Seven Qualities of Culture He remains an Englishman

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Once upon a time, I had a course in which we were asked to define culture in a way that was both academically accurate and yet uniquely personal. After much study of the resources, I decided mine would read as such:

Culture, simply put, could be described as learned artifacts (the 3 B’s: beliefs, behaviors, and boundaries) that are communicated from generation to generation in order to secure an evolving rate of success for survival on both an individual and a social stratum.

Culture is defined as learned artifacts, including ethnicity, class, gender, and social legitimacy; rituals, language use, dress codes, and social etiquette; and taboos, laws, and moral prohibitions. These are the slow-moving aspects of a larger society (whether that’s 500 or 500k or 5mil people). But culture isn’t monolithic. It is comprised of its own larger sense of beliefs, behaviors, and boundaries, as well as any number of subcultures that have modifications to the overarching culture around them.

However, it is culture that serves as the glue between people at scale and over time. I came across a quote the other day, and I stuck it in my back pocket just for a day like today. It is hardly effective to be abbreviated since context is important.

My friend Bernardo […] believed that it wasn’t important for Englishmen to be intelligent (intelligence could be a hindrance) because, as I had discovered, they all could behave intelligently when the need arose. This is how it worked. They all had a few ideas firmly embedded in their heads. He said “seven ideas,” but his figure was probably too low. Whatever the number, the ideas were exactly identical and universal. That was why in older days, in distant lands with no possibility of communicating with their superiors, weeks or months by sailing ship away from London, admirals, generals, governors, ambassadors, or young administrators alone in their immense districts, captains of merchant ships, subalterns in command of a handful of native troops in an isolated outpost, or even common ordinary Englishmen, facing a dangerous crisis, had always known exactly what to do, with the certainty that the prime minister, the foreign secretary, the cabinet, the queen, the archbishop of Canterbury, the ale drinkers in any pub, or the editor of the Times would have approved heartily, because they too had the same seven, or whatever, ideas in their heads and would have behaved in the same way in the same circumstances. […]

 

How were those “seven” ideas implanted in the British heads? Bernardo explained that what he could talk about was the people he knew best, the elite, the quintessence of Britishness […] was mainly formed of people who were related or related to relations, had known each other from childhood, had gone to the same schools and universities, called each other by their first names, spoke with the same accent, as if the upper class were a distinct province. The “seven” ideas had been driven into their heads in their mothers’ laps, in the nursery, in the classrooms, in the playing fields of whatever public schools they had gone to. But, he said, all other Britons of all classes shared the same ideas, absorbed in childhood from their parents at home, from ministers in church, and from the teachers in whatever school they went to. As long as problems could be solved and crises faced with those ideas, the empire and the peace of the world had been secure. Now (we were talking in the thirties) the world was changing, other nations were successfully competing with the British, problems had become sticky and incomprehensible, brutality had taken the place of dexterity, colonial possessions wanted to give up the placid prosperity of alien rule in exchange for independence, poverty, and interminable internal wars: the magic of the “seven ideas” no longer worked.¹Barzini, Luigi Giorgio. 1983. The Europeans. Simon and Schuster, 52-54.

This distinction of class, first of all, I think, is important to note. While this sense of Britishness was shared by “all other Britons of all classes” as a matter of a kind of cultural happenstance or osmosis, it is particular that the so-called elite instilled these ideas—whatever they were—into the children via a cultural imperative that had solidified into what we might term customs of the empire. It was automatic, an unthinking expectation, and self-replicating generation after generation.

Crowley was a product of this kind of thinking. After spending some time with this idea and working through the hypothetical possibilities of what this list consists of, I think one can see so much of his own thoughts—even about Thelema—as being shaped by this kind of empire mentality, both in the need to adhere to it out of a compulsion of upbringing and also in his rebellion against it.

Yet I have to wonder about the concept of a unified culture that is so pervasive that it becomes second nature, not merely as an aesthetic or as a performance.

