Millennials are unprepared to wield power
On reading THE DECAMERON, and the virtues of magnanimous conduct
Last week our book club discussed an incredible book. Normally we read contemporary novels and nonfiction, but one of our members proposed Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, a novel (of sorts) written in the 2nd century AD, by a North African Roman. Initially I started to read this edition, but I found the translation to be whack and totally unreadable: the characters were told in such a mixture of dialects and registers of diction that the juxtapositions were too unnatural and too startling—it didn’t create any effect besides cacophony.
Thinking this was going to be a slog, I found an audiobook, which was drawn from a different translation, and this one was so enchanting, so full of humor and life! I haven’t been this transported by a prose fiction in quite a while.
The format of the novel is relatively familiar if you know early novels. The Golden Ass is essentially an anthology. It’s about this guy who travels to Greece and is insatiably curious about magic and the wants to see it for himself—he tries to get his lover to turn him into a bird, but ends up transformed into a donkey. He is then stolen by bandits, rescued by a kind maiden, then, to his misfortune, sold off to a number of owners, including a troop of third-gendered priest(esse)s of Cybele, a poor laborer, a legionary, and a bunch of others. Along the way, he overhears lots of stories and relates them all to the reader.
I found it so entertaining that after we finished I decided to listen to The Decameron, a 14th-century anthology by Florentine writer Boccaccio. The tales in Boccaccio are less interesting overall. Many of them are essentially jokes—some poor man goes to a rich miser and tells him a story that embarrasses him, and the miser decides not to be so miserly anymore.1
What you realize, reading early prose literature, is that this is as close as we’ll ever get to a literature ‘of the people’. Prose tales are usually descended from fairy stories, animal fables, or anecdotes. They’re stories people used to tell each other. They weren’t written down. They’re not even told by bards or skalds. They’re like the stories parents tell their kids, or that friends swap over bards. And especially in anthologies, the writers are often writing down stories that are quite old—some of the stories in The Decameron were first attested in ancient Greek literature, 1500 years before. Others are originally from equally-ancient Sanskrit collections of prose, and reached Italy through God-knows-what route.
Often in early novels there’s a wise ruler or noble who closes the story by rescuing the protagonist. For instance, in the Middle Egyptian Tale of the Eloquent Peasant—this peasant is really mad at his rich neighbor for stealing his donkey, and he goes to the high steward to complain, and after ten days of pleading, the steward sides with the peasant and makes him rich.
In one of the stories in The Decameron, a poor sponger goes to a rich miser’s house and tells him an allegorical story about how bad it is to be a miser, and the miser is like, “You got me! I’m gonna reward you.” Although these stories are replete with bad landlords, bad kings, bad nobles, bad officials, who punish any sign of disobedience, there are also good ones in there who don’t insist too much on their rights and are willing to be good. For instance, in another Decameron story, a prince falls in love with a virtuous foundling. He is wasting away, lovesick, and his mother schemes to make the foundling her son’s lover, but when the foundling refuses an unlawful union, the mother is like…okay, you got me, and offers her son to the girl in marriage.
It struck me how little I’ve come to expect this kind of magnanimity in modern life. In modern life, we quite literally have the spectacle of the highest court in the land ruling that it doesn’t matter if a death row inmate is innocent or not—all that matters is if they’ve used all their appeals. Similarly, a much-reported phenomenon is that the number of presidential pardons has gone down significantly over time, not just on a per-capita basis, but even on an absolute one: if you look at the early 20th century, Presidents would pardon like a thousand people, whereas modern Presidents have pardoned many fewer: of recent office-holders, only Barack Obama pardoned more than a thousand people, while Trump and the Bush’s had almost record-low numbers. There is a significant downside to pardoning people—it’s never good politics to help a convicted criminal—but the pardon represents the humanity of the executive, the sense that we owe something to people beyond cold justice. I read a lot of advice columns, too, and the advice rarely tends to magnaniminity. Instead it’s “set a boundary and stick to it.” I remember reading, for instance, about an Indian-American woman whose white mother-in-law can’t stop bringing up her race (in an earnest desire to connect). The comments were all like, “This is a red flag!” But really…she’s just an old woman, dealing with something very strange to her. My mother-in-law would constantly talk to me about the one trip her parents took to India in 1936—she was just trying to build common ground with me. I had become a part of her life, and I was now closer to her daughter than she was—it was my time to be magnanimous with her, and I knew it, but that’s not the message our society pushes these days.
