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An episcopate really is a good governance structure. It’s got enough form to be able to do stuff, but not so much that the subsidiarity of local concerns is abandoned.

You see things like it arise in a variety of guises and in a variety of spheres of life.

I'd like much more the Presbyterian and especially Reformed model, but there are good things in the Episcopal model, undoubtedly.
It also helps prevent (not absolutely) cults of personality from taking root.
it helps. That's a subsidiarity thing, too -- pastorates that are too long will create personality cults, but "too long" is a joint decision that is largely made by the local community and its leadership -- and in situations when that dynamic deteriorates, there's a tiered hierarchy available to help.
“Ah, well the word modernist is code for non-believer” from https://youtu.be/m2dNCw0hPLs?si=0xBHOTYnG-WaOGae. The one and only Yes, Prime Minister.
The comparison between the necessity of the Queen and of God in that sketch reminds me of the medieval conception of bellatores, laboratores, and oratores (which, if you believe Georges Dumézil, may have been largely conserved intact all the way from proto-indo-european days); in particular royalty provides a least upper bound for both the bellatores and the oratores, so Appleby may be correct to observe that necessity factored through the Queen (wlog King).
“A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.” S03E04 Y,M

Oratores tend to overrate their own compute (wrt Hackers), mistaking gametalk for powertalk & vice versa (also: does the sage engage in PT), or, more rarely, tripping up in decidability problems (looking at you, Berne)

Maybe a more parsimonious model is thus: labrats(nerds?designers?) are sometimes preferred over the bellicose(noncom jocks?hackers?) because oratores bet on them grokking accountability/accounts/accounting. In our worldtree/conjoinedtrianglesofequiodsuccess, however one cuts it, the nerd-jock & the weird-normie (as well any head of church?) provide glue.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41338777

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJYa68AnECY

“I believe fiction much more than non-fiction”

(Clue to the real reason the gods/minds play with mortals — the [abacus] beads of the (demi)gods who are trapped in the Slow Zone or its border?. Think Greg Egan has a couple of shorts covering this angle too)

EDIT: bellator von Hammerstein-Equord bet otherwise (Ritterbarde?)

> does the sage engage in PT

Mu! (category error, at least for the Aristotelean sage)

The Gervais Principle describes how people behave in organisations (at the extreme: in prisons or gulags every inmate quickly becomes a sociopath); eudaemonia concerns people with sufficient autarky for yet another kind of talk: the enjoyable exploration of honourable topics among friends.

Such then being the eudaemonic talk, the corresponding character on the side of deficiency is gametalk, and on that of excess powertalk. Gametalk is deficient because it speaks of nothing and goes nowhere; powertalk is excessive because it is purely instrumental, and furthermore uses a great deal of instrumentality only to arrive at places of small interest.

compare https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... and https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

(all for now; I expect Epictetus will differ, for unlike Aristotle he's not about to argue that eudaemonia involves picking your parents wisely)

Hey.. Eric Schmidt , and reportedly DJT exude eudaemonia. [cites available] I dont know about autarky and honour in those cases; might be deformed to work. Those are examples you might be familiar with, plenty anecdata of sociopathy back-inferred from distant effects being incommensurate with local affect.

Fwiw i still find it hard to dichotomize banter of Sir H & Lord H, instrumental locally, but not overly excessive, and often returns to the status quo antebellum. Formulaic?

server error on those links coukd be bw on my side..

try these links, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.183333/page/21... to https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.183333/page/22... ?

As far as EES and DJT go, neither seem to have the proper mean concern with regard to riches, for both seem to have been excessive in getting and have been deficient in giving (NE II,vii.4). That said, based on personal communication with the former, he'd (in my limited sample) score well on Aristotle's checklist (NE IV,iii.14-34) for proper mean concern with regard to honour, while judging from the social media output* of the latter, he'd score poorly.

* this is probably an upper bound: with the exception of (the fictional) Dolphus Raymond, I'm having trouble thinking of anyone who deliberately projects a dishonourable public persona to cover an honourable private one?

https://timkellogg.me/blog/2024/06/26/politics-analysis

Any luck with the Schuetzenberger thm?

Will get back to aristotle when more bw thanks!

>"The Alpha course, which has been taken by more than 24 million people and counts among its celebrity attendees… Bear Grylls and, more dubiously, Russell Brand"

I was disappointed at the inclusion of this discrediting swipe at Brand, as if Alpha is something other than a space for any and everyone.