Ode to Brotherhood

I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there. -Joanna Newsom, “Emily”

Next, I’ll take a look at how an aspiring absolute ruler, by all measures of practicality, can use the power of friendship to defeat the forces of evil. Most of what I describe can also apply to whatever similar aims you might have, so if you’re not a fan of my fanatical grandstanding on absolutism’s behalf, this one’s pretty light on all of that.

It’s a lost art. Contemporary success stories construe friendship more as incidental rather than instrumental. What’s more, we witness cautionary tales of ambition tearing old friends apart, leaving both in regretful isolation at the peak of their careers. It’s lonely at the top.

I think we can chalk this one up to another aphorism, along with the rest of those similar ailments: Things ain’t like they used to be. As for the causes of societal decay, I’ll leave that topic of debate up to those more well-studied.

But if there’s one such forgotten virtue in human nature that could be revived at the level of individuals and brought to bear toward the replenishment of the rest, it’s brotherhood. There are countless examples of this phenomenon, but it’s more central to acknowledge that that’s what a brotherhood is. It voluntarily unites kindred spirits in the furtherance of their common ideals and interests—to some degree of opposition or tension with the general public—just as surely as a leader gives orders.

Brotherhoods are resilient. They are much more easily brought together than broken apart. Whatever processes are at fault for dismantling the fraternities of the world, they were endothermic: Costly and externally applied. There’s no mystery beyond this than the natural desire for good company and purposes beyond the self, and a brotherhood is a surefire source of both. In fact, these groups are strengthened by adversity (to a point) since men find purpose in hardship, especially when mutually endured with friends.

Another quality of the brotherhood is that it strengthens conviction and extremity in belief among its members. Once more, this is a secondary effect of human nature—people like to talk about things they have in common, and the rarer and more fundamental the commonality, the more enjoyable the conversation. What’s shared and accepted becomes tradition, and tradition is passed on to new members.

If all of this seems obvious, it should. And yet, we have all these old ways of doing which constituted the old ways of being, but left with only a pile of names and a rational but non-functional understanding of what they meant, how are we to put the pieces back together?

The usual place to start among reactionary crowds is the family. If we just brought back the mother and father, and if they taught their kids to be good, then things would go back to the ways they used to be. But how to bring back, and what to teach? It pains me to think of these matters so coldly, but these are very difficult things to do, and it would take very many independent accomplishments of this feat to see any marked improvement. We can continue to try in the meantime, however.

Brotherhoods are a lot easier to make, and they can do much more as individual entities in much less time. It’s true that their energies can and have been spent toward insidious purposes or nothing at all, the latter more often than not. They tend to content themselves with esoteric rituals and lofty ideals, concealing from themselves what they’d really want done, and settling on nothing instead. Pin things down too much, and you lose the magic and become a club. Shoot too high, and you become a cult.

Once again, this comes down to human nature and free will. A man can do as he pleases, but he’d rather do something of more use than less given the chance. But he’s not sure if this problem is more important, or that, or if either of them are a problem at all, and he doesn’t know who to agree with here…can’t we just pursue happiness instead?

It’d be tricky, but a would-be absolute ruler with proper vision and a practical mind could provide such an opportunity through the medium of a brotherhood. It shrinks down the scope of the challenges involved in imposing absolute rule to a tangible but still tantalizingly taboo set of shared beliefs, resources, and tasks: “Someone, somewhere, should do something about all this” becomes “Better him than what we’ve got,” and “What can be done” becomes “What can we do.” I’m willing to take a page out of the Enlightenment playbook here and lean on fraternité. Instead of trying to change public opinion through decentralized Overton window-pushing, just find people who already pretty much agree with you, give them a place to be among like minds, and offer them an interesting course of action.

I’ve suggested establishment of absolute sovereignty by way of military force in the defense of borders, and I won’t bother stating the obvious regarding how a brotherhood could serve a useful means to that end. If an aspirant has other plans in mind, though, he will need one even more. He’ll rely on his kindred spirits as confidants, sources of information, and pragmatic influences on those outside of it.

There’s no surer modern sensibility than disgust toward transparent concentrations and displays of political power—Who do you think you are? Who died and made you king? If someone wants to establish absolute rule, he’s going to need people he can trust to watch his back, and a brotherhood can be a great way to find them.