The Politics of Pedigree
by Roger Lyons
The recent series of posts relating to the table of ancestor preferences suggests that different ancestors have different roles and relations with respect to the stallion population. Maybe it’s time for a more schematic rendering of that variety.
Franco Varola famously placed the variety of touchstone sires (chefs de race) on a typological spectrum, using the analogy of the left and right wings (the dominant liberal and conservative ideological commitments) of the English-style parliament. His dosage analysis focused on the functional relations of the different types. However, his typology didn’t address the question of compatibility between individual ancestors. Could Varola’s analogy lead to a way of characterizing individual ancestors on that basis? Let’s give it a whirl.
Two structural changes are required.
First, our shift of emphasis means that we’re no longer subject to parliamentary rules. Out here in the street there’s a broader ideological spectrum, including radicals and anarchists, and, as the autocrat of your thoroughbred breeding operation, you ignore them at your peril. As we’ll see, it’s important that we sequence the four major ideological commitments in this way: radical, liberal, conservative, anarchist.
Second, the linear structure used by Varola won’t do. We need a structure that reflects the way in which the four ideological commitments relate to one another. So, the solution is to place them on a clock, with the radical at twelve o’clock, the liberal at three o’clock, the conservative at six o’clock, and the anarchist at nine o’clock. The question of compatibility is addressed by placement of ancestors on the clock, relative to one another and respective of their “ideological” commitments.
The radical, at twelve o’clock, is the easiest type, thanks to Varola, who familiarized us with “the Phalaris revolution.” Clearly, the radical is an incipient figure in Varola’s analysis and a pivotal one. As change-makers go, Native Dancer would be a prime representative of the radical commitment, but not the extremist that Phalaris was. The advantage of our compatibility clock is that we can place Native Dancer at around one o’clock if that seems right–the radical commitment shading into the liberal. Appropriately, the radical is diametrically opposed to the conservative, at six o’clock.
Accordingly, the liberal is opposed to the anarchist. Why? One might associate Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer with the liberal commitment, whose distinction is that it defines the mainstream of the population at any given time and in any given place. The liberal knows how to conform and expects the same, gets along best with other liberals. For that reason, the liberal has a tendency to be complacent about the company it seeks and needs to be revitalized continually by radical and conservative associations. The liberal has no use for anarchy and will give it no quarter.
The conservative can get along with the liberal just fine if often on contrasting terms and might tea party on the anarchic side, but the conservative can’t abide a radical. I’m inclined to think Varola’s pure types, such as Bold Ruler and Double Jay on the left and Vaguely Noble and Alleged on the right, could all be considered conservative in their way. Unlike the radical, who wants to start something new, the conservative wants to preserve something long established, regardless of Varolan type. Remember, our clock doesn’t stop with what an ancestor contributes. Its hours mark where an ancestor is likely to fit successfully in the population.
The anarchist, at nine o’clock, opposes the liberal mainstream any way it must, just wants its distinctiveness to be respected. The survival of the anarchist is always under threat. Largely because anarchists don’t play well together, their best hope lies in alliances with either the radical or the conservative elements, at twelve o’clock and six o’clock, respectively. Graustark is almost certainly an anarchist, and I suspect Halo of leaning libertarian.
There, I think that winds up the compatibility clock enough to get its wheels turning.
OK, I know this post turned quickly toward satire, but it began with a bit of truth (which is always the case with good satire). I see nobody, including me, has stepped up to the plate yet about that. Certainly, Varola was serious about his continuum and the ways they must get mixed for success–though, of course, he began with a list of exclusively successful, breed-shaping stallions, while I know your radical and anarchist outliers will mostly, by definition, fall away.
March 14th, 2011 at 1:15 pmbrilliant.
March 14th, 2011 at 1:28 pmThank you so much for that, Greg, because I have misgivings about the satiric tone–just couldn’t resist it, I’m afraid. I do think there’s something to it. Most of the outliers make a mess of things, but the ones that don’t fall away can take key rolls amid the carnage, and some very few can reshape the breed.
March 14th, 2011 at 1:35 pmSee. Bob gets it. He knows about those outliers and their hazards.
March 14th, 2011 at 1:36 pm