Not that magnanimous conduct was ever that common, I think—a very common theme in early prose literature is the corruption of all institutions. The very first story in The Decameron is about a reprobate sinner who lies through his teeth to a priest, so the priest will be willing to shrive and bury him—the priest is so convinced that the sinner is later canonized. But the ideal was for magnanimity. If the superior was hoodwinked or fooled by their inferior, the superior was supposed to have a sense of humor about it.
One of my favorite stories in The Golden Ass for instance, features a husband who comes home, and he tells his wife about the disgraceful scene next door, where the neighbor discovered his wife cheating on him, and he murdered her and her lover. The husband then discovers his own wife is cheating on him—her lover is hiding right in the room! And he’s like, “I’m not going to be an idiot like the guy next door. I won’t seek your death as is my right under the law”. Instead he just goes to bed with the wife’s lover—a handsome youth—and divorces the wife.
Magnanimity is about proportion and humor. It’s about not overreacting, and it’s about recognizing your duty to care for your social inferiors and not abuse your power. It feels like a fundamentally very pre-modern emotion, since it’s tied up in hierarchy. The magnanimous steward isn’t against there being rich people and poor people—he just thinks the rich shouldn’t abuse their standing. The magnanimous husband doesn’t want to forgive his wife—he just eschews overpowering rage.
I would say that magnanimity is incompatible with a belief in equality, except we see magnanimous behavior in Jesus all the time. Like when the unclean woman touches him, he says she’s redeemed by her faith—he doesn’t say she’s not unclean. When they’re stoning the woman to death, he doesn’t say the woman isn’t sinful, he just says she shouldn’t be killed. When the other woman anoints him with the oil, and his followers leap on her and are like why are you wasting this money, he’s like chill out, the poor will always be with you, but I’m going to be gone soon.
But, generally speaking, it feels like magnanimity is inseparable from hierarchy. That’s why it’s so strongly associated with the top of society, with kings and rulers. The middle tiers of society fear showing weakness. They cannot afford to be magnanimous, because someone might take advantage of them. But the ruler or steward or husband can show magnanimity, because everyone knows they are the ultimate authority (perhaps this is also true of Jesus).
Nowadays much conservative thinking, in particular, is explicitly anti-egalitarian. I think being against political and social equality is absolutely absurd—just complete claptrap. I’m also reading Aristotle, and he equates aristocracy with rule by the most talented, but he also says that a slave could easily have as much merit as a king—it’s only chance that’s put one person in one position and not in the other. So how can the aristocracy have the most merit? I think that to combine anti-egalitarianism with a belief in meritocracy is the most dangerous possible position, because it frees the rulers from any responsibility to those below them (you see this in Aristotle, for instance, where he compares a slave to a machine, good only for increasing the owner’s power and making them more productive).
I’m not totally sure there’s a place in modern society for magnanimity. It feels like a view that’s very tied up in a pre-capitalist mindset. For instance, I was reading Ippolito Nievo’s Confessions of an Italian, which is in part about a family of decaying nobility—and they keep around all their household retainers for life, well past any point of economic productivity. That’s for two reasons, in a pre-capitalist society, the only thing you can really buy is living labor. Even possessions—houses, food, tailored and made objects—are the result of the labor of people who live on your estate, in your community. There is no quality of fossilized labor—you can only own what you can create right now. Even if you tried to convert your excess into money, there is a limit, because the economy is only partially monetized: there’s just not a strong enough demand for goods and services. Thus, if you’re rich enough, the tendency is towards a kind of autarky—to create your own mini-nation on your estate. This means all the social relations inherent in property are front-and-center. To eat, to dress well, to live in a clean house, all of that involves managing a complex network of social relations that are, in the modern world, managed for you by the institution of money.
