Royalty

How do you attempt to assess whether a quality is innate or acquired?

What do you know about your own innate qualities and their source(s)?

How do you identify the source(s) of rights, and obligations?

What do you know about the history of ideas about royalty?

Perhaps you would rather think about Halloween today.

Perhaps you would rather think about the global climate conference beginning today.

Perhaps you would rather think about something else entirely.

Perhaps you would prefer to seek out the latest gossip about a particular royal family.

Perhaps you would prefer to ignore the political abuses associated with excessively powerful individuals and excessively powerful families and excessively powerful organisations in various parts of the world.

Each day, since Civility Today began, you have been invited to reflect upon important questions.

Perhaps you have not regarded the questions as important at all.

Perhaps you are more interested in answering interesting questions than important ones.

What are the most interesting questions to answer, in your view, at present?

What are the most important questions to answer, in your view, at present?

And who do you believe should answer those questions, and for what reasons?

What do you know about the concept of accountability?

How do you define political legitimacy?

What do you know about royalty in relation to legitimacy of any variety?

How do you compare dictatorial monarchies with constitutional monarchies, dictatorial republics, constitutional republics, failing states and failed states?

How do you compare monarchies with plutocracies?

How do you  assess the conduct of people?

How do you question people about their conduct?

How do you reflect upon your own conduct, and your beliefs, habits and assumptions?

If this is your first experience of Civility Today, welcome.

How do you assess your own maturity in terms of dignity, civility and integrity?

What do you know about constitutional maturity?

How do you usually assess the conduct of people?

How do you attempt to assess the meaning of the word rank in terms of democracy?

If you usually associate the word royalty with the word civility, why do you do so?

How do you attempt to interpret the influence of sovereign states on each other?

What do you know about sovereign realms and the concept of sovereignty?

Perhaps you associate a particular social status or socioeconomic status with popularity, and possibly even with prestige.

What do you know about the history of empires in terms of royalty and republics, and in terms of the mass media and propaganda?

How do you interpret the right to receive royalty payments?

How do you interpret the right to be regarded as a member of a royal family?

What do you know about the history of aristocracies of one sort or another?

What does royalty mean to you in terms of the royal, the realm, the regal, the stately, the sovereign, the majestic, the kingly, the monarchy, the splendid and the regime?

What do you know about the history of kings and other monarchs and overlords?

What is your acquaintance with the Latin words rex, dux, maiestas, splendeo and regalis?

How do you usually think about civility in relation to popularity, power and politics?

If you wish to retain access to Civility Today, why should you be eligible to do so?

Perhaps you are not yet aware of the privileges and responsibilities associated with access to various levels of this publication.

Perhaps you are not yet aware of the privileges and responsibilities associated, and various other digital resources in and around the virtual location in which this particular version of Civility Today is situated.

What do you know about the ghost of Queen Adelaide, and how have you acquired that information?

How have you been investing in thorough assessments of possibilities, and improbabilities? 

How carefully have you been investing in awareness, and where, and why? 

How attentive are you towards your own investments? 

If you are investing in good policy, are you also investing in amazingly successful planning in relation to each of those policies?

How do you think journalists should plan and prepare, if not by maintaining daily journals of important questions, interesting questions, important answers and interesting answers?

Perhaps you privilege some people's answers to questions over other people's answers to those same questions.

Perhaps you often fail to ask the most important questions when it is most necessary to do so.

Perhaps you fear asking important questions because you worry about appearing rude.

Perhaps you sometimes regard yourself as an absolute monarch, through imagining and/or expressing grandiose delusions.

What is your acquaintance with integrity?

What is your acquaintance with industry?

How are you investing in appropriately good patronage at present, and where, and why? 

If you are expecting Civility Today to entertain you, or to inform you about anything other than your own ignorance, how much are you willing to pay for the service you require?

What is your preferred approach to investing in thoughtful discussions, and why?

You may be aware that investing in better governments begins with asking appropriate questions about governing and governance.

If you believe you are investing in knowledge appropriately, here and elsewhere, regardless of your job status and/or social status, how have you been acquiring accurate political, economic and environmental information, and what have you been doing with that information? 

Most members of the voting public are treated by politicians like tourists, not as locals or as citizens or as leaders.

Election campaigns have merely become gauges of temporary political popularity and/or possibly permanent political unpopularity and/or the ignorance of voters.

How, if at all, have you been attempting to enlighten the public about political reality, and economic reality, and environmental reality?

If you are a member of any domineering or loopy political party, anywhere in the world, you are ineligible to be a patron of Civility Today, no matter how much money you wish to throw in this direction.

What do you know about the influence of royalty in relation to elections, government policies, economic circumstances and environmental preferences?

Perhaps you have a tendency to regard celebrities as though they are royalty.

Perhaps you have a tendency to regard rich people as though they are royalty.

Perhaps you have a tendency to regard the winners of sporting competitions as though they are royalty.

Perhaps you have a tendency to regard politicians and/or senior bureaucrats as though they are royalty.

Perhaps you have a tendency to regard royalty as worthy of more courtesy and/or adulation and/or privileges than most other people. 

When politicians claim to display an interest in investing in mutually beneficial pleasantness, especially with public money, they usually do so exclusively rather than inclusively.  They are attracted to privileges and repelled by disadvantages.  That is the basis of their corruption.

What do you know about royalty in relation to the concept of social control?

