes I personally consider worthy--caring for the weak, erecting and protecting great monuments and cities and wild areas, etc. Obviously this has been attempted before in various different regimes--merely having full dominion over all "available labor" and turning it toward "worthy purposes" does not automatically create a great nation, as the USSR and China found out--but it doesn't stop me from wondering, if Man wasn't so busy making gates for the king or increasing user conversion from 17.805% to 17.873%, what would that society look like?
- card_zero 1y agoNobody knows what percentage. Besides, people want more than to be fed, sheltered, and protected from violent attacks. Undoubtedly they are often wrong and want ridiculous pointless things, but nobody knows exactly which things are the wrong things. That's why we have a diverse society of idiots, all trying different things. What intrigues me is that all of it is considered "economic activity", and counts toward GDP and is considered beneficial, even flower arranging and witchcraft accessories and cloud-connected sneakers. Somehow that assessment ends up being correct, because nobody knows for sure which parts are bullshit.
- quacked 1y agoI agree, but surely with some strict definitions, you could get within 5%. I am intrigued by the same thing you are. How does it all count as economic activity? What percentage of the flower-arranging has to be done to ensure that the medicine-manufacturing can be done? It's such an endless chain--"I pay the credit card fee on my purchase of custom stationary to the credit card company and the credit card company rolls it up in its revenue projections and forecasts a more profitable Q3 so their stock price increases so the portfolio-holding lenders are more lenient with their loan terms so Pfizer takes out a larger loan to build a factory in Bangalore to run the manufacturing lines..." If the custom-stationary buying stops, so does the factory-loan lending... and vice versa.
- deadbabe 1y agoDon’t enter a city like a king, enter a city like Prince Ali.
- Pinus 1y agoI thought there was something about the king of the UK having to ask permission to enter the City of London, but apparently that is a misunderstanding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation#Temple_Bar_Ceremony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation#Tem...). Pity, it would have been a good story of even monarchy bowing to finance! =)
- IAmBroom 1y agoThe Sovereign does have to ask permission to enter Parliament, however. It's observed in a ritual, twice-repeated refusal before every speech before Parliament.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoBefore I read the article, I was reminded of a somewhat relevant quote attributed to Vincent Scully lamenting the replacement of old Penn Station with MSG. "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat." What an insult to human dignity ugly architecture is. You can infer the manner in which human life is valued in a culture by the architecture and the art it produces, especially relative to its means.
- fsckboy 1y agois the timing of this from some in the body politic reacting to "No Kings Day" by expressing some deeper, truer yearning?