Blogging Rob Roy chapter 26
"Every tub has to sit on its own bottom." That was a line Count Basie picked up from one of his musicians and it became a business principle for him. When Bailie Jarvie and Owen are having a discussion about Scotland's economic state, the very same expression comes up. "Na, na sir, we stand on our bottom ...." What it means in both cases is that everyone earns their own way.
That is an important line of demarcation between an honour and shame society and a guilt innocence society. In an honour and shame society honour is shared. I cannot have honour without sharing it with everyone in my in-group. If I try a phenomenon sometimes called tall poppy syndrome kicks in although that is a bit of a misnomer as tall poppies are encouraged so long as they remember that they are poppies and that their tallness is supposed to reflect glory on all the other poppies.
The reverse is also true. Any shameful act I perform will also bring shame on my entire in group. In an honour-shame culture the members of the in group will punish anyone who they feel brings shame on them. The most heinous example of this in our world probably being Muslim honour killings.
In an innocence-guilt society, everyone stands and falls alone. Count Basie came from an African-American subculture that still was predominantly honour-shame based but he broke with it when he set up his band. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. This was not without resistance from some other black musicians who saw this as selfishness.
No society is, as I've noted before, purely honour-shame or purely guilt-innocence. Every honour-shame society will trade with outsiders. So, for example, biblical laws that seemed to ban lending money at interest didn't apply when trading with outsiders. Even in a guilt-innocence society relations between very close insiders will have honour shame aspects. If a married person commits some flagrantly outrageous sexual offence they drag their husband or wife down with them and innocence will not protect that husband or wife.
In Chapter 26 we get the two ways put side by side for our perusal. Scott writes beautifully here giving both sides their due but clearly showing why it is better to enter the modern world. I've spoken a lot of Scott's shortcomings in recent blog posts. This is his strength. The millions of people who read him in the 19th and early twentieth century read him for chapters like this one.
And it's not hard to see why if we think about it. These people were living in a world where modernity was rising but they still were not far from tribal allegiances. My grandmother was born in a village that had a road that ran through town but went nowhere. On both ends it just tapered out past the limits. There was no toilet, no electricity, no telephone, no doctor. But she met my grandfather because he was the bush pilot who flew the mail in.
That is a more dramatic example of the contrast between Rob Roy's world and the one Bailie Jarvie wants for Scotland.
In the argument we see in this chapter, both sides score points. Bailie Jarvie is forced to acknowledge that Rob Roy is not evil. But he gets his own point in too. And that point is that Rob Roy's world is a small world where sickness and deprivation are constant companions. You can see that on the tombstones in my Grandmother's home town. You can see the year that diphtheria came in and killed five of her siblings in seven months.
Jarvie pulls the lid of a bowl of punch and it has limes from a farm of his. That's a big world because there is nowhere in Scotland or England where you can grow citrus fruit. If you want to "get" Sir Walter pay particular attention to this. There is a love story and a happy ending but the really important connection for him and his first readers is the one between ethnic communities like Scotland and modern global markets. Like Count Basie believed in a bigger, better world where every tub had to sit on its own bottom.
"Every tub has to sit on its own bottom." That was a line Count Basie picked up from one of his musicians and it became a business principle for him. When Bailie Jarvie and Owen are having a discussion about Scotland's economic state, the very same expression comes up. "Na, na sir, we stand on our bottom ...." What it means in both cases is that everyone earns their own way.
That is an important line of demarcation between an honour and shame society and a guilt innocence society. In an honour and shame society honour is shared. I cannot have honour without sharing it with everyone in my in-group. If I try a phenomenon sometimes called tall poppy syndrome kicks in although that is a bit of a misnomer as tall poppies are encouraged so long as they remember that they are poppies and that their tallness is supposed to reflect glory on all the other poppies.
The reverse is also true. Any shameful act I perform will also bring shame on my entire in group. In an honour-shame culture the members of the in group will punish anyone who they feel brings shame on them. The most heinous example of this in our world probably being Muslim honour killings.
In an innocence-guilt society, everyone stands and falls alone. Count Basie came from an African-American subculture that still was predominantly honour-shame based but he broke with it when he set up his band. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. This was not without resistance from some other black musicians who saw this as selfishness.