Many commentators have commented on the fact that in the modern world, ethics and politics have collapsed into one thing. Your ethical life is trapped within a web of relations that you didn’t create: you cannot behave ethically at work, you can only behave the way your boss demands. You cannot behave ethically as a consumer, because your relationships with producers are so structured by money (so long as you pay people enough money, you’re more or less ethical). There is still an ethics within the family, but the stakes are lower, because of divorce and the safety net. Thus, a person’s politics become their ethics. What you believe politically ends up standing in for all the ways other people might once have had an impact on the world.
I think perhaps the main role for magnaniminity is when people are employers or managers, because, paradoxically, employing another person is one of the least-capitalist relationships in modern society. If you employ someone, their quality of life is directly affected by your whims. They can quit, but it’s difficult and often has major personal consequences. And, on the other hand, unless you are the owner of the firm, their output isn’t directly to your benefit. You aren’t really in an economic relationship with them at all—you’re in a very formal relationship, one that’s created by the organization in which you work.
The most magnanimous person I worked for was my first boss, who told me once, a few years into my job, that it was his policy to never get angry with anyone who worked for him. And I realized this was true: he never ever got angry, even when people were lazy or underperformed. He also didn’t screw people over, didn’t act like a tyrant. He did good work, and I don’t think it would be accurate to say he treated his employees with respect—he often thought they were idiots or not that great—but he respected the fact that he was in charge, and that he had power, and he didn’t power trip or try to make their lives miserable.
Magnanimous conduct basically means taking a broader, more long-term perspective. The magnanimous leader is able to move past his immediate passions and to think about what is best overall for his aims and his organization. It’s one reason why Abraham Lincoln still fascinates so many. He came from a humble origin, with little leadership experience, and had so much reason to be insecure, yet he put up with people who hated and undermined him, so long as he thought they were effective: he’s like another Quintus Fabius Maximus, willing to be reviled in the short term in order to ensure long-term success.
One thing I observed when my millennial peers started to rise in middle management, was that they were unprepared for power. We, like all recent generations, were raised to think of ourselves as rebels and underdogs. We were supposed to be outspoken and to question authority. We are all the sons of immigrants and the daughters of mill-workers. We took shit from our bosses and said, “When I am in charge, I’ll be different and better.”
Somehow, and I don’t know why, this kind of attitude can create a real darkness. I first observed it in millennials who became startup CEOs. One friend said he was looking for employees that lived within a half-mile of work, so they could be there every second. I said, “What about people with kids.” He said, “We aren’t hiring anyone with kids!” Another wanted employees who would give 110 percent, who would dedicate themselves without question to the company. I asked, “You are dedicated to the company because you own thirty percent of it. Why should your employee be dedicated?” They mumbled something about the ‘interesting problems’ the employee would get to work on.
You’ll see the same thing amongst millennial managers and owners whose employees are unionizing: “I support unions, but these guys are just being unreasonable…” You see it in the acquaintance who was a housing activist and rented out units on their own property that weren’t up to code! People somehow have the right moral and political beliefs, but they don’t know to understand their own role at the top of a particular hierarchy. They’ve been raised in oppositional systems, where you take as much as you can get, and now they don’t know how to sacrifice and to let go. They don’t understand that not every book you can write is worth writing, not every viral tweet is worth making, not every company is worth founding—that at some point, you need to stop amassing wealth and power, and start using that wealth and power well.
Egalitarianism is a political project. The world we live in is not equal, so we need to make it equal. But it leads to a very consequentialist morality: something is moral if it will ultimately make the world as a whole better. But what makes the world better is always for you, the good and moral person, to amass more power and influence. Magnanimity doesn’t operate that way: it’s about your responsibility not to the world, but the individuals around you. I suppose it’s possible to believe in equality and be magnanimous, but in the moment when you are magnanimous, you must accept inequality and accept that you are on top of a hierarchy. Moreover, magnanimous conduct requires a very finely calibrated sensor. You cannot merely give in to what people demand, because doing so would undermine the basis of your authority. You need to learn how to give in without weakening your position too much overall. It’s a difficult thing, and I think it’s just too complicated for a lot of people with egalitarian ideals to do.
