Official US Arms Granting Authority

 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
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26 January 2012 17:32
 

Joseph McMillan;92028 wrote:

I disagree. Not necessarily. Indeed, I suspect that many if not most of the members of this forum would say that "gentleman" is no longer a social status—i.e., a rank within a hierarchy—at all.


Postnomials for educational accomplishments and legal careers in the U.S. would stand ready to resuscitate that horse were it to finally expire from our beating.

 

Or were you referring to a "heritable" social status and rank?

 
Dohrman Byers
 
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Dohrman Byers
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26 January 2012 18:21
 

Joseph McMillan;92028 wrote:

I disagree. Not necessarily. Indeed, I suspect that many if not most of the members of this forum would say that "gentleman" is no longer a social status—i.e., a rank within a hierarchy—at all.


I agree. It seems to me that, in contemporary American usage, "gentleman" denotes not a social status but a way of behaving, characterized by courtesy, honesty, integrity, dependability, etc. It also identifies the class of people who may use certain public facilities.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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26 January 2012 19:07
 

Jeffrey Boyd Garrison;92029 wrote:

Postnomials for educational accomplishments and legal careers in the U.S. would stand ready to resuscitate that horse were it to finally expire from our beating.

Or were you referring to a "heritable" social status and rank?


What I mean is that few people in the United States would understand "gentleman" as correlating in any way with M.D., Ph.D., or Esq. after the name.  As Fr. Byers said, "gentleman" is a positive descriptive term, but it is not one that occupies a clear place in a social class hierarchy as it once was in England or even here.  You can’t pick a cut line at, say, "upper middle class and above" and say everyone above the line is a gentleman and everyone below it is not.  Indeed, as far as I can tell, Americans as a whole are generally convinced that a garbage collector can be just as much a gentleman as a university professor, a sharecropper as much as an agribusiness owner, depending on how they conduct themselves.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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26 January 2012 19:49
 

Joseph McMillan;92033 wrote:

What I mean is that few people in the United States would understand "gentleman" as correlating in any way with M.D., Ph.D., or Esq. after the name.  As Fr. Byers said, "gentleman" is a positive descriptive term, but it is not one that occupies a clear place in a social class hierarchy as it once was in England or even here.  You can’t pick a cut line at, say, "upper middle class and above" and say everyone above the line is a gentleman and everyone below it is not.  Indeed, as far as I can tell, Americans as a whole are generally convinced that a garbage collector can be just as much a gentleman as a university professor, a sharecropper as much as an agribusiness owner, depending on how they conduct themselves.


I don’t think our points of view are quite so far apart as it would appear. Perhaps "status" is not le mot juste, and something like "condition" or "way of being" would be more like it. Let me quote Reynolds again. He uses the word "status," but I don’t think he’s positing a hierarchy that devolves upon much besides deportment, though he is inescapably affirming that that status/condition/way of being is superior to others:


Quote:

For in the second place the display of arms is a forthright and confident assertion of status. Here the old expression noblesse oblige is particularly apt, for it was historically used to describe just this status; and it means simply that any rank or position that you inherit, assert for yourself, or accept, carries with it the obligation to meet its responsibilities with integrity, courage, and honor. In the area of social life, where family arms have no near competitor, these bearings are an avowal that you strive within your physical resources and your spiritual capacity to ‘live like a gentleman’ and that you expect to be considered one. They are not an indication of great wealth, nor pretension, nor even (in the case of new arms) of ‘old family,’ nor for that matter of a high level of educational or cultural attainment; but they are a sign of gentility. To put it most succinctly, if you are a product of and exemplify gentle birth or breeding, or if you have achieved it in yourself, you are entitled both morally and in the technical sense to the use of arms. That is still the basis for the ‘granting’ of arms in every country where arms are regulated by law. They are an open recognition of your status as a lady or gentleman.

 

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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26 January 2012 20:05
 

Joseph McMillan;92033 wrote:

What I mean is that few people in the United States would understand "gentleman" as correlating in any way with M.D., Ph.D., or Esq. after the name.  As Fr. Byers said, "gentleman" is a positive descriptive term, but it is not one that occupies a clear place in a social class hierarchy as it once was in England or even here.  You can’t pick a cut line at, say, "upper middle class and above" and say everyone above the line is a gentleman and everyone below it is not.  Indeed, as far as I can tell, Americans as a whole are generally convinced that a garbage collector can be just as much a gentleman as a university professor, a sharecropper as much as an agribusiness owner, depending on how they conduct themselves.