Quintessence of Britishness: A Working List

Below is one plausible reconstruction of the “seven ideas.” Because Barzini never listed them, any list is necessarily conjectural, but we can extrapolate from the Victorian–Edwardian elite training he describes (nursery » public school » game fields » general osmosis of British culture) and from contemporary accounts of what Britons themselves said animated the empire.

1. Duty to Crown & Country

British servants of the empire grew up believing that their primary duty was to the monarch and, through the monarch, to the nation itself; empire was simply national service on a larger scale. Confident that their instincts reflected the sovereign’s wishes, a subordinate on the Nile or a lone magistrate in Rangoon could act immediately in a crisis, certain that any decision they made would be supported back in London.

2. The Rule of Law

They revered precedent, due process, and—at least in principle—equality before the law, treating statute as a shared operating system that transcended local custom. This faith in legal order allowed Britons to convince themselves that their governance was intrinsically just and to impose a single juridical grammar on communities as different as Lagos, Lahore, and London.

3. Stoic Self-Restraint (“Stiff Upper Lip”)

Emotional control was highly valued: one spoke softly in triumph, more softly still in disaster, and saved private doubts for the diary. A governor who lost his composure would shame the service; maintaining steady poise during rebellion or plague was seen as proof he deserved to lead.

4. Fair Play & Sportsmanship

From prep-school pitches to colonial courts, Britons loved clear rules, disliked sly advantage, and believed a gentleman must be able to lose with grace. Sport thus became the testing ground for empire: decisions made “in the spirit of the game” felt legitimate whether the game was cricket at Lord’s or diplomacy in Khartoum.

5. Muscular Christian Morality

Victorian Protestantism demanded courage, cleanliness, temperance, and a missionary zeal to spread both gospel and “civilization.” This moral code provided the ethical foundation for expansion while framing conquest as a benevolent uplift rather than naked self-interest.

6. Noblesse Oblige & the Public-School Service Ethos

Those born into privilege were taught that leadership was a moral duty, not merely a social advantage: they were meant to govern for—and, inevitably, over—the less privileged. Such paternalism allowed broad autonomy; a district commissioner could improvise bold policies, confident that his honorable intent would secure Westminster’s approval.

7. Enterprise, Pragmatism & “Gentlemanly Capitalism”

Initiative and calculated risk were coupled with a personal code that scorned dishonesty; profit was acceptable only when earned “decently.” A lone official might cut a trade treaty or lay a railway on his own authority, trusting that success would justify his actions once news reached the metropole.

What can we learn from this?

These ideas were mutually reinforcing. The rule of law set the outer boundary; fair play and Christian morality supplied inner restraints. Duty and noblesse oblige provided the motive, while stoic self-restraint plus pragmatic enterprise delivered the style and the results. A young official thus carried a mental toolkit that seemed sufficient for every crisis, until—as Barzini observed—the world changed faster than the toolkit could keep up with.

Those seven habits used to serve as Britain’s trusty sextant—polished brass, steady by starlight, dependable wherever the mail steamer docked. The trouble is that the sextant was set to an imperial chart whose red lines have long since been rubbed out. Two mechanized wars, a century of uprisings, and the slow collapse of inherited pecking orders exposed its power source: reflexive deference, a single-strand storyline, and the cozy notion that duty flows downhill while gratitude pools at the top. If we want them to work in a post-imperial, plural world, we’ll need to toss the whole contraption into the crucible, burn off the colonial dross, and cast what’s left into fresh tools—a kit designed for self-standing adults who cooperate because they choose to, not because a faded flag commands it.

Toward a Common Denominator

The Book of the Law reminds us that “every man and every woman is a star”; sovereignty is therefore cellular, not hierarchical, yet the firmament still arranges itself into constellations that give the night sky—and any culture we build beneath it—its useful grammar.

1. Fidelity to Destiny

Duty now orients toward the secret centre rather than an external crown: each person’s primary duty is to discover, embrace, and consistently live out their unique True Will. A community prospers only when every star follows its authentic orbit, and any common policy worth having is simply the harmonic resonance that occurs when those freely moving trajectories converge.

