On society: simply a matter of personal values -- and subjective to its core -- especially in the case of defining "best." The only other "branch of thought" that shoots out is that the current U.S. society is the most enmeshed within the lives of its people. Again, whether or not this is a "good" thing, something to be lauded or decried, is individual.
In the past, you were not a "part" of society; you simply co-existed. Your main "society" was local, and its influence and demands did not have the same reach for the commoner until mass-communication took off, and became readily (and cheaply) available.
To some this is regressive towards individualism. To others this is a glorious advent towards improving material circumstances.
On the last, while material circumstances have improved, those of the spiritual (non-religious) nature have dwindled. There is ever less room to be human, "boxed-out" by the burgeoning, frenetic, and all-encompassing need to be a useful part in the whole.
Materially, the person working 2 jobs is better off than a literal serf; but in the incorporeal, both are still slaves in soul -- needing to labor for another in order to survive (while the other can simply live idle, and survive by virtue of his slaves).
Another branch could be that the serf didn't know he was a serf. He was not educated, nor cognizant of much but the (few) people around him. His spirit was simple, and wanted of little but base primal needs. Were he to learn he was as serf, I'm sure his spirit would become broken, knowing full well how terrible his circumstances are (in relation to his betters) -- and its crushing inescapability. But without such, he simply lives his life, as that's all he's known. There is no ephemeral "greener pasture" to keep on striving for until he drops dead (spiritually, and physically). He knows not of anguish. Discomfort and physical abuse? Yes. But of spiritual anguish he knows not.
This can go on and on in many different directions, but suffice to say I see it as moot.
On noblesse oblige: main proponent of change? I believe never. Its simply theatre; a social nicety. All it does is "smooth" any "ruffled feathers," and helps hide the disparity in material circumstance; as well as soothe negative emotions -- stopping them from cascading into general class-antagonism, and slave uprisings.
The increased visibility of the vast swathes of nouveau elite means their actions are under constant scrutiny by their lessers. Instead of reveling in degeneracy and exuberant opulence "behind closed doors" as the old elites did, they now broadcast it to the billions of proles, inadvertently reminding them that there is a "greener pasture." And as our hypothetical serf, all-aware that it is an utterly unreachable height (that is, if one hasn't been completely deluded by one's society or oneself into believing it is possible).
The simplest rule of governing over the masses is to make them believe their lives are good and well -- that they have everything they could ever want; that there is no "greener pasture." That the encroachment onto the soul of the common man by society is for the benefit of the common man, and not simply a way for the uppermost crust to simply subsist on their labor. Perhaps even that there is no encroachment onto the soul at all, it simply is "all they've known," and "how life is."
In this respect, a lack of noblesse oblige is just one example of the failings of our betters in managing societal progression, in-spite of the boorish and ever-deepening entanglement of "society" within the life and spirit of the commoner.
I had never read anything of his, but just now read through an article[0] and it seems like our observations match up (if only due to the shared ethnicity of our souls).
Do you know which of his works pertains most closely to his thoughts on "what should be done?"; where he writes more on non-religious faith, and "taking the meaning given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life?"
Most people in the US probably only know he wrote "War and Peace". I started reading it online, but got bored and quit before long.
However, reading about Tolstoy as a person, and some of the shorter stuff he wrote is way more interesting, at least to me.
Andrea Dworkin wrote about Tolstoy's story "The Kreutzer Sonata" in the book "Intercourse" and compared it to his real life relationship with his wife. Which seems to have been horrific...according to her, who posterity has not esteemed like her husband.
Dworkin focused on misogyny, but other people have found aspects of Tolstoy's thinking or behavior repellent for other reasons. Here is something G.K. Chesterton wrote (since on HN only his fence ever seems to be mentioned)
"It is difficult in every case to reconcile Tolstoy the great artist with Tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, with the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land. It is difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the oppressor flat with his fist. All, however, arises from the search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so express it, more natural than it is natural to be. It would not only be more human, it would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. The truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth."
In the past, you were not a "part" of society; you simply co-existed. Your main "society" was local, and its influence and demands did not have the same reach for the commoner until mass-communication took off, and became readily (and cheaply) available.
To some this is regressive towards individualism. To others this is a glorious advent towards improving material circumstances.
On the last, while material circumstances have improved, those of the spiritual (non-religious) nature have dwindled. There is ever less room to be human, "boxed-out" by the burgeoning, frenetic, and all-encompassing need to be a useful part in the whole.
Materially, the person working 2 jobs is better off than a literal serf; but in the incorporeal, both are still slaves in soul -- needing to labor for another in order to survive (while the other can simply live idle, and survive by virtue of his slaves).
Another branch could be that the serf didn't know he was a serf. He was not educated, nor cognizant of much but the (few) people around him. His spirit was simple, and wanted of little but base primal needs. Were he to learn he was as serf, I'm sure his spirit would become broken, knowing full well how terrible his circumstances are (in relation to his betters) -- and its crushing inescapability. But without such, he simply lives his life, as that's all he's known. There is no ephemeral "greener pasture" to keep on striving for until he drops dead (spiritually, and physically). He knows not of anguish. Discomfort and physical abuse? Yes. But of spiritual anguish he knows not.
This can go on and on in many different directions, but suffice to say I see it as moot.
On noblesse oblige: main proponent of change? I believe never. Its simply theatre; a social nicety. All it does is "smooth" any "ruffled feathers," and helps hide the disparity in material circumstance; as well as soothe negative emotions -- stopping them from cascading into general class-antagonism, and slave uprisings.
The increased visibility of the vast swathes of nouveau elite means their actions are under constant scrutiny by their lessers. Instead of reveling in degeneracy and exuberant opulence "behind closed doors" as the old elites did, they now broadcast it to the billions of proles, inadvertently reminding them that there is a "greener pasture." And as our hypothetical serf, all-aware that it is an utterly unreachable height (that is, if one hasn't been completely deluded by one's society or oneself into believing it is possible).
The simplest rule of governing over the masses is to make them believe their lives are good and well -- that they have everything they could ever want; that there is no "greener pasture." That the encroachment onto the soul of the common man by society is for the benefit of the common man, and not simply a way for the uppermost crust to simply subsist on their labor. Perhaps even that there is no encroachment onto the soul at all, it simply is "all they've known," and "how life is."
In this respect, a lack of noblesse oblige is just one example of the failings of our betters in managing societal progression, in-spite of the boorish and ever-deepening entanglement of "society" within the life and spirit of the commoner.