It’s a dog-eat-dog world—particularly, it seems, during a U.S. presidential election year—and yet we know that our progress truly depends on having a broader vision of humanity. So how do we pause, reflect, and start to regain that broader vision?
We may start by reflecting on who we know who inspires through example, truthfulness, and selflessness. Who do we see, and who can we follow; who exemplifies nobility?
Nobility is an inherent but unevenly dispersed human characteristic, not something that is solely or necessarily the result of intellectual choice.
But it is a characteristic—a strength—that can be nurtured and brought to the fore by the contradictory striving and humanity of individuals and by societies. It is a characteristic that can determine the productivity, cohesiveness, and power of nations.
Nobility is a key underpinning of leadership, whether in an individual or in a nation. It is an essential component in the creation of prestige, whether individual or national. And it is the underpinning driver, therefore, of national legitimacy. States that attempt international suasion solely through military or economic power inevitably pay heavily for ignoring the prior acquisition of nobility, prestige, and legitimacy.
Such states, dependent on mere force or wealth, are consumed by transactional power and find it difficult to endure without the continuity of a durable reserve of nobility.
Nobility is nonetheless little understood or quantified. Nobility differs from time to time and place to place, and yet it always signifies a sense beyond self and a sense beyond the immediate. It reflects a sense of continuity of identity and values and signifies the protection and endurance of society and the textures that make that society strong, unique, bonded, and therefore durable. It implies the protection of the weak by the strong and a benevolence born of strength and self-command.
It expresses itself, then, in a concept of the ideal. But can an individual, being imperfect by nature and carrying the potential for both good and evil, weakness or frailty and strength, really embody that ideal? Indeed, even more, can a society—a collection of individuals—reflect that ideal?
Monarchies, for example, attempt to imbue “the crown,” as an abstract symbol for a nation, with all the virtues of nobility, so that the monarch is merely its dynamic embodiment, carrying, in essence, the task for a “higher being,” that being either spiritual or conceptual.
The task of nobility is to unite and inspire, and not to shine a light on the failures of the weak, who do not, perhaps, have the strength to live up to the ideal at all times. The weak or disadvantaged cannot be excluded or humiliated by the noble example; they are, indeed, protected and uplifted by it. Nobility, therefore, must to a great extent be nebulous, but visible, inspiring without criticizing or punishing, helping us all to a sunlit upland. Given the reality that nobility consistently reemerges through history and through societies, often marking some societies with a historical resonance, stature, and success, it may be assumed that the characteristic is innate to humankind, and even to other noble living species of beings.
Can nobility be triggered as a result of introspection, and a reflection of a natural or inspired “positivism”? Or is it a naturally occurring form of individual and societal self-confidence resulting from the acquisition of wisdom or purposely driven respect? Can a highly visible structure of noble individuals and a hierarchy inspire an emulation of “noble behavior”—expressed in personal honor and “virtù” in its form meant by Niccolò Machiavelli—throughout a society, ultimately generating prestige and all the influence inherent in that characteristic?
Nobility reflects the pinnacle aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which identifies personal accomplishment as the highest expression of a human need, followed by esteem. And “esteem” is earned through the nobility of behavior.
Nobility, however, is expressed not only as a “need” in individuals—which it clearly is—but also as a reflection of characteristics that would invite esteem, and accomplish goals. Societies from their most primitive forms have attempted to codify or symbolize this prestige, strength, and confidence through the creation of social hierarchies, the pinnacle of which is exemplified by the image of leadership, such as a crown, or a lyrically inspiring constitution—a “magna carta.”
And these characteristics have devolved in cellular forms through societies, to the nobility of motherhood, fatherhood, the family. Modern society, attempting to negate the concept of nobility—or to reinvent it—has tried to create a “statistical society.” In this, the traditional cascading of “inspirational nobility” from a leader down through a social hierarchy to individuals at family levels in “modern” states is replaced by an elimination of individual nobility as the basis for societal greatness. Individual “charisma” or unidimensional popularity attempts to substitute for the substance of nobility.
This “charisma,” however, is but a brief distraction—an ersatz nobility—from the deeper natural human instinct and need for a meaningful, and meaningfully led, society. And today, that is often part of the great division of societies between the urban-driven “statistical society”—often called globalists or secularists—and the less urban-driven rural or regional societies, often portrayed as nationalists. Perhaps it is a classical reflection of the debate between “nature” and “nurture.”
Beneath it all, we yearn to be inspired, and to inspire. It is the embodiment of leadership and esprit de corps.
