Pomp and Circumstance

Several months ago I was accosted by an academic for having neglected to pay homage to the formal title "professor"; the miserly clerk in question found themselves unable to countenance the libertine scene of myself, the young upstart, in parlance with a vetted elder under pretense of equality. With an air of gentle condescension, I was reminded that the uninitiated are not rightfully permitted to speak in the idiom of the canaille when engaging with their betters. This would be understood unduly rude.

Now, considering this common rogue's familiarity with the works of a particular academician nil, how must it reflect upon such a one's sense of due that naught but parchment-title should be understood to twain them from scholar?

This is not the sense of obligation sprouting from a moral respect for the original virtue of two free minds striving toward a meaningful fulfillment. Rather, it is the expression of an aristocracy profoundly contrary to nature. For the foundation of such an aristocracy, one must ignore intellectual rigor insofar as it conflicts with the true root of learned distinction, namely formal certification and title.

This is the sole intellectual principle of the bureaucratic despotism, the full wrath of which has I think been curbed historically only by the good sense of many intellectuals, who, recognizing the limitations the principle's fulfillment imposes upon the creative intellectual process, have striven to ignore or relegate it into the oblivion of legal formality. Nevertheless it yet survives, perhaps in part because a great many of the obedient serfs reared under its aegis recognize its abolition as a threat to their acquired status as clerical functionaries. An elaboration of the latter point is warranted.