It's a longstanding gripe, and somewhat complex, but the heart of it is that the system is steadily getting harder and harder to *understand*. Plain and simply, the more different awards there are, the less people can keep track of them, and indeed, the less they try. Heck, even I can't remember what all of the East's awards mean any more, and I'm a relatively serious court junkie.
The result is that I've observed a growing trend of people having no clue what any given title means, simply throwing up their hands at the whole thing and ignoring it. Which hurts the Society in a subtle way, because one of the major points of the award system is to say, as a society, "This is what matters to us". It's one of the more concrete ways in which we define ourselves. I observe that to be less and less true over the years, and best I can tell, the single greatest cause is the proliferation of ever-more-specialized awards.
Or putting it more simply: the more finely-defined the awards are, the less each award *means* to the average member, and therefore the less it means to us as a collective.
Personally, I find that sad. I really wish we had the courage and generosity to keep our existing awards wider and more welcoming, rather than putting Do Not Enter signs on them and forcing us to slice-and-dice things so finely. (And I use the word "keep" advisedly -- remember that, once upon a time, the Laurel was for everything except armored combat, and just in my time it has narrowed considerably. The current state is the result of a steady erosion in the definitions of the awards...)
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Date: 2014-11-18 04:30 pm (UTC)The result is that I've observed a growing trend of people having no clue what any given title means, simply throwing up their hands at the whole thing and ignoring it. Which hurts the Society in a subtle way, because one of the major points of the award system is to say, as a society, "This is what matters to us". It's one of the more concrete ways in which we define ourselves. I observe that to be less and less true over the years, and best I can tell, the single greatest cause is the proliferation of ever-more-specialized awards.
Or putting it more simply: the more finely-defined the awards are, the less each award *means* to the average member, and therefore the less it means to us as a collective.
Personally, I find that sad. I really wish we had the courage and generosity to keep our existing awards wider and more welcoming, rather than putting Do Not Enter signs on them and forcing us to slice-and-dice things so finely. (And I use the word "keep" advisedly -- remember that, once upon a time, the Laurel was for everything except armored combat, and just in my time it has narrowed considerably. The current state is the result of a steady erosion in the definitions of the awards...)