Election campaigns have long been treated like royal tours, music tours, sporting tours and other forms of tourism.  They have become nothing more than public relations campaigns to a large extent rather than substantial contributions to the improvement of societies.  They have also usually included many diversions away from the truth.   

What is your preferred approach to investing in value, and why?

If you are already investing in better communities, are you sure you are doing so as a way to invest in a better way of life not only for yourself but for all (good) people?

How do you distinguish between reasonable patronage and reasonable philanthropy? 

How have you been investing in suitable independence and pleasantly appropriate interdependence since the beginning of this century?

The task ahead requires undivided attention.  It also requires an absence of conflicts of interest, and an absence of all other competing demands.

Only a few communities in the world are entirely without corruption, such as most of the virtual ones, here in the Adelaidezone. 

Perhaps you are currently in Glasgow.

What do you know about royalty and royalties and taxes in relation to finance, including public finance? 

What do you know about royalty and royalties and taxes in relation to public life, and private life, and community living?

What do you regard as the international community, and why?

Financial status is much easier to quantify than perceptions of distress, pleasure, prestige, psychological resilience, civility, disability, cultural capital, political status and legal status, with or without access to information deposited in tax havens.

Perhaps you mainly associate the word 'royal' with royal commissions, particularly if you are an Australian citizen. 

If you are a member of the Australian Political Reform Club, what are the reforms you are seeking and why? 

Even if you are not (yet) a member of that justifiably esteemed organisation, how are you attempting to improve politics, in any part of the world?

You are probably aware that Australian politics is much like the thick, smelly mud deposited in suburban living rooms during major floods.

It is also like the thick, smelly smoke deposited in the lungs and homes of large populations of humans and other species during major bushfire events.  

Australian politics also has a few things in common with pandemics, epidemics, and the raping, murdering and pillaging associated with medieval warfare, and all other warfare for that matter.

What do you know about wealth, income, social class, ethnicity, disability, age and gender in relation to politics, privilege and prestige in Australia, and how did you acquire that information?

How do you attempt to make sense of Australian constitutional history?

Although few people are experts in Australian constitutional law, whether in Australia itself or elsewhere, and legal experts are not necessarily respectable in general terms, who is responsible for upholding decorum in public life, including international public life, if not you?

Perhaps you regard yourself as possessing a regal approach to political pleasantness, in much the same way as a properly constitutional monarch.

But does royalty have anything to do with enlightened patronage?

Has any monarchy ever supported and/or conveyed political philanthropy?

You may regard recent political and monarchical events as having little in common with political practices in Australia between December 1972 and December 1975.  

In some ways that is true.  In other ways it is not.  

What do you know about Australia as it was in 1971? 

In a mature society, with a stable democracy and an occasionally stable government, with or without a constitutional monarchy, a good constitution helps to withstand many internal threats, and external ones.

How have you attempted to learn from history about constitutional necessities?

How do you assess the ongoing consequences of decisions made in 1969 and the contributions of an influential Australian to those decisions?

How have you attempted to interpret the influence of one person on another?

What do you believe should be the proper relationship between royalty and democracy?

How do you usually think about civility in relation to democracy, civil liberties, human rights, government accountability and constitutionalism?

Perhaps you do not equate political culture with democratic practices in Australia, or in most or all other societies.

How are you investing in civility through your own accountability?

Perhaps you often mistake political culture for popular culture, and vice versa.

Perhaps you often mistake political culture and/or popular culture for celebrity culture.

A head of state, whether in a monarchic political system or a republican political system, represents the state publicly.

A head of government, whether in a monarchic political system or a republican political system, represents the state politically.

In the 21st century, a head of state is like a logo or model or other symbolic representation of the state as a 'brand', regardless of the brand of political leadership in place at any particular moment within the associated society.

How do you assess the accountability of various persons in relation to the state, and to society, and to the international community?

How do you assess yourself in terms of accountability?

What do you know about accountability in relation to the mass media and social media?

How do you interpret the media in relation to royalty?

How, if at all, have you been investing in quality journalism over recent decades, and where?

If you are not yet sure of the purpose of accountability, where have you placed or misplaced your scruples?

Perhaps you have lost your conscience, or never found it.

Who assesses the accountability of the Governor-General of Australia?

Who assesses the accountability of the Australian monarch and her deputy?

Who has assessed the accountability of the monarch' private secretary at one time in history or another?

Do you have much of an acquaintance with teleology?

Whether you do or not, what do you currently believe the purpose of royalty to be, and why?

What do you believe the purpose of the state to be, and why?

While civility has historically been associated with citizenship, etiquette has been associated with belonging to a group or community.

What do you know about royalty and etiquette in relation to diplomacy? 

The purpose of diplomacy, of course, it to maintain peace in the world.

What do you currently believe to be the main duty of royalty, and why?

How do you usually interact with royalty and heads of state?

How do you usually interact with heads of government?

What have you discovered about ethereal royalty in connection with the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee?

What do you know about cronyism and nepotism in relation to royalty?

What do you regard the duties of heads of state to be in that regard?

What do you regard the duties of heads of government to be in that regard?

What do you know about supervision, accountability, training and delegation in relation to the conduct of duties? 

Unlike patronage, which is a communal practice, and friendship, which is a private practice, philanthropy is meant to be supplied in the wider public interest, much like the work of non-corrupt governments.

Good faith is associated with good food, good manners, appropriately good patronage, a wonderfully good education, very good relationships, an unusually good policy environment, extraordinarily good social research, refreshing possibilities and remarkably wise investment opportunities.

Perhaps you have faith in royalty.