Padriag
Posts: 2633
Joined: 3/30/2005
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Celticfirelite, I'm going to take a different approach in my response than others. In fact I'm going to suggest an entirely different perspective to consider.
Reading over many of the posts in this thread and others like it about "masters" one thing becomes very clear, most consider "master" to be a title. From this then stems all the arguments about how that title should be earned, who deserves it, who awards it, when it can be taken away, what qualifies someone as a master, etc. All because its very commonly viewed as a title.
To my mind, viewing it as a title is simply a bad idea. But before I go further I think its a good idea to explain why I think its a bad idea.
First is the obvious I've already touched on. If you view it as a title then there are all those questions about qualifications, how the title is earned, who awards it, etc. These invariably spawn arguments because the reality is there is no one to set any universal standard for any of these things.
In addition, I see submissives seeking to associate various qualities with the title as a kind of short cut in determining who is a good dominant and who isn't. Often, for example, you see discussions about what a master should be, that he should be responsible, that he should be sane, that he should be safey conscious, that he should be honorable, and so on. All these things are qualities a person might or might not possess. But there is only one reason to associate all these qualities with the title of "master" and that is as a short cut to determining the character of an individual. That is, if it can be said that a person can only be a master if they are honorable, saftey conscious, honest, responsible, etc... then one can say that a person who has earned the title of master must therefore be all those things. Its an attempt to make the title of "master" mean all those other things and thus a shortcut to who is okay and who isn't. The two problems with this are that first, in reality this is often not true, there are many who call themselves "master" who are none of those things, nor is there any way to restrict who calls themself a master. Second, at its root a master is really only one thing, someone who does or seeks to own a slave(s). I'll come back to that point below.
The second problem with viewing it as a title is on the other end, those that seek it. By treating "master" as a title a degree of authority, or at least the appearance of it, gets associated with it. And as a result you get people who have it in their heads that just because they use the title they have authority over others... which gives rise to the cliche' "on your knees slut" said to random submissives. The reality is the title confers no real authority at all, its is not the source of authority for a dominant. Yet there are many who seek authority in a title precisely because that's the only source of authority they know, they have none of their own (and don't know how to achieve it any other way). John Maxwell called this form of authority from titles "positional authority" and he identified it as the weakest form of authority there is. In the cases where a title actually does grant some authority, people obey you only because of the title, not the person. For a dominant this should be unacceptable, they want to be obeyed for who they are, not any title they possess. For dominants, their authority comes from within themselves.
So if "master" isn't a title, what is it then? And my answer is, its an orientation. To explain exactly what I mean by that, let me compare it to sexual orientation. If you are "straight" you seek a heterosexual relationship, that is the approach or orientation of a straight person to a sexual relationship. Conversely someone who is gay seeks a homosexual approach to a sexual relationship.
Thus if master is an orientation, then it describes not a title or a position, but an approach to a personal relationship... that of master and slave, dominance and submission, or, as I said above someone who seeks to own a slave as the basis of their relationship. Conversely, a slave also is not a title but an orientation, one that seeks to be the slave half of that relationship. A master seeks to own a slave, a slave seeks to be owned... this is the context of the relationship they seek.
The advantage to viewing "master" and "slave" as orientations is that it leaves very little to argue about. Whether an individual "master" or "slave" is competent, sane, responsible, etc. become judgements that have to be made individually. There is no longer any deeper meaning to being a master, anymore than there is to being straight or bi or gay. Its simply a descriptor of the kind of relationship you seek, no more, no less. Thus, since I am a straight master, you may safely assume from that brief statement that I seek to own a female slave as the basis of our relationship. But that is all you can assume from that statement, whether I'm competent to do that, responsible in how I do it, etc. are all still determinations you'll have to make about me as an individual.
And this fits with reality too, because there will always be good masters, bad masters, mediocre masters, incompetent masters, skilled masters, sadistic masters, and various combinations thereof... but these become descriptions of individuals, not an attempt at a monolithic description of an entire group. The same is true of slaves, there are and always will be the good and the bad and lots that are somewhere inbetween.
Consider it food for thought.
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Padriag
A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer
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RE: What isthe making of a a Master? What is making of ... - 
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