If your point is simply that no one these days uses the word "gentleman" in the original sense of someone who lives in hereditary gentle circumstances (i.e., someone whose inheritance enables him to live off the proceeds of his tenants’ labor and can devote himself only to pastimes of his choosing, like a Mr. Bennet or a Mr. Darcy, or the descendant of such a person), then of course you are right, but it sounds like you’re going quite a bit further than that. My sense is that you’re being hyperbolic (and inconsistent, for that matter).

 

Americans—myself included—are generally open to the possibility that a person can be virtuous, refined, etc. regardless of his formal educational or professional accomplishments and his family background. For sure, we tend to believe that Jefferson’s "natural aristocrat" is possible—that the individual’s ability and effort rather than the social status of his progenitors should be allowed to determine his own standing. But we are also pragmatists who recognize that as with animals (to paraphrase Adams’ angle on the natural aristocrat proposition), breeding in people produces a certain number of fairly predictable outcomes. We see some kind of connection between biological trends and social trends. Poverty and ignorance are not auspicious for the development of virtue or anything else besides more poverty and more ignorance, they do have a way of being intergenerational malaises, and I don’t think most of us believe that nurture is all there is to it. Nature accounts for something in our liabilities as well as our assets—like facility with throwing footballs, learning languages, etc. Adoptive parents can be especially poignant commentators on this reality.

 

As to postnominals, I think we do anticipate conduct from an M.D., a J.D., a Ph.D., an M.Div., or a COL substantially better than that which we anticipate from a high school dropout. And we do tend to accord higher status to individuals with the aforementioned postnominals.

 

In any case, just a few turns in the conversation ago, you were pointing out that the traditional upper stratum of American society—a stratum whose legacy is alive, even if the stratum itself is largely displaced—is extremely self-aware and extremely exacting in its admissions criteria. Are you saying they don’t actually count in our delineation of American values?

 

And how do we reconcile the historical reality that this upper stratum is mainly responsible for bequeathing to us our native tradition in heraldry with the idea that heraldry has no status connotations?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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26 January 2012 23:29
 

Fred White;92035 wrote:

I think you’re being hyperbolic (and inconsistent, for that matter).


You won’t be surprised that I don’t think so.


Quote:

Americans—myself included—are generally open to the possibility that a person can be virtuous, refined, etc. regardless of his formal educational or professional accomplishments and his family background. For sure, we tend to believe that Jefferson’s "natural aristocrat" is possible—that ability and effort rather than the social status of progenitors should be allowed to determine social standing. But we are also pragmatists who recognize that as with animals (to paraphrase Adams’ angle on the natural aristocrat proposition), breeding in people produces a certain number of fairly predictable outcomes. We see some kind of connection between biological trends and social trends. Poverty and ignorance are not auspicious for the development of virtue or anything else besides more poverty and more ignorance, and they do have a way of being intergenerational malaises.


This is not the place to debate the merits of nature vs. nurture, but to the extent we’re making assertions about what most Americans believe, survey data has shown that Americans consistently rank environment as a more important factor than genetics in how someone’s life turns out, with both of them far, far behind the exertion of personal effort. In any case, it has little if anything to do with heraldry, other than that there must be at least a few garbage collectors with valid rights to the use of old inherited arms.


Quote:

In any case, just a few turns in the conversation ago, you were pointing out that the traditional upper stratum of American society—a stratum whose legacy is alive, even if the stratum itself is largely displaced—is extremely self-aware and extremely exacting in its admissions criteria.


Yes, and so? The subject at hand in this turn of the conversation is not whom the traditional upper class views as worthy of admission to its ranks, or even whom it views as gentlemen, nor is it whom you or I think qualifies for this lofty distinction. The question is what Americans generally understand by the word "gentleman," other than as a more elaborate term for "man."


Quote:

Are you saying they don’t actually count in our delineation of American values?


We’re not talking about values. We’re talking about what the term "gentleman" means. To quote from your previous post:


Quote:

I like what J. A. Reynolds has to say about that—that bearing a coat of arms in the American context says that you consider yourself, and expect to be treated like, a gentleman, and moreover, that you promise to behave like a gentleman.


