On Feudalism, Ruin, and the Post-Apocalypse

Solomon VK has been writing some excellent posts about the unlikely interface between SF and feudalism (see here and here). What is the appeal (he asks and sets out to answer) of 'feudal futures' such as Dune or, if we are thinking about RPGs, Fading Suns?

I only wish to add a footnote to his inquiry in observing that real-world feudalism often developes as a response to near-apocalyptic collapse of relatively advanced civilizations. In history, we tend to see feudal structures emerging when a 'golden age' has ended and a 'dark age' is underway. Hereditary local lords were the defence structure in dark ages Europe against Vikings, Magyars and the like in the period of decline after the fall of Rome. Similarly, in Japan, feudalism developed in the period of anarchy and civil strife at the end of Heian period, with the samurai emerging as a military caste to secure the estates of magistrates (or to protect farmers from rapacious aristocrats). In a time of declining living standards and a collapse in order, the basic feudal trade-off - in which the local lord offers people protection in return for them keeping him well fed - makes pefect sense.

It seems to me then the 'feudal future' aesthetic of collapsing intergalactic civilisation combined with a splintering into feudal 'houses' or similar makes a kind of sense. And this is probably why feudal future settings often seem to have a strong aesthetic of ruin or even post-apocalypse. In the real world, knights frolicked in the ruins of the Roman empire, and in the feudal future it therefore seems natural that their interstellar equivalents would find themselves inhabiting a galaxy peppered with ruins of a much more advanced civilisation. 

There is I think also a more basic psychological impulse at play in the feudal future: a recognition that when humans are confronted with something vast and unknowable many of them will prefer to fall back on an any-port-in-a-storm mentality to physical security. Imagine if the entire galaxy around us was open to human exploration and travel - and, by the same token, our civilization was open to everything that the galaxy itself contained. I can easily imagine the reaction to that being the pledging of loyalty to anybody promising stability and security. Stretched across a solar-system of galaxy-spanning civilisation and a division into many 'local' feudal houses seems plausible.

Finally, it is probably worth mentioning that there is something indestructibly romantic and intoxicating about high chivalry and its juxtaposition to future technology. The future, from where we are standing, looks raher inhumane and alienating; how much nicer to imagine it being something more like Robin Hood, Henry V or El Cid.