House of Eratosthenes

Last night I had a dream about a kingdom in a faraway land, closed off from the outside world by very high walls. The kingdom was ruled by a strong and wise King, who did everything he could to make sure everything inside the walls worked as normally as possible. Toward that end, he made sure to sit in judgment of a swift trial whenever anyone was caught doing something strange.

The sentencing looked a lot like that scene with the old guy in Judge Dredd. The convicted strange-person would be banished forevermore from the kingdom, and sent to walk outside the great doors and live outside the high walls, forever. This would be a huge ceremony with great celebration and fanfare. The villagers would gather by the great doors and jeer at the unfortunates forced to walk through them, throwing rotten vegetables at them. The people of the kingdom rejoiced in the power and wisdom of their king, and once the great doors slammed shut behind the condemned man, they imagined the worst.

A left-handed blacksmith was caught pounding on a new horseshoe with his left hand instead of with his right hand. He was banished from the kingdom.

A farmer’s wife was caught harvesting eggs from the chicken coop, grabbing them by the pointy end instead of by the big end. She was banished from the kingdom.

A boy was caught cleaning the horse stables with gloves on his hands. He was banished from the kingdom.

Nobody was too concerned about learning what happened to these people, but at suppertime they would let their imaginations run wild. Giant eagles would carry the condemned to their nests to feed their young, said an old woman. Jackals would drag them to the ground by their necks, and tear into their bellies, said an old man. Giant ants would cover them head to toe while they slept, and eat them alive, said a particularly obese little boy. The villagers saw them take the “Long Walk” through the great doors, the doors slammed shut, and the condemned might as well have disappeared. Then the villagers went back to their normal lives doing their normal things…as normally as was possible.

Then a funny thing happened.

They ran out of horseshoes. People had horses, but they couldn’t ride them anywhere.

They ran out of eggs. Families went hungry.

Nobody was cleaning out the stables, at least, not as quickly as they needed a cleaning. There was horse maneure everywhere.

Disease became rampant. A famine struck the kingdom.

The problems became worse and worse — and as they did, the wise, benevolent king became more strict about making sure his subjects were doing everything the normal way. A one-legged man was banished for limping wrong. A farmer harvesting corn was banished for wearing his harvesting bag over his right shoulder instead of over his left one. Another farmer was caught milking his cow by pulling on the teats in the wrong order, and he was banished.

Food became more and more scarce.

In desperation, someone finally decided to go hunting; and so, for the first time in a century or more, the villagers stepped outside the high walls of the great kingdom.

What did they find?

They found — another kingdom. Their whole world had existed inside of another one, a greater one…in which people weren’t afraid to do things in creative new ways. A larger kingdom full of stable boys shoeveling horse waste with gloves on their hands so they would stay healthy; farmers’ wives picking up eggs by whatever end was handy; and blacksmiths building horseshoes by swinging the hammer with whatever hand could do it the fastest and best. The handicapped made their way in whatever manner they chose, and nobody scolded them for it. The corn was piled high at harvest time because people picked it in whatever way they wanted to. The milk flowed freely because it was milked in whatever way made the most sense to the guy doing the milking.

The villagers realized that the “condemned,” upon walking out of those great doors, simply took up residence in the larger kingdom. The villagers had imagined that they had ostracized the condemned, but all this time, that had really only been ostracizing themselves. They sought to bind others and free themselves, and succeeded only in binding themselves and freeing others.

And in the great kingdom there was no disease, and there was no famine. People lived life fearlessly…pausing only to gaze at the high walls isolating the tinier kingdom in their midst, and shake their heads sadly. As for the villagers from the smaller kingdom, they had locked themselves up in a prison and hadn’t even known it. Bound by rules that made no sense. Deprived of freedom enjoyed by others. Blinded by their own ignorance. But — of course — painfully “normal.”

Upon waking, I realized my dream was simply Logan’s Run in reverse. The City of Domes citizens had rejoiced in the “renewal” of the thirty-year-olds on “Lastday,” presuming this was the natural outcome of “Carousel.” The spoiler was that there was no renewal and everyone who was dead was dead-for-good. In my dream, the villagers had presumed that anyone who was shut out of the gates had ceased to exist; the spoiler was that those who were ostracized, not only continued to exist, but enjoyed a greater standard of living than those who went on inside the high walls of the smaller kingdom.

They had become obsessed with normalizing things, and in so doing had going through a sort of play-acting like they were causing someone’s existence to come to an end. Out of sight, out of mind…but in the end they realized it was their own existence, if any at all, that they had brought to an end. They had sought to make their kingdom — their micro-kingdom — the epitome of cleanliness, and instead had made it into an object of filth.

My dream seems to have a lot of smooth parallels with real life, and the errors we tend to make as we live it. I think Rod Serling would have liked my dream.

Why is it that people who can’t take advice always insist on giving it?

— James Bond, Casino Royale (2006)

To paralell today’s whackiness, a left-handed blacksmith would be banished for pounding the horseshoe with his right hand — for that would suggest that the blacksmith thought there was something wrong with being left-handed.

Black conservatives and women who choose to stay home and raise their children face the same kinds of problems.
- philmon | 07/02/2008 @ 14:31
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[…] I had in that hot summer night when the last presidential election campaign was in full swing, about the tiny fortress with the strict rules and the high walls. Those who exile end up exiling […]
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- Bitterly Clinging | Washington Rebel | 12/05/2011 @ 06:46
[…] In times past, it has made such a deep impression on me, as to affect my dreams. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/31/2013 @ 06:25
[…] Just dang. Don’t know what I ate that night, but I dreamed this, vividly, eight years ago…must have made an impression on me because I actually blogged it. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/20/2016 @ 07:03
[…] SOURCE with the rest of this article […]
- In The Bubble | IowaDawg Musings & More | 11/20/2016 @ 12:12
[…] one of those dreams. I don’t get these very often. Last time I had one like this it was thirteen years ago, back before Emperor Barack The First, and it had something to do with people ostracizing other people and losing track of the fact they […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/27/2021 @ 08:38

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Memo For File LXIIIWednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Memo For File LXIII
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008