You interpret this as "necessarily" an assertion of social superiority to others. I do not, certainly not "necessarily." Unless we accept a long outmoded understanding of what it means to behave like a gentleman—the meaning that was implicit in oft-misquoted 17th century line about bearing the port and countenance of a gentleman—it is open to virtually anyone to behave like a gentleman. It is also perfectly reasonable in modern American society for anyone to expect to be treated as a gentleman or lady—that is, with respect. Indeed, treating other people respectfully is probably one of the essential elements in what the term "gentleman" means in 21st century America.

 

It was not always so. At one time—in the 17th century, certainly—to be considered a gentleman an Englishman not only had to possess landed wealth (and to spend it liberally). He could not suffer a blow or an insult, or decline a challenge from another gentleman who claimed to be affronted by something he had said or done. He could not engage in retail trade or work with his hands; some theorists ruled out any kind of involvement in manufacturing, while others made exceptions for soap-making and iron founding, provided one owned the land on which the iron was mined.

 

Indeed, as late as 1920, the Henley Royal Regatta barred John B. Kelly of Philadelphia (Grace Kelly’s father) from competition on the grounds that having worked as a bricklayer somehow tainted his amateur status as a rower. What it actually did, of course, was to taint his status as a gentleman in the eyes of the Henley committee.

 

Twenty or so years earlier we find Sir George Sitwell, Bt, in the pages of The Ancestor magazine ridiculing the grant of arms to the Jewish diamond magnate Barney Barnato, a poor boy from Whitechapel who made a fabulous fortune by hard work and perhaps a little sharp dealing in the minefields of South Africa. This invited the following rebuttal in a letter to the editor:
<div class=“bbcode_indent” >
There seems to be authority for styling certain members of the royal household gentlemen ; also subaltern officers of either service (but what of the civil service?); also solicitors and attorneys, and possibly some others. Does the distinction descend to their, children? My solicitor adds that it is usual so to describe any person who lives comfortably upon his private means; a retired publican for example. What becomes of the retired gentleman he cannot tell me, and I have never met with one, except in the columns of a newspaper.

 

Outside these somewhat narrow limits, what is our criterion to be? Is it birth? The bluest blood flows in the veins of peasants and labourers. Is it wealth ? Then Sir Gorgius Midas and the late Mr. Barnato are our models. Is it landed property? Then the duke’s younger son, with his portion in consols, must give place to the distributor of unconsidered trifles with a pound of tea. Is it dress, manners, education? The retail shopkeeper may shine in all of these; yet modern snobbishness will affect to exclude him. What of the detrimental lordling, who goes to the bad, and swindles his friends and relations? What of the country squire with the speech, appearance, and manners of a chawbacon, the shady captain living by his wits, the solicitor who has been struck off the rolls ? What again of the factory lad who becomes an intrepid explorer and missionary, the carpenter’s son who rises to high honours in the church, the butcher’s boy who closes his career a wealthy captain of industry and a genial and widely respected justice of the peace? What of the ploughman who leaves behind him a deathless name in the literature of his country, or the miner who, from the management of his comrades’ savings, is promoted to play a weighty part in the great council of the nation?
</div>
This in 1902, in England. And we are to think 110 years later in the United States that to think of oneself as a gentleman, or to be called one by others, "necessarily" implies a social status superior to that of other people?


Quote:

And how do we reconcile the historical reality that this upper stratum is mainly responsible for bequeathing to us our native tradition in heraldry with the idea that heraldry has no status connotations?


I didn’t say heraldry has no status connotations. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. What I said was that it does not necessarily have such connotations, and that it is not correct to say that anyone who uses arms is necessarily asserting a social status superior to other people.

 

In any case, it’s not at all clear to me that one can generalize about the social standing of those who used personal heraldry in early British North America, although the early members of the NEHGS Committee on Heraldry strove mightily strove mightily to do so. But more to the point, it’s not 1630 any more. Once William Barton articulated a basis for bearing personal arms almost 200 years ago, and especially after the NEHGS COH stumbled on the same logic a hundred years later, there’s no earthly basis for someone who assumes a coat of arms in this country to think that it somehow makes him or marks him as better than anyone else.

