i speak to you now from a #linux daily driver desktop machine. i have officially given up the windows, which will only be used for gaming and music production, and even then i'm trying to figure out a way to phase that out. (if you know how i can properly get Marvel Rivals working, please let me know, and yes, i do know the SteamDeck=1 %command% thing, but it's not making a difference.)

what distro am i using?

arch of course

#defenestration

By any chance, is Trump meeting Putin in a room with windows on a high floor?

#HopeSpringsEternal
#Defenestration

Royalty, Administration, and Antimemetics

I was all of 15 when defenestration was forever implanted in my mind. It means to throw someone out the window. It happened in Prague, 1618. Some important people were defenestrated, fell 70 feet, landed in dung. This led to the thirty years war and the coining of the word ‘defenestration’. Defenestrating happened to important, visible, people held responsible for mismanagement leading to widespread discontent. While the defenestrated may represent the idea, surely we can’t imagine that it was that specific person who was going around causing the suffering. No, they had minions. Here we explore a bit of their story. 

Royalty is meant to be seen. They were either chosen by or were the local gods to lead the people. They were the head of everything and if something were to go wrong it was their responsibility. Royalty also means creating good memes. Whether the Alhambra, Taj Mahal, or Beijing projecting power through architectural memes was the standard.

Administration and bureaucratic structures is the silent clockwork that powers the projection. These guys, are antimemetic. The antimeme is a recent invention and denotes ideas that have high impact but are hard to spread. This is important because when the tax burden gets too high you want the peasants to go for the king not the local tax collector. 

The Mughal emperors were the head of the administrative machinery with final say over all important matters. The administration itself was antimemetic in nature. The provincial officials such as the bakhshi, sadr as-sudr, and finance minister reported directly to the central government rather than the subahdar (provincial governor). Matrix organization, I hear you thinking. This complex, multi-layered reporting structure, while designed for central control, also diffused responsibility and made the precise locus of decision-making less transparent to external observers and even to other officials.

In the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor abolished the Central Secretariat to assume personal control. However, the volume of letters got so high that he soon appointed a few grand secretaries. They never held a high rank and always merely “recorded imperial decisions”. If merely were a boxer he would be a heavyweight. Can’t blame that guy with the pen if he’s just doing what the king asks him to.

From the al-Andalus through the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals the the ulama shaped legal systems and molded public morality. Of course the monarchs decrees but the ulama interpreted them and applied them as law into daily life. This interpretive authority, operating subtly within the legal and religious bureaucracy, allowed for continuous adaptation and influence without the visible, attributable acts of formal legislation, making it profoundly antimemetic. 

Let me end with the quote from the wonderful, and joyfully mimetic, Yes, Minister:

“Hacker: Humphrey, did you know that 20% of all honours go to civil servants?

Sir Humphrey: A fitting tribute to their devotion to duty, Minister.

Hacker: No, their duty is what they get paid for. The rest of the population has to do something extra to get an honour. Something special. They work for 27 years with mentally handicapped children six nights a week to get an MBE. Your knighthoods simply come up with the rations.

Sir Humphrey: Minister, her Majesty’s civil servants spend their lives working for a modest wage and at the end, they retire into obscurity. Honours are a small reward for a lifetime of loyal, self-effacing discretion and devoted service to Her Majesty, and to the nation.

Hacker: “A modest wage”, did you say?

Sir Humphrey: Alas, yes.

Hacker: Humphrey, you get over £30,000 a year! That’s £7,000 more than I get.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but still relatively the modest wage.

Hacker: Relative to whom?

Sir Humphrey: Well, Elizabeth Taylor, for example.

Hacker: Humphrey, you are not relative to Elizabeth Taylor. There are important differences.

Sir Humphrey: Indeed, yes. She didn’t get a first at Oxford.

Hacker: And you do not retire into obscurity?! You take a massive index-linked pension and go off to become directors of oil companies and banks.

Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes, but very obscure directors, Minister.

Hacker: You’re in no danger of the sack. In industry if you screw things up, you get the boot. In the civil service, if you screw things up, I get the boot.

Sir Humphrey: Very droll, Minister, now if you’ve approved the list…”

[Series Two (1981) Episode Two: Doing the Honours]

Sources

Much of the reading and sourcing of material for this was done across books from the Contraptions Book Club and some deep research help.

• Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography by Robert Irwin
• Monkey King: Journey to the West, the abridged Lovell edition
• Islamic Gunpowder Empires by Dougles E. Streusend
• Kingdoms of Faith by Brian A. Catlos
• Zheng He: China And the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 by Edward L. Dreyer
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister

#alAndalus #Antimemetics #Bureaucracy #Defenestration #Government #HistoricalTheory #history #HistoryMemes #Humor #MingDynasty #MughalEmpire #OttomanEmpire #PoliticalSatire #PoliticalTheory #Politics #PowerStructures #Sociology #YesMinister