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June 2003
The decline of the gentleman
in late modernity
Commentary
by Mark Wegierski
The Interim
Current-day, hypermodern societies, such as the U.S., Canada, Britain,
and north-western Europe - countries which were formerly among the world's
bastions of gentility - now have a hostile outlook and inherent bias
against the traditional gentleman, or the man of manners and genuine
cultivation. As a result, the general moral tenor, as well as the stability
of family life in those societies, has been further undermined. There
are a number of different factors that have led to the decline and devalourizing
of the gentleman in late modernity.
- Hyper-egalitarianism
in late modern societies makes the gentleman seem like an archaic
figure of aristocratic privilege.
- The overthrow
of traditional morality in late modern societies appears to make the
gentleman and his ideals a suffocating standard which no one should
be forced into.
- The spread
of mass-media pop-culture makes the gentleman's ideal of manners and
self-cultivation appear irrelevant and ludicrous. Usually, vulgar
sport stars, rock stars, and movie stars are today's primary heroes.
- As the current-day
oligarchic and bureaucratic power-elites have radically moved away
from the traditional identifications of aristocratic national elites
with history, patriotism, religion, and the countryside, the locus
of the gentlemanly ethic (and often the source of his personal sustenance)
has been undermined. The triumph of commercialism, and the exaltation
of the merely rich, has undermined the traditional outlook of the
more responsible and self-restrained use of one's wealth. There is
usually a radical disjunction today between the man of means, and
the man of manners.
- The increasing
emphasis on technology and the necessity for technical specialization
for advancement in "the real world" of business, reductively defined
law, and technology, result in the marginalizing of generalist and
humane, liberal arts approaches, which are the traditional focuses
of the gentleman.
- The growing
power of radical feminism has had baneful effects on the more traditional
context of manners and morals in which the gentleman has previously
thrived.
- The ideal
of the gentleman, which is often seen as bound up with Western civilization,
holds little appeal for multicultural populations, or for theorists
of minority empowerment. Although (as can be seen, for example, in
the writings of Confucius) the ideal of the gentleman has certainly
existed outside Western civilization, the decline of the gentleman,
and of Western civilization today, may indeed be related.
It could be argued that the traditional gentleman, who not so long
ago stood at the pinnacle of the planet, has now been sent into internal
exile. The true gentleman could be seen as being like the Phantom of
the Opera - as recently interpreted in Andrew Lloyd Webber's theatrical
musical - savagely scarred and effectively repressed into the underground
(unconscious) of society. The Beauty and the Beast television series,
which unfortunately ended in such a pessimistic way, is also an example
of this repression into the unconscious of the true gentleman, who could
be seen as seeking expression today as a Romantic hero-figure.
Tim Burton's art deco/gothic re-interpretation of Batman, Ridley Scott's
dark-future movie Blade Runner (based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?), as well as the movie Ladyhawke - which showed
a solitary knight dressed in black fighting on behalf of the Church
of Rome against an evil, heretical bishop and sorcerer of seemingly
unlimited powers - may also be seen as invocations of this theme of
"the lonely, wounded hero."
Such music as 1980s' retro-alternative (shading into the techno-pop
and love-ballads of that period) sometimes feels to be participating
in seriously Romantic themes. In the current-day, hyper-modern context,
the Romantic impulse can have a neo-traditionalist, as well as more
common, antinomian, interpretations. One interesting synthesis of Romantic
imaginativeness and Christian thought were the Inklings of Oxford (C.S.
Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, among others). Indeed, C.S. Lewis spoke of
the need for spiritually and culturally robust "men with chests."
Late modern society may be seen as disassociated in a huge number of
ways, and as fundamentally lacking in strong yet sensitive, integrated
personalities such as that of the true gentleman. With the disassociation
of the masculine image, we on the one hand have brutish "studs," and
on the other, varieties of gelded "geeks." Can one ever hope again for
some kind of synthesis in masculine identity, combining manfully physical
and truly reflective traits?
It can be suggested that NO society calling itself civilized can function
long without the now-threadbare cloak of pieties and decencies the true
gentleman represents. Yet, will the spirit of the gentleman ever substantively
return?
Today, it seems unlikely.
Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and researcher.
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