The Second Author's Note

My fellow hags,

As we wait for the moment of our dear new Egregore’s Question, I shall, out of curiosity, ask you all to consider a personal question of mine, a question with a lowercase “q,” that I have pondered since our last meeting.

I ask you, “What is the purpose of human nobility?”

In Eschenbach's Parzival, human nobility is expressed as an aptitude required to stand in the presence of the grail, an aptitude that can be measured by one’s humility, one’s compassion. Lofty idealism aside, this strikes me as unsatisfactory, because the grail itself does not exist, and no excess of noble deeds should ever compel it to appear.

I thus surmise that stories like Parzival reveal to us a known truth, like the lie that parents tell their children on Christmas Eve, that our aspirational endeavors like trust, selflessness, and good behavior are mere inventions, whimsical constructions by faceless authorities, in the same manner in which imaginarium bends to an invisible hand, to shape us to futures not entirely our own.

Therefore, at the moment, this is my answer to the question.

Nobility exists to be exploited.

Kind regards,
Lisa Everest