Once upon a time, a community of scholars built a village on the summit of a broad hill in the middle of a bountiful island. The men and women who founded the village were said to be gods. They were preternaturally wise, with minds of astonishing subtlety. But they were vain and indolent, and gave scant regard to the poor people who lived in the plains below, who tended to their basic needs and supported them in their idle speculations.
Their King, who was also their chief archivist, was named Atlas. He cautioned his brothers and sisters, saying that if the twin pillars that sustained the world were to crack and fall asunder, all would be lost.
But Pleione, the astronomer, smiled indulgently at her husband. She replied that the world was a self-balanced globe that stood poised in the midst of a circumfluous medium called aether—“a medium,” she added, “that fills the interstices of space and pervades the infinite expanses of the heavens.” King Atlas shook his grey locks and lowered his head in dismay, because his subjects had not understood what he had attempted to convey to them. Pleione and the other scholars laughed good-naturedly and chided their King. And a thousand years passed.
The village grew into a populous city, its marble streets lined with observatories and gabled universities, whose lofty towers and overhanging gardens were interlinked by elevated walkways, broad staircases, and arched bridges. The city was the envy of the world.
But one afternoon under a thickening sky, a hush lay over the city. For the streets were blood-spattered and strewn with the mutilated corpses of the city’s inhabitants. When the people who lived in the plains below rose up in revolt and indiscriminately massacred every man, woman, and child in their path, it was not lost on anyone that the leaders of the uprising were not “of the plains,” but were the sons and daughters (the students and disciples) of the city’s philosophers, lawgivers, physicians, priests, poets, artists, and statesmen.
It was a revolution of the young, of the jeunesse dorée, who, although they were clever and had been taught well by their elders, were ambitious and mistook intellectual exuberance and brazen wit for the wisdom of years and the knowledge that comes only through experience. The rebels outlawed the search for truth, having boldly asserted that they had already found it. The assemblies of debate were closed and sealed, and independent reasoning was proscribed. Though they had been warned that they were treading dangerously close to the brink, the youth scoffed at these warnings, and marveled at the ignorance and presumption of those who would dare to explain to them what they believed they already knew.
The ancient historians had demonstrated, by convincing proofs and numerous precedents, that revolutions tended to destroy those who led them. “Nevertheless,” the gilded youth affirmed, “it would be better to die for these principles that I have so eloquently elaborated, than to suffer under the yoke of this aging tribe of vain and indolent oppressors, who know not the meaning of labor nor the humiliations that attend a life of abject poverty.” And they toyed with their electrum rings as they said these things, and plucked the lint from their perfumed garments.
Mounting their podiums in the city’s squares, or leaning over the rails of the gorgeous balconies of the palaces and temples, the firebrands pointed contemptuously at their rivals’ platforms. They harangued the poor, whose lives had never been easy but whose situation had not been improved as the leaders had promised them that it would.
Feeling betrayed, deceived, and used, the people of the plains melted away and walked, embittered, down the porphyry steps and alabaster ways that led to their homes. But as they descended, they asked one another in urgent whispers whether the benefits and rights, which over the centuries had indirectly accrued to them from the city on high, would still be guaranteed once a new system of government was installed. “Of course,” they assured themselves, “for these benefits and rights are inalienable, part of nature, and only seem to have come from the city on the hill.”
As the crowds dispersed, the activists grew less sure of themselves. Their voices sounded hollow, even in their own ears. Their arguments grew incoherent and rambling, their speeches blathering and self-contradictory—until (at last) their inspiration fled them altogether, and their words were drowned out in the gusts of the rising wind.
The foreign emissaries, wealthy merchants, misers, and thieves crowded the harbors and the shores. They bribed the shipmasters to grant them safe passage so that they could escape the cataclysm that they sensed was drawing near. The vessels sailed against the squalls at twilight, never to return to the once prosperous isle.
In front of the great library stood the chryselephantine colossus of King Atlas, resting his hands on the twin pillars, which (according to tradition) were the props that sustained the world: one represented the spirit and the other the body, with Atlas (symbolizing the mind) standing as the link between the twain. Lightning struck the base of the pillars, which cracked and fell asunder. The statue of King Atlas tumbled forward and shattered into twice ten thousand pieces.
A rift opened beneath the rubble, and the great city, which had shone for a millennium like a shining beacon on the hill, collapsed into the yawning chasm and vanished under a rising plume of dust, ash, and smoke. And with a shock that would reverberate through history and become the stuff of myth and legend, the fabled Island of Atlantis sank swiftly into the foaming sea.
Oh the gods and their pride … or is it their ignorance that causes their own downfall? Good thing god 2.0 is omniscient so at least we know he’ll foresee and forestall his own downfall in the future. Sorry Nietzsche. They reanimated god just in time and he is here to stay for good! America trusts in god so it will never fall like Atlantis. God wouldn’t allow it.
To steal a phrase from somewhere (I feel bad not being able to attribute in the moment), "the sum of all fears"! Now my concern is where do I stand on this continuum? Sadly, I don't know for sure. Loved this offering to think Daniel!