I’ve started to think that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the concept of noblesse oblige.  By which I mean that I think it is misunderstood both by people who believe that they are displaying it, or that they ought to display it, and by people who are inclined to judge others for it or for its absence. 

In particular: I think people believe that it’s about gestures.  That if you’re rich or blue-blooded or privileged or whatever, that every so often you have to demonstrate that you’re a decent person with decent human sentiments by reaching out and doing something nice for some poor less-fortunate schlub.  Give a whole bunch to a photogenic charity, or leave a really big tip, or some such. 

And the thing is that, as a social strategy, that almost never works.  

(There are rare exceptions.  If the gesture is really big and really costly and really resonant, it can have some real moral impact.  This almost certainly requires anteing up something other than money; poor schlubs naturally assume that big-shots possess functionally infinite money anyway, and aren’t impressed by their financial expenditures.  The thing where old-money families send their sons off to war, even when it would obviously be easy for them to get out of fighting if they wanted, is a good example.  That said – )

Envy can’t be beaten with moral suasion.  If people are inclined to resent you for your wealth or your position, you’ve already lost the social game, there’s basically no gesture you can make that will change their minds.  It doesn’t matter how nice you are.  The hinge of envy is “I think this person has advantages that he doesn’t deserve,” and no one seriously believes that the way you come to deserve advantages is by being nice. 

The way you deserve advantages is by playing a necessary role. 

And that’s what noblesse oblige is really about.  It’s about demonstrating that the community relies upon you (whatever “the community” means in context), and thus that your wealth/privilege/etc. is an important aspect of The Way Things Work, rather than simply being a random private benefit.  It’s about employing two dozen domestic servants in your giant country manor, or maybe running the factory that employs half the breadwinners in town.  It’s about being available as a fair and trustworthy judge for people’s disputes.  It’s about serving as a private social safety net of last resort, through some means or other.  In a very fundamental sense, of course, it’s about taking up your longsword and your plate mail and protecting your peasants from bandits. 

This is a lot harder than it used to be.  Rich powerful people aren’t the pillars of small communities anymore; they live in all-rich-and-powerful-person communities of their own.  Often, they get their wealth and power through arcane methods that have no obvious direct positive consequences for any specific people.  I know. 

But if you’ve got privilege and you want to keep it, I’d strongly encourage you to think hard about this.  The “I’m just a regular guy like you, except with tons of money and influence” strategy is rapidly ceasing to work at all, and it never worked that well to begin with.  Stable aristocracies have something to offer.

Hannah Arendt talks about this – not using the term noblesse oblige, just talking about the dynamic – which is why it comes to mind.  As she explains the historical precedents, exploiter classes generally don’t fall to revolutions or reorganizations.  Exploitation sucks, but it tends to grow out of a stable productive relationship between the exploiter and exploitee, which provides at least some meaningful benefits to both of them.  The upper classes that fall are the ones that no longer have any capacity to exploit anyone, the ones that are identical to the lower classes except for being much richer…