We often describe society in terms of roles: leaders, workers, users, creators. A linguistic analogy can shed new light on these structures: the grammar of a sentence.
In grammar, we typically find:
The subject: the actor, the one performing the action.
The verb: the action, or the organizing dynamic.
The object: what the action is directed toward.
Now map this onto a feudal society (or any rigid hierarchy):
The king or ruler functions as the verb — the source of direction, the one who organizes meaning and action.
The subjects (citizens, workers) play the role of grammatical subjects — they carry out the action, often on behalf of the verb.
The objects are the resources, tools, and sometimes (unfortunately) people who are acted upon but have no agency in return.
This model describes a static, vertical world — everyone has a defined role, and that role determines their range of action. But grammar gives us an intriguing twist.
In language, roles are fluid:
A word can be a subject in one sentence, and an object in another.
A noun can become a verb (“to Google”).
An adjective can become a noun (“the poor”, “the good”).
In poetry or metaphor, even inanimate objects can become agents.
What if society worked the same way?
In an open society, roles aren’t fixed:
An employee can become a founder.
A consumer can become a creator.
A marginalized group can become a political subject.
Even tools (e.g., AI systems) can become active participants.
We move from a static hierarchy to a dynamic syntactic field, where meaning arises not from fixed positions, but from context, function, and interaction. Roles shift. Agency circulates.
It’s tempting to see the verb as the “best” role — the initiator, the transformer. But that’s a bias. Sometimes, real wisdom is in being a subject who listens, or an object who anchors meaning. Even a king might choose to become subject to higher principles, or object of collective will — not in weakness, but in service.
Grammatical Roles and Social Roles: A Structural Analogy
We often describe society in terms of roles: leaders, workers, users, creators. A linguistic analogy can shed new light on these structures: the grammar of a sentence.
In grammar, we typically find:
The subject: the actor, the one performing the action.
The verb: the action, or the organizing dynamic.
The object: what the action is directed toward.
Now map this onto a feudal society (or any rigid hierarchy):
The king or ruler functions as the verb — the source of direction, the one who organizes meaning and action.
The subjects (citizens, workers) play the role of grammatical subjects — they carry out the action, often on behalf of the verb.
The objects are the resources, tools, and sometimes (unfortunately) people who are acted upon but have no agency in return.
This model describes a static, vertical world — everyone has a defined role, and that role determines their range of action. But grammar gives us an intriguing twist.
In language, roles are fluid:
A word can be a subject in one sentence, and an object in another.
A noun can become a verb (“to Google”).
An adjective can become a noun (“the poor”, “the good”).
In poetry or metaphor, even inanimate objects can become agents.
What if society worked the same way?
In an open society, roles aren’t fixed:
An employee can become a founder.
A consumer can become a creator.
A marginalized group can become a political subject.
Even tools (e.g., AI systems) can become active participants.
We move from a static hierarchy to a dynamic syntactic field, where meaning arises not from fixed positions, but from context, function, and interaction. Roles shift. Agency circulates.
It’s tempting to see the verb as the “best” role — the initiator, the transformer. But that’s a bias. Sometimes, real wisdom is in being a subject who listens, or an object who anchors meaning. Even a king might choose to become subject to higher principles, or object of collective will — not in weakness, but in service.