2. Covenant of Consent

Instead of worshipping frozen statutes, we develop explicit agreements that live and breathe—entered into voluntarily, amendable by mutual assent, and dissolvable without penalty when their purpose is fulfilled. Justice becomes a dynamic art of recalibrating freely chosen contracts, not an act of kneeling before precedent that has ossified into dogma.

3. Equanimity in Power

Power misfires whenever passion outruns presence. We therefore cultivate poised awareness—steady breath, disciplined mind, balanced emotion—so that the current we marshal in daily action remains clear, directed, and incapable of being hijacked by panic or ego.

4. Transparent Play

“Love under Will” embraces transparency by rejecting hidden score-keeping and secret rules. Whether we’re talking about commerce, politics, or intimacy, everyone involved should be aware of the boundaries and the stakes; if someone wins through secrecy, that victory is invalid, and we start over.

5. Solar Integrity

We exchange the shadow of inherited guilt for the radiance of the Sun. Courage, candor, erotic honesty, and creative joy constitute a self-coherent ethic that neither banishes the flesh nor permits the exploitation of others; virtue is judged by the clarity and warmth of the light we emit.

6. Company of Heaven

Since each star burns with its own fuel, aid moves laterally, never from a pedestal. Knowledge, tools, or shelter are offered when requested and accepted without obligation, fostering self-sufficiency rather than dependence; mentorship thus replaces tutelage, and mutual aid supersedes charity.

7. Frontier Alchemy

Enterprise shifts into continuous experimentation—a laboratory of art, science, relationships, and polity—where profits are seen as surplus energy reinvested in ongoing growth, not as capital hoarded from subjects. Risk is embraced as part of the discovery process while failure is regarded as valuable data rather than shame.

How these Ideas Cooperate

1. Individual Anchor (I–III)

Fidelity to Destiny, the Covenant of Consent, and Equanimity in Power form the personal compass that prevents a star from losing its way. By acting solely from one’s understanding of True Will, binding oneself through freely chosen agreements, and tempering action with steady presence, the individual (and, by extension, society) becomes self-guiding, resistant to both external pressure and internal chaos. A constellation can hold its shape only when each of its lights is securely identified first.

2. Inter-personal Protocol (IV–VI)

Transparent Play, Solar Integrity, and the Company of Heaven define the grammar of relationships. Open rules foster trust, radiant honesty prevents exploitation, and lateral service turns aid into a circulating current rather than a hierarchy of debts. Together, they allow autonomous stars to interlock without eclipsing one another, weaving constellations whose patterns remain flexible and luminous.

3. Collective Vector (VII)

Once individual orbits are stable and the relationship lattice is clear, Frontier Alchemy channels the surplus light outward. Experimentation becomes the community’s propulsion system, transforming excess energy not into dominion but into exploration—new arts, sciences, and social forms that expand the cosmos we share. Collective power thus becomes a sail, not an anchor: it propels us forward instead of holding others back.

Reclaiming Culture

Culture isn’t something you shrug on like a well-cut jacket; it’s the loom humming in the corner, the one we keep threading whether we notice or not. Destiny, consent, equanimity, transparency, integrity, community, transformation—those are our shuttles snapping back and forth. Choose your own thread, by all means, but remember we’re weaving one cloth and it has to be tough enough to cover more than your own shoulders. Every time we hammer out ground rules in daylight, or lend a hand sideways because we see ourselves in the other, the pattern repeats. 

The Victorians stumbled into their fabric by birthright; we get to craft ours on purpose—a light-packing grammar of belief, behavior, and boundary that flexes, travels, and refuses to calcify into empire.

So the job before us isn’t polishing relics or smashing them; it’s composition. Write living folklore. Build pop-up polities that stretch without tearing. Trade seeds across the fences we can’t see. That’s the real work. If we steward these ideals well—testing, pruning, iterating—they will propagate as naturally as once did chapel hymns or cricket rules, yet without the hidden cargo of domination. The reward is a culture agile enough to meet futures we cannot yet name: constellations that hold their shape precisely because each star burns in liberty.

Love is the law, love under will.