At the root of the ancient’s support for aristocracy was that it was preferable to oligarchy. Oligarchy is rule by the wealthiest, whereas aristocracy is rule by the gentle-born. The aristocrats are raised to rule—they have a sense, from birth, of what is due from them to the people. Oligarchs, in contrast, were raised to make and keep money, and those are habits that preclude an overall sense of responsibility.
Nobody has ever figured out how to resolve these contradictions. I think, as the stories in the Decameron show, that magnanimity is a thin reed. It’s much better to live in a society with greater freedom—where you don’t need your husband or boss to be magnanimous. And yet, the truth is that we do, in 2023, have something of a ruling caste. It is a very large one, it’s true, but one can be fairly certain that the three thousand kids each year who graduate from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, Duke, and a few other colleges will, in two decades, have some sizeable amount of the wealth and power in the land—and given that we have such a caste, we should probably also re-learn some of these aristocratic virtues.
Personal Aside
Leni started preschool at the end of August, and she’s since become very curious about dads and daddies. Yesterday she told me that I was her sloth Felix’s daddy, and today she said that I was dolly’s daddy. At first I wanted to make sure she knew I was just pretending to be their dad, and that I wasn’t her dad. I am very sensitive to the idea that people might think I am the mom who is really the dad.
But it’s actually not very easy to explain being trans to a child without reinforcing a gender or biological essentialism. If I am not her dad, then what is a dad? Who is a dad? Does she even have a dad? Moreover, I started to feel a little sorry for her—she just wants to understand this very basic concept, mommies and daddies, and I wasn’t explaining it to her!
Like, I’ve tried being like, “Some people have two daddies, some people have two mommies, and some people have a mommy and a daddy.” And that’s totally fine, but it just felt like I could do better. It reminded me of the way parents used to not talk to their kids about sex. The problem with sex is that we know kids will probably experience the urge to have it, and we know that we don’t want them to have it, and we don’t really understand how to square those two things, so we just put off thinking about it.
It’s hard and embarrassing, yes, but it’s also unfair to expect them to understand something better than we understand it ourselves.
So I assayed an attempt the other day, and I was like, “Leni, are you curious about daddies?…do you wonder why you don’t have a daddy? Well…it’s because before you were born, I used to be a daddy, but I decided to switch and become a mummy. But…if you had a daddy, it would be me. And I am big and can do some daddy things, but I just don’t like to be called your daddy, because that’s not my name—just like you don’t like to be called names other than Leni!”
Yes, in the process of explaining, I broke my rule and for the first time described myself as, basically, the mommy who is a daddy. Annoying! But it seemed worth it in order to give more peace of mind to Leni. And it also made me think, you know, cis lesbian couples have to explain at some point to the kid that they’re only biologically related to one of them, and that there’s some man running around somewhere who gave them half their DNA. Not something I have to do! So there’s at least one upside, perhaps the only one, to being trans.
As an aside, I am very curious about the economics of Naxos Audio, which produced both of these audiobooks. I cannot imagine the sales of an audiobook of The Golden Ass or The Decameron are very high, and both of these books had very high production values, with classically trained actors—the Decameron had a cast of ten actors to voice all the parts! The Decameron is also forty hours long!!! How did they ever recoup these costs? And this is far from the least economical book in their catalogue: they’ve also recorded a 150-hour audiobook (in three parts) of The Diary of Samuel Pepyes. And if that’s not enough, they’ve got an equally-long three-parter of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I’m thinking of writing them and asking if they’ve got foundation support or something…
I’ve always loved the term ‘noblesse oblige’ and in the past two decades felt like we needed more of it.
The Decameron is one of my favorite works. I've always felt that Boccaccio was overshadowed by Dante and Petrarch- not exactly a hot take, I know, but I'm still happy to see him getting recognized.