 

It certainly won’t get his daughter into the Comus or St. Cecilia ball.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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27 January 2012 04:30
 

Joseph McMillan;92039 wrote:

This is not the place to debate the merits of nature vs. nurture, but to the extent we’re making assertions about what most Americans believe, survey data has shown that Americans consistently rank environment as a more important factor than genetics in how someone’s life turns out, with both of them far, far behind the exertion of personal effort.


I think I have affirmed that Americans generally believe that effort can trump environment and genetics, but how widespread they believe the capacity for this kind of effort is might be another story. It doesn’t rule out their also thinking in terms of probabilities. In any case, I’m skeptical of any research on beliefs that relies on self-reporting detached from a multiplex analysis of behavior, etc.


Quote:

In any case, it has little if anything to do with heraldry, other than that there must be at least a few garbage collectors with valid rights to the use of old inherited arms.


No, what Americans think about heredity and what they think about heraldry are related, because heraldry is a hereditary system.


Quote:

The subject at hand in this turn of the conversation is not whom the traditional upper class views as worthy of admission to its ranks, or even whom it views as gentlemen, nor is it whom you or I think qualifies for this lofty distinction. The question is what Americans generally understand by the word "gentleman," other than as a more elaborate term for "man."


Neither of us is contending that "gentleman" is a terribly lofty distinction in contemporary America, but the traditional American upper class has contributed strongly to the yardstick by which it is measured, whether we’re talking about simply being gracious or being genteel. In fact, absent an upper class, how does the word even enter anyone’s vocabulary?


Quote:

We’re not talking about values. We’re talking about what the term "gentleman" means.


It’s plain that we’re talking about both, because the two are indissoluble.


Quote:

You interpret [bearing arms] as "necessarily" an assertion of social superiority to others.


Yes, I do, though the assertion may in many cases be unintentional or clumsy. Putting a coat of arms on your stationery says something very different from putting Mickey Mouse on your stationery.


Quote:

Unless we accept a long outmoded understanding of what it means to behave like a gentleman—the meaning that was implicit in oft-misquoted 17th century line about bearing the port and countenance of a gentleman—it is open to virtually anyone to behave like a gentleman.


Well, here we get back to the complexities of what people really believe about the accessibility of gentlemanly qualities, but in principle, yes, in America, it is open to virtually anyone to behave like a gentleman, but far from everyone does. Ours is not an age notable for civility.


Quote:

It is also perfectly reasonable in modern American society for anyone to expect to be treated as a gentleman or lady—that is, with respect. Indeed, treating other people respectfully is probably one of the essential elements in what the term "gentleman" means in 21st century America.


Modern American society is remarkably narcissistic, and even what would not so long ago have been considered merely ordinary decency is in shorter than optimal supply. Nonetheless, it is increasingly common for our countrymen to believe that they are entitled to not only ordinary decency, but deference and admiration as well, regardless of their actual conduct and accomplishments. Even if one accepts the idea that treating other people respectfully is one of the essential elements of being a gentleman, it is still but one of the elements, and that element is far from universally distributed among the present population. Therefore, to conceive of oneself as a gentleman is not status-neutral.


Quote:

It was not always so. At one time—in the 17th century, certainly—to be considered a gentleman an Englishman not only had to possess landed wealth (and to spend it liberally). He could not suffer a blow or an insult, or decline a challenge from another gentleman who claimed to be affronted by something he had said or done. He could not engage in retail trade or work with his hands; some theorists ruled out any kind of involvement in manufacturing, while others made exceptions for soap-making and iron founding, provided one owned the land on which the iron was mined.

Indeed, as late as 1920, the Henley Royal Regatta barred John B. Kelly of Philadelphia (Grace Kelly’s father) from competition on the grounds that having worked as a bricklayer somehow tainted his amateur status as a rower. What it actually did, of course, was to taint his status as a gentleman in the eyes of the Henley committee.

