A king, a priest, and a wealthy man are in a room together. Also in the room is a poor, common man with a sword. Each man demands that the commoner kill the other two. The king promises to elevate the man to that of a knight with his own lands and estate. The priest promises that the man will have earned favor with God and his place in paradise will be assured. The wealthy man offers half of his fortune for the man to do with as he pleases.
Who does the common man obey and who dies?
This is a variation on a riddle posed by the spymaster Varys to the newly appointed Hand of the King, Tyrion Lannister, in A Clash of Kings. The riddle itself is most interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is that it has no answer. Obviously the common man is going to respond to whichever aspect of power is most attractive to himself, whether that be governmental, spiritual, or monetary.
The riddle is also interesting in how it shows that power itself is an illusion. The three men in question all held things that defined power, but the true power of life and death was held by the man with the sword. Only by the exise of this power, would the power of the survivor be able to manifest itself to the benefit of the common man with the sword. However, the powers that the three men have are real to some degree because the common man can't take what was offered from the two dead men. Likewise, he earns nothing for his troubles if he kills all three men with his absolute power of life and death. This gives a partial answer to the follow up question that if the man with the sword has all the power, why to the men with swords follow the leaders and not the other way around?
I have no real point to all of this, only to note the interesting nature of power and the illusary pursuit of it. I like riddles and I like philosphical questions as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment