Underneath the seemingly unaccountable changes in the way the world unfolds over the centuries are forces that either cause or are caused by war, famine, weather, new inventions and so on. The issue of human survival always hinges between two kinds of survival: individual and group. Sometimes the chances of surviving are much better for the individual and sometimes for the group, but they are highly interdependent. Since individuals are often protected as well as identified by their group affiliation and since groups survive by the willing allegiance of many individuals, stories about how to reconcile and honor both the triumphs and the sacrifices are always in the air, partly to control what will happen and partly to justify what has already happened.
Denis de Rougemont in his classic book, “Love in the Western World,” reckons that “Tristan and Iseult” is an example of the code of individual behavior that grew out of the Crusades, to keep the discipline and allegiance of “chevaliers” (horseback riders) attached to the folks back home, but sometimes in conflict with the preceding idea of “feudalism,” which meant that power came through the acceptance that a particular patch of land “belonged” to kings (backed up by God, of course) who could control and dispose of everyone who lived there and the assets they created through their work. The kings in the time period of Tristan used their wealth to underwrite the knights or chevaliers who were assumed to act with great loyalty and dedication in the king’s interests. So King Mark more or less “owned” Tristan, in the same way that God “owned” the believers: through an intense idea of faith and obligation. The King “was” the nation and to betray the king was to betray the country.
The Romantic idea of an individual falling in love amounted to a heresy. Adultery was treason. And once those chevaliers had ridden their horses off to the Holy Land, seeing all sorts of things along the way and relying on their individual wits -- or at least a buddy group -- to survive in unknown territory -- well, once they’ve seen Paree (or Jeroo), how do you keep them back on the farm? And how do you keep them from figuring out, -- like a horse who realizes that a bit only controls his mouth and that he’s much bigger and more powerful than his rider -- that there are larger forces than a king? At that point one still believes in God -- or not. The same with the women left behind or used as a trading token.
A knight, unlike a horse, knows he can be seriously injured or killed. Healing is a high value in combat, and so the code of fealty can be overcome if the injury is grievous enough. Tristan is as good as dead when he is set adrift in a boat, unconscious. It is not his choice to be washed up on the shore of Ireland where a princess, Iseult, has the skills to save him and does, compassion overcoming caution. He’s not deliberately betraying his king by being healed, but it puts him in tension between his individual survival and the survival of King Mark, which will be much enhanced by marriage to Iseult through Tristan’s efforts.
De Rougement says (p. 19 in my paperback)” “I propose to consider Tristan, not as a piece of literature, but as typical of the relations between man and woman in a particular historical group -- the dominant social caste, the courtly society, saturated with chivalry, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The group in question was indeed long ago dissolved. Yet its laws remain our laws in an unsuspected and diluted form. Profaned and repudiated by our official legal codes, these laws have become the more compelling in that they wield no power over us except in our dreams.”
I would broaden that out even more. In a denomination grouped only by the affinities of the congregation members (weakening as the generations thin out), the representative of the whole is the denominational headquarters -- the Pope in the instance of the Roman Catholics. Then the priests become the chevaliers, risen to knighthood on the horse of ordination. If their code is strong, they can be crusaders as well as protectors. If it is weak, the whole institution turns rotten.
The Roman Catholic church still runs by feudal rules, but no longer has the land that would make it a nation except in scattered patches all over the planet. It is a “virtual” nation with much wealth which comes from the allegiance of its people. It is a corporation which is less like a person (as is the legal convention, as though institutions could be their own king) and more of a landless nation. If it cannot protect the members from disease (whether physical or moral) then it is going to rot from within. And so will the United States which also collects taxes in the feudal way -- though adding representatives of the people whose duty is to keep the faith, and to limit authority by mapped boundaries. Feudalism died because of abuse by those in power and so can religious institutions or governing institutions.
The consequences to any “nation” that does not preserve the health of the constituents is a rise in the felt need of individuals to take matters into their own hands, whether it is a formal and land-based country, provoking demonstrations, or a family in which the adults do not act to protect their children, obliging them to rebel or run away. When it appears that the whole planet is grievously wounded and infected, then God is discredited and we look for a mystical Irish healing woman, an Iseult. But there are false Iseults, like the one Tristan marries to please King Mark, and she moves under a black sail.
This is a wildly simplified and possibly distorted understanding of what de Rougemont is saying and I haven’t even finished reading the book yet, but I think it is a useful formula for interpreting some very confusing dynamics. The question is “what should an individual do to preserve his or her community?” (Assuming one has found a community.) Then, in reciprocity, what is the community doing to protect its members? The US claims it can find a unity in plurality through the protection of rights and the prevention of oppression. But if we get scared enough, that falls apart. They call in the Chevaliers, the Samurai, and the Predator drones to force authority.
We are waiting to see what all these horsemen of the keyboard can manage. Will leaking information and revealing corporation disguises return faith to the people? Or will it destroy order ? Shouldn’t we be looking for something we can all believe in the way we used to believe in God? Or is the individual hacker saving us all?
Science, which can amount to a religion, recommends the planet as something we can believe in, the ultimate human group. (Forget about the rocket riders who go on Crusades to the stars.) But we are demanding that science heal us. In the end everyone will die -- the question is what will you live for in the meantime? Your own right to do what you like, or the honor of your country, or the good of life on this planet, or some virtual world that may or may not really exist? (Are all those virgins a reward or a problem?) De Rougement says it doesn’t really matter whether the emphasis is on individual or group -- the thing that counts is making the story go on and on -- now this way and now that way. It is Scheherazade who knows. It is the story that survives when all else is gone.
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