by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: March 12, 2010

Ah, the great "I'm a hereditary, get me outta here" debate.  What's it all about then, Alfie?

Theoretically, heredity should be a good thing.  In the normal course of events, a child learns from his family, right from the off.  She picks up bits and pieces of information, and instructions on how to build a world from that information.  This is all perfectly natural and, indeed, preserves the culture and customs of that lineage.  Of course, to what extent you place importance on culture and customs depends in part on that which you place on ancestry; but if you take as a given that ancestry is important, notwithstanding the importance of building knowledge upon knowledge, then you will see its efficacy.

Obviously, the path of knowledge is best trodden linearly - it is possible to tread it vicariously, of course, but pictures from along the way don't necessarily give all the information a personal journey might afford.  And non-hereditary learning does tend to have the effect of pictures along the way, because the gaps between those pictures have to be traversed somehow and, while it is possible to be accurate in one's surmises, more likely is it that the web with which at least some of those gaps are plugged will be deceptive.  Heredity, in terms of growing up amongst a ruling family, should be able to fill those gaps accurately, always allowing for the child's intellectual capacity.

Ergo, heredity should be allowed.  However...

The saying "power corrupts" and its derivatives stems from the psychological principle by which is explained the tendency of those without moral parameters formed by the need for societal considerations to act purely in their own interest.  This is seen in places like Africa where, without the checks and balances of accountability being strong in evidence, anyone can get anything done so long as he has enough money to bribe the relevant official.  Where heredity comes into this is in the absense of electoral accountability; therefore, in the principle of a divine right to rule, there are the seeds of the very corruption which, in Africa, breeds basket-case economies and failed states.  Then again, many of these African economies aren't dynasties - some are democracies and some, like Zimbabwe, are dictatorships in all but name.

That said, many of the heredities of the past - the Habsburgs of Switzerland and the Anglo-Gallic Plantaganets, to name but two - have been plagued with problems, from the infamous Habsburg inbreeding and the resulting mental imbalances and physical anomalies, to the mental instability and wan effetism of Henry VI, whose disposition increased the power of the magnates and thus enflamed the Wars of the Roses.  In the latter case, it should be pointed out, that although Britain was a feudal monarchy, the views of the people did hold sway, even if the penalty for dissention was often death, unless pardoned by the monarch.  Thus, in reality, was there some measure of accountability even if it can't be said to be electoral as we would know it today.

By and large, therefore, there is a case for hereditary succession, even if it does not automatically chime with the modern appetite for purely meritocratic power.

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