|
"As it was, over time many people had come to understand what the sage was saying and agreed with him. They even realized that he was offering them quite literally a whole New World, and this not on a platform of war, like the wars that had destroyed the nation, but on the platform of their self-development as a people. Thus, the sage was able to offer the people hope, and this hope was founded on the basis of his intellectual background in the tallest humanist scientific traditions of all times.
"The trouble was, that the sage wasn't the king. He was but a sage and had no power to influence the policies of the state. In fact, the king soon hated the sage for his powers of perception that he lacked himself. He hated the sage, because he knew, although he was the king, the people could abdicate him and that he would be abdicated for sure if the sage ever gained the universal support of the entire population. Thus, a battle unfolded between the king's stooges and the sage and his supporters. The battle soon became another war, a war of slander and legal actions. Nevertheless the sage was gaining support throughout the realm. Of course, that support was a far cry away from being sufficient to abdicate the king.
"In order to increase his support among the people, the sage's most loyal supporters started a campaign of fund raising, so that his ideas could be copied by many scribes, to be given to people who could read, who would then be able to teach others. This was done so that everybody could understand the platform of the sage's proposed New World for all people.
"Now, it was here where the system broke down," said Olive. "Many people said that they couldn't possibly spare any money for such a lofty project. They insisted that they had barely enough for themselves, to buy food with for their family. They came up with all kinds of excuses: Their children needed shoes; their spouses a new coat for the coming winter; and so it went on and on. They made it clear that they couldn't possibly give their scarce resources away for something as exotic as a political campaign. They all said that they liked the sage, and that his ideas are good, but in the same breath they also became indignant and asked why should they put themselves out to the point that it would be hurting their families in order to support a man to become king? So, most of them declined and said that they couldn't do what was asked of them.
"I just can't remember how the story ends," said Olive. "It has the potential to end like the U.S. election ended in 1932, that ended with Roosevelt's election to the White House. The people gave themselves a victory by putting Roosevelt into a position where he could help the people to fulfill their dream of creating a New World for themselves. The story of the kingdom and the sage also has the potential to end like the Renaissance ended, that was destroyed when the war philosophers of Venice gained dominance and created a chain of wars that lasted for eighty years and ended up destroying half the population of Europe. That's when cities of a hundred thousand are reduced to just a few thousand and entire village were simply wiped off the map as though they had never existed. If such a thing happened in the kingdom the people might remember the sage just as some pioneers remembered the Renaissance in the pains of their dying world during the Thirty Years War. Would this kind of ending be the right ending for my story?" she asked.
"If I were to write the story," I said to Olive, "I would give the people in my story enough wisdom, so that they would find it in their heart to support the sage, regardless of the hardships involved."
"But would this be realistic, Peter?" asked Olive.
"It all depends on what realistic means," I replied. "From a scientific standpoint, a victorious humanist ending would be realistic. In fact, it would be the only realistic answer. If I were to write the ending, I would describe the people as being willing to make the needed sacrifices when those sacrifices are necessary to protect their civilization and with it their own life, since civilization is the foundation of a modern people's very existence. Everyone's physical existence depends on its functioning. Why shouldn't the people in the story be able to understand this?"
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
|