 

Twenty or so years earlier we find Sir George Sitwell, Bt, in the pages of The Ancestor magazine ridiculing the grant of arms to the Jewish diamond magnate Barney Barnato, a poor boy from Whitechapel who made a fabulous fortune by hard work and perhaps a little sharp dealing in the minefields of South Africa. This invited the following rebuttal in a letter to the editor:
<div class=“bbcode_indent” >
There seems to be authority for styling certain members of the royal household gentlemen ; also subaltern officers of either service (but what of the civil service?); also solicitors and attorneys, and possibly some others. Does the distinction descend to their, children? My solicitor adds that it is usual so to describe any person who lives comfortably upon his private means; a retired publican for example. What becomes of the retired gentleman he cannot tell me, and I have never met with one, except in the columns of a newspaper.

 

Outside these somewhat narrow limits, what is our criterion to be? Is it birth? The bluest blood flows in the veins of peasants and labourers. Is it wealth ? Then Sir Gorgius Midas and the late Mr. Barnato are our models. Is it landed property? Then the duke’s younger son, with his portion in consols, must give place to the distributor of unconsidered trifles with a pound of tea. Is it dress, manners, education? The retail shopkeeper may shine in all of these; yet modern snobbishness will affect to exclude him. What of the detrimental lordling, who goes to the bad, and swindles his friends and relations? What of the country squire with the speech, appearance, and manners of a chawbacon, the shady captain living by his wits, the solicitor who has been struck off the rolls ? What again of the factory lad who becomes an intrepid explorer and missionary, the carpenter’s son who rises to high honours in the church, the butcher’s boy who closes his career a wealthy captain of industry and a genial and widely respected justice of the peace? What of the ploughman who leaves behind him a deathless name in the literature of his country, or the miner who, from the management of his comrades’ savings, is promoted to play a weighty part in the great council of the nation?
</div>
This in 1902, in England. And we are to think 110 years later in the United States that to think of oneself as a gentleman, or to be called one by others, "necessarily" implies a social status superior to that of other people?


Yes, simply because we all understand that not everyone is a gentleman and that not being a gentleman is a state inferior to that of being a gentleman.


Quote:

I didn’t say heraldry has no status connotations. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. What I said was that it does not necessarily have such connotations, and that it is not correct to say that anyone who uses arms is necessarily asserting a social status superior to other people.


A particular beholder may be oblivious of heraldry’s status connotations, and a particular user may be as well, but neither obviates the connotations themselves, because they have an objective reality. Moreover, assertions can be indirect or unintentional.


Quote:

In any case, it’s not at all clear to me that one can generalize about the social standing of those who used personal heraldry in early British North America, although the early members of the NEHGS Committee on Heraldry strove mightily strove mightily to do so. But more to the point, it’s not 1630 any more. Once William Barton articulated a basis for bearing personal arms almost 200 years ago, and especially after the NEHGS COH stumbled on the same logic a hundred years later, there’s no earthly basis for someone who assumes a coat of arms in this country to think that it somehow makes him or marks him as better than anyone else.


No earthly basis? Of course there is. The extent to which anyone is marked as thinking himself better than anyone else by bearing a coat of arms is not invariably huge, but it is there in some palpable measure.

 

Now, perhaps there’s a question of the vehicle used to bear the arms vs. the arms per se. A coat of arms tattooed on a bicep sends a different message than a coat of arms engraved on a signet ring (though the tattoo bearer may not realize that), but I’m thinking in terms of traditional vehicles—rings, stationery, porcelain, silver, etc.


Quote:

It certainly won’t get his daughter into the Comus or St. Cecilia ball.


True, but there are more than a few degrees of distinction below that, and seeming to the gatekeepers like an authentic armiger might well play a part in one’s gaining them.

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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27 January 2012 14:27
 

Joe, you wrote the following on 8/27/11, in our thread on Contacting the U.S. Heraldic Registry (http://www.americanheraldry.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6174&highlight=depot&page=2):


Quote:

Those who can’t afford to pay a few hundred dollars to register their arms might reflect on whether it’s premature to be assuming arms in the first place. I would never tell you you can’t or shouldn’t, but even in our fairly egalitarian society the display of arms suggests that one has arrived at a certain level of standing in the world.


It would appear that you were affirming the same fundamental proposition I’m making now. Have your beliefs changed, or are you writing out of "the transitory imperative of scoring debating points back and forth" (a truly lapidary expression for which I salute you)?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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27 January 2012 15:52
 

When I wrote:


Quote:

Those who can’t afford to pay a few hundred dollars to register their arms might reflect on whether it’s premature to be assuming arms in the first place. I would never tell you you can’t or shouldn’t, but even in our fairly egalitarian society the display of arms suggests that one has arrived at a certain level of standing in the world.


