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TwinRuler
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13 Mar 2017, 3:00 am

:) Mind you, I have for the longest time been very fascinated with the Medieval Knights and their Code of Chivalry. After all, when most think of it, they tend to associate chivalry with the idea of protecting women and coming to the aide of damsels in distress. Of course, as vitally important as that is, at a more basic and fundamental level, it was also concerned with the regulation of war itself!

I could be wrong, but I am almost of the suspicion that The Code of Chivalry, was and is, somehow, or other related to the Conception of The Just War, at least in Western Civilization. And, I also would not be too much surprised if the 19th Century conception of The Civilized Rules of Warfare were, somehow and somewhat, rooted in said Code of Chivalry, to some extent.

:ninja: Of course, not to be too Eurocentric, I would suppose, that the Japanese, to their credit, had their own version of it, The Code of Bushido, as practiced by their Samurai. Mind you, for some odd reason, I am really interested in History, military history in particular.

Of course, there are certain revisionist Historians, today, who make the claim that there actually was no Code of Chivalry: at any rate, that it was not quite as noble or as chivalrous as most Whites would like to believe. Still, increasingly nowadays, there are those who also claim that The Code of Bushido was not all it was sliced up to be (excuse the pun). Well, anyhow, even if The Code of Chivalry was not really all that, in historical fact, that is no reason for a writer of imaginative fiction, to not depict the idealized version thereof. After all, Ayn Rand, in her book, The Romantic Manifesto makes an interesting distinction between History and Fiction.

Of course, History is interesting in that it is a chronology of all the bad things that people did, over the centuries of Civilization; Fiction, according to Ayn Rand, is actually "an idealization of how people should be", that "the protagonist symbolizes the author's values", or some such. Very inspiring. Upon reading that, I realized, I should read and I should write more fiction. Yes, and in my view, it shows precisely and exactly what is the importance of fiction, in any society!

:D Wait, I think I have had an epiphany! Mythos is basically a Collective form of what Ayn Rand, in her wisdom, termed fiction. After all, Myths, whatever one may think of them, are idealizations of entire Nations and Peoples, written by the members and representations of said Nations and Peoples. Yes, that seems to make much sense to me. And, people being people, have a sort of need for a Collective Mythos!

Besides, now that I think of it, History, for the most part, is Revisionist. Indeed, the term Revisionist History is a bit redundant. Yes, and that is why there is so much controversy, these days, about precisely that topic. Historians keep trying to debunk and refute earlier ones. So much so that there is even a discipline, termed Historiography: roughly, the History of History itself.

Mind you, the entire idea of the Anglo Saxon Invasion Theory, is, in its eerie sort of way, a lot like the Anneid, as written by Virgil, all those years ago. Exactly like it was claimed that the Romans were of Trojan ancestry, today it is claimed that most of English blood are ultimately of German, or at any rate Northern German, ancestry. Of course, I wonder if any of you ever really think of that. Mind you, I always loved Greek and Norse Mythology. Looking back, I am not too sure why!



techstepgenr8tion
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23 Mar 2017, 9:52 pm

On a side note - there are chivalry orders out there right now but they might be a little bit different than what you're thinking of, ie. think in the Masonic and Martinist directions.


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Darmok
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23 Mar 2017, 10:48 pm

^ Yes, there still are chivalric orders, some with very long histories. They exist principally in countries that are monarchies, since the monarch is the "fount of honor."

One of the most famous is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, no longer quite military, but doing Catholic charitable work in various places:

https://www.orderofmalta.int/


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