No society is, as I've noted before, purely honour-shame or purely guilt-innocence. Every honour-shame society will trade with outsiders. So, for example, biblical laws that seemed to ban lending money at interest didn't apply when trading with outsiders. Even in a guilt-innocence society relations between very close insiders will have honour shame aspects. If a married person commits some flagrantly outrageous sexual offence they drag their husband or wife down with them and innocence will not protect that husband or wife.
In Chapter 26 we get the two ways put side by side for our perusal. Scott writes beautifully here giving both sides their due but clearly showing why it is better to enter the modern world. I've spoken a lot of Scott's shortcomings in recent blog posts. This is his strength. The millions of people who read him in the 19th and early twentieth century read him for chapters like this one.
And it's not hard to see why if we think about it. These people were living in a world where modernity was rising but they still were not far from tribal allegiances. My grandmother was born in a village that had a road that ran through town but went nowhere. On both ends it just tapered out past the limits. There was no toilet, no electricity, no telephone, no doctor. But she met my grandfather because he was the bush pilot who flew the mail in.
That is a more dramatic example of the contrast between Rob Roy's world and the one Bailie Jarvie wants for Scotland.
In the argument we see in this chapter, both sides score points. Bailie Jarvie is forced to acknowledge that Rob Roy is not evil. But he gets his own point in too. And that point is that Rob Roy's world is a small world where sickness and deprivation are constant companions. You can see that on the tombstones in my Grandmother's home town. You can see the year that diphtheria came in and killed five of her siblings in seven months.
Jarvie pulls the lid of a bowl of punch and it has limes from a farm of his. That's a big world because there is nowhere in Scotland or England where you can grow citrus fruit. If you want to "get" Sir Walter pay particular attention to this. There is a love story and a happy ending but the really important connection for him and his first readers is the one between ethnic communities like Scotland and modern global markets. Like Count Basie believed in a bigger, better world where every tub had to sit on its own bottom.
I haven't been able to re-read Rob Roy to follow your commentaries, but much of what you say here is striking a chord with me. I understand now what you mean about shame, I was misinterpreting your earlier references to it because of my professional training and what it connotes in that context. My family stressed to me early on that if I did something that was "shameful" (like getting a girl pregnant) I would bring shame on my family's good name. Conversely, if I did something honorable or noteworthy it would reflect well on my family and my ethnicity. Having lived through the Great Depression they also said that sometimes all you have is your good name, so they placed a high value on that and I don't think that was a bad thing to have inculcated in me. Often we would hear in reference to outstanding black men "he's a credit to his race," we rarely hear that anymore. I grew up in a relatively small town where everybody knew everybody else, but there were tribal aspects too--the italians lived in one section, the Slovaks in another, the Irish had their section, and the WASPS (who ran the town) lived in the best sections. Those lines of demarcation have broken down--but not completely--since I was a boy, and I guess that is a good thing. But implicit in that tribalism was that there was protection from those outside the tribe who could never really be trusted 100%. But also implicit was that if I did screw up, while they might beat the crap out of me in private, publically they would support me against those hostile outsiders.
ReplyDeleteI took a course in grad school called "Agape and Special Relations" that addressed this very topic. It was taught by a well-known Ethicist who ultimately wrote a book on the topic. The thesis or question was ought Christians give preferential treatment to other Christians in business and other social interactions. The professor cited that this is an unspoken but common practice among those of the Jewish faith. There is no real answer, compelling arguments can be made for and against.
Jules, are you familiar with Mars Hill Audio?
ReplyDeleteMars Hill Audio?
ReplyDeleteNo I'd never heard of them before. I Googled them when I saw your question but I know nothing about them
It's a busy weekend around here so it may be a while before I notice any comments.
I think you would enjoy Mars Hill Audio. I've been receiving them as a Christmas gift from a friend for the last several years. The format is similar to NPRs "All Things Considered." This month's edition (Vol. 103) has some very interesting discussions that relate to some of your recent posts. I find myself agreeing with more of the people they've interviewed in recent years than I did when I first started receiving them, first on cassette tape now on CD.
ReplyDelete