I was expressing a view of how things ought to be—and probably should have added that phrase, "ought to" in my formulation:  "the display of arms ought to suggest…"

 

In the recent exchanges between Fred and me, I was responding to the assertion that the display of arms necessarily asserts one’s possession of a social status superior to others.  This is not a question of how I think people ought to behave, but rather of how their actual behavior must be interpreted.  To use Fred’s example, I do not think that assuming a coat of arms and having it tattooed on your bicep (or calf, or back, for that matter) can reasonably be interpreted as an assertion of social superiority by the tattoee.

 

A further reflection on this:  I haven’t thought this through with any rigor, but my use of the word "premature" in the passage above prompts the idea that it may be appropriate for one person and not another to assume a coat of arms without implying a social status distinction.  For example, a 45-year-old, university-educated former naval officer from an old Virginia family who is now a partner in a Richmond law firm, member of all the right clubs, etc, is of the same social class has his own 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.  But there are all kinds of things that it is appropriate for him to do but not for them to do.  I’d suggest that assuming a coat of arms is one of them.

 

The same would seem to be true more broadly.  One person of a given social status may have accomplished things through a combination of age, talent, application, and luck, that another person of the same social status has not, or not yet.  It is possible to imagine that the assumption of arms would be appropriate for the two people at different times, yet this need not imply a fundamental social class distinction

 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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27 January 2012 16:25
 

After following this debate (in this thread as well as others over the past couple of years), I am more confirmed in my own position that personal/family arms in our very competatively (ala free enterprise) cultured American states are simply "team colors" and that if one family’s arms are identified with a gentle class distinction, another’s may be just as readily identified with the lowest villainy without regard to some universal armorial class. I think the purpose of displaying arms is to hang your gentility (or villainy) on something others can look at in the same way the idea of a fast and convenient lunch is attempted to be psychologically hung from a pair of golden arches. The display puts you (and those armorially allied) on the radar and establishes which team you fight for (or for the less mace-bashingly inclined, which family/hereditary enterprise you work for). Even now, if you see someone wearing L.A. Raiders paraphanelia and another wearing Seattle Seahawks paraphenelia (at first glance and without observing other details), you will most likely have immediate unconcious assumptions about those people that are based on your experience with being a fan (or not) of football, but also with having seen the behavior of hooligans who don the regalia of one team and not the other. The activity of all who don the same armory impacts the preconceived judgements of all who encounter unknown individuals from that armorial group.  As in the macrocosm of sports and business livery, so also in the microcosm of familial armory?

Hatfields vs. McCoys would have been so much more colorful with armory. :D

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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27 January 2012 16:41
 

Joseph McMillan;92051 wrote:

In the recent exchanges between Fred and me, I was responding to the assertion that the display of arms necessarily asserts one’s possession of a social status superior to others.  This is not a question of how I think people ought to behave, but rather of how their actual behavior must be interpreted.  To use Fred’s example, I do not think that assuming a coat of arms and having it tattooed on your bicep (or calf, or back, for that matter) can reasonably be interpreted as an assertion of social superiority by the tattoee.


The tattoo could be configured in ways that make the armorial element ironic (e.g., an image of a coat of arms being urinated on its supporters, one a Rastafarian and the other a Hell’s Angel), but I think it’s clear that I’m referring to configurations that simply replace vellum with living flesh. It’s entirely reasonable to interpret such tattoos as assertions of social superiority, however oafish, naive, and unconvincing they may seem. Assertions depend on objective realities—the received meanings of the signs employed in making them. The intentions behind the assertions are secondary because the signs speak for themselves. At any rate, I’m not a historian of tattoo art, but it seems pretty clear that tattooing is itself a language of power, so one can understand why a coat of arms might seem to belong to the same semantic field, as it were, as any number of (maybe all) tattoos. Come to think of it, if I were a heraldic artist, I wouldn’t hesitate to look at tattoos for inspiration.


Quote:

A further reflection on this:  I haven’t thought this through with any rigor, but my use of the word "premature" in the passage above prompts the idea that it may be appropriate for one person and not another to assume a coat of arms without implying a social status distinction.  For example, a 45-year-old, university-educated former naval officer from an old Virginia family who is now a partner in a Richmond law firm, member of all the right clubs, etc, is of the same social class has his own 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son.  But there are all kinds of things that it is appropriate for him to do but not for them to do.  I’d suggest that assuming a coat of arms is one of them.


I would agree, the issue being that a coat of arms, ostensibly, is like a tattoo—something you’re committed to for life. It’s inappropriate to let minors make such commitments (excepting, I guess, sacraments like confirmation, bar mitzvah, etc.). It’s a consent issue, in other words.


Quote:

The same would seem to be true more broadly.  One person of a given social status may have accomplished things through a combination of age, talent, application, and luck, that another person of the same social status has not, or not yet.  It is possible to imagine that the assumption of arms would be appropriate for the two people at different times, yet this need not imply a fundamental social class distinction


Agreed, but doesn’t the propriety of either assuming arms depend on what the act necessarily implies?

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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27 January 2012 16:59
 

Jeffrey Boyd Garrison;92053 wrote:

After following this debate (in this thread as well as others over the past couple of years), I am more confirmed in my own position that personal/family arms in our very competatively (ala free enterprise) cultured American states are simply "team colors" and that if one family’s arms are identified with a gentle class distinction, another’s may be just as readily identified with the lowest villainy without regard to some universal armorial class. I think the purpose of displaying arms is to hang your gentility (or villainy) on something others can look at in the same way the idea of a fast and convenient lunch is attempted to be psychologically hung from a pair of golden arches. The display puts you (and those armorially allied) on the radar and establishes which team you fight for (or for the less mace-bashingly inclined, which family/hereditary enterprise you work for). Even now, if you see someone wearing L.A. Raiders paraphanelia and another wearing Seattle Seahawks paraphenelia (at first glance and without observing other details), you will most likely have immediate unconcious assumptions about those people that are based on your experience with being a fan (or not) of football, but also with having seen the behavior of hooligans who don the regalia of one team and not the other. The activity of all who don the same armory impacts the preconceived judgements of all who encounter unknown individuals from that armorial group.  As in the macrocosm of sports and business livery, so also in the microcosm of familial armory?

Hatfields vs. McCoys would have been so much more colorful with armory. :D


I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, but if what you’re saying is that the implications/effects of wearing a Raiders jacket and wearing a signet ring are similar across the whole spectrum of social situations, then one of us is living in an alternate reality. Everyone understands that the microcosm of familial armory occupies (or pretends to occupy) a higher rung on the social ladder than the macrocosm of professional sports livery.

 
David Fofanoff
 
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David Fofanoff
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27 January 2012 18:59
 

I think you can boil it all down for the American use of arms as a visiaul badge of honor (or dishonor) depending on your perspective of the individuals involved. Basically, to use the Free-Market view of it all - it’s about marketing yourself to potential suitors / clients / comrades, etc. :rolleyes:

 
Wilfred Leblanc
 
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Wilfred Leblanc
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27 January 2012 19:12
 

A person who bears arms and is dishonorable will bring his arms into disrepute if the arms have any visibility, but the intention of bearing them in the first place is to stake a claim to a place of honor that is distinct from places less elevated.

 
Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
 
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Jeffrey Boyd Garrison
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27 January 2012 22:19
 

Fred White;92059 wrote:

A person who bears arms and is dishonorable will bring his arms into disrepute if the arms have any visibility, but the intention of bearing them in the first place is to stake a claim to a place of honor that is distinct from places less elevated.


That is perhaps YOUR intention in bearing arms Fred (and nothing wrong with that), though I believe not every armiger’s intention.

 

Personally, I don’t seek to use arms to establish claim to additional honor (or lack thereof). I do however, use arms to be easily identifiable symbolically on the field (either the social field of the internet or anywhere else I choose to display it). This is in the same way people use other symbols of identification; it is not restricted to european heraldry. If others choose to heap accolades or scorn on my arms, then my armory is there for them to do so easily. That is my purpose, to appear on the radar for allies and friends to rally to and for others to react as they will. Most people of higher "station" than myself I know find the idea of heraldry to be pointless and/or laughable. It serves me not even slightly to advertise to them my own arms and to do so would definitely not be some assertion or demand for honor from them; I find it baffling that you could possibly think so. :neutral: