Osama Bin Gandalf
or: Why simple minds shouldn't read the Lord of The Rings

Elves and Ringwraiths, Hobbits and Orks, Gandalf and Saruman, Aragorn and Sauron, Peace and War, Light and Darkness, White and Black - that's the world of the Lord of the Rings, written more than two centuries after my death. Nevertheless I read it last week - as what you call eBook. Downloading such a huge oeuvre into the 18th century is a pain in the ass but it was worth it.

Personally I like this book. It's very creative and rich, one of the best stories I've ever read. It's basically kind of a huge fairytale (or "literary legend" if you prefer this expression).

But that's the point: It's a fairytale. In a fairytale, it's natural to have "Good" fighting against "Evil". In a fairytale, Good and Evil are not question of behaviour, not a question of ethics, but a question of nature. Elves are good by nature, Orks are evil by nature. Gandalf and Aragorn are good by nature, Sauron and the Nazgûl are evil by nature. As in this kind of story, good guys naturally ally with other good guys against evil guys, good and evil become also a question of sides:

Good = Us, Evil = Them

The good guys are good because they kill the evil guys, and the evil guys are evil because they kill the good guys. A very simple and clear principle. This is how fairytales work.

But what about reality? Can this conception of "Good" and "Evil" be transferred into real life? Would Gandalf be "good" in a world where goodness is - or should be - measured by ethics? Maybe not. He manipulates people. He is friends with fanatic racist Aragorn who kills orks just for being orks. He tortures Gollum to retrieve information. He abandons his "friends" always when they need him most. He may be even a liar. (Mister Gandalf, if you were really hold prisoner on the top of Isengard, how did you get your wand back?) And power-hungry as he is, he goes far beyond his orders to "help and assist" and becomes the leader of the alliance against Sauron. (Gandalf - ripped out of the fairytale context - makes me believe that there is only one thing worse than a fanatic who pretends being sent by the gods : A fanatic who really is.)

In fact, Gandalf reminds me a real-world person who also wears a beard, a dress and a funny hat, who feels also he has been send by some divinity, who also is full of hatred on what he considers the "Empire of Evil", and who also sends naïve innocents on suicide missions to destroy what's most precious to his enemies :



As said, this is only under the hypothesis that Gandalf would be teared out of the "fairytale" context. As character in Lord of the Rings, I like and admire Gandalf.

But I'm digressing. The point is, you can't transfer the "Good vs. Evil" schema from Lord of the Rings to reality. In reality, "Good" is not a question of what flag you are fighting under, it's a question of ethics, of behaviour. If you define "Good = Us, Evil = Them", you are applying exactly the same logic as Al-Qaeda.

When you run over some creature with a green face in Middle Earth, you can assume that it'is evil, and kill it the most cruel way that comes to your mind, it will be okay. But you can't do the same in reality. Here's a photo of a real person with a green face:



His name is Omar Khadr, he is 15. His face is green because he just got shot into the back by an US soldier, twice. He is more or less what you call a "child soldier", and his only sin was that he maybe did what soldiers are supposed to do: Kill enemy soldiers. The shooting left him blind on one eye. And as he lies there, his life is just about to become worse: He will be sent to Guantanamo and, among other humiliations, be used as a human mop to clean urine on the floor. You can read the full story in this article.

Jesus said: "What you did to the least of my brothers, you have done to me." (Matthew 25: 40) Think about it when you look at the photo. I'm pretty sure that when it comes to the Last Judgement, having used Jesus as human mob will not speak in favour of the jailors of Guantanamo.

That's not how I thread my prisoners of war, and i would have executed every officer of mine who threatens prisoners this way. Don't these jailors have any honour? Why do their threat their prisoners like human scum, even children? The answer why they do so is, maybe, in one of the first responses to the article I mentioned:

Frightening. That's exactly the attitude that let me to writing this post. We are not in LotR - this is reality. And in reality, "good" and "bad" is not a question of sides, but of ethics. And using a prisoner of war as human mob to clean urine on the floor is not what I call an ethical behaviour.

(Oh, and by the way: Renaming "prisoners of war" into "enemy combatants" to avoid written or unwritten conventions about the treatment of prisoners of war does not help anything.)

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not telling you to turn your swords into ploughshares. I'm not telling you to make peace, not war. War have ever existed and will ever exist. I'm currently making war against Austrian Habsbourg and their allies.

But please, please, stop claiming that you are fighting because you are the good guys and they are the bad guys. They are your enemies, but they are not evil for being your enemies. I have probably made more wars than most of you, and I can tell you: Since the dawn of mankind, no war has ever been made for ethics. Wars are made for politics, ideology, territory and such, but never ever for "good" and "evil".

Pardon? You don't agree? The War of Secession, to free the poor slaves? Nonsense. This war will be fought to save the Union, not to free the slaves.

That's what was(will be) behind this war - everything else is war propaganda. In fact, every time someone tells you that you are the good guys and that he wants you to fight the evil guys, you can be pretty sure that it's war propaganda. Bin Laden tells the same thing to his people.

I feel that you still don't agree. I feel that you will object that I'm not well informed down here in 1708, that in your time, at least one intervention of America was a "Good vs. Evil" fight: The intervention in WW2, as it stopped a genocide. I agree that it did stop the genocide - but this was not the reason, it was a side-effect. America didn't intervene because Hitler was slaughtering the Jews - it intervened because he was taking over Europe. If the Allies would have wanted to stop the genocide, they would have bombarded the railroad to Auschwitz with their flying machines, but they didn't. So, stopping the "Evil" was not a priority. Stopping the growth of a rival superpower in Europe was. It wasn't about ethics, it was about politics. As always.

You see, I'm not that uninformed. I might live in 1708, but I've got Internet. However, with a terrible bandwidth.

That's why I think that the meaning of the words "Good" and "Evil" in the Lord of the Rings is not the same as in reality. And that's why I think you should not read this book unless you do realize this difference. This is a wonderful book, but dangerous if read by the simple minds. You are not Elrond, people, I'm not king Aragorn, and Omar Khadr is not an ork. We are all humans who have to question every step we do, and we will once be judged by what we did, not by what flag we were fighting for.

Elves and Ringwraiths, Hobbits and Orks, Gandalf and Saruman, Aragorn and Sauron, Peace and War, Light and Darkness, White and Black, America and Al-Qaeda, GIs and Terrorists, Christendom and Islam, Good and Evil - do you really think it is so simple?



Edit: Encouraged by divine Dwam, submitted this blog entry as news. Wish me luck!
Edit: Yay, it's online! Thanks, crispy, for the fast review and correction of the article!

What is Art?

Unlike many people on this site, I'm not an artist, although I have always been patron of fine Arts in France, and as such the propoter of artists such as Molière, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Charles Le Brun. Some adulators even called me the "leader of the muses", like Apollo Musagetes. But there are certainly a lot of people on this site who know mor about art than I do.

I'm living in baroque, where art seems to be relatively simple to distinguish from non-art. For us baroque people, art is what's

• manmade, and


• beautiful

This holds for all kind of artwork - be it a painting, a sculpture, an opera, a park, a building, a dress, a novel or whatever. This definition shifts, of course, the question "What is Art?" to the much more tricky question "What is beauty?" - but for now, let's put this other question aside.

This is the baroque conception of art. However, when considering art of your time, I realize that "manmade beauty" may be just one side of art. Art is not always beautiful, at least when you take "beautiful" in the sense "pleasant for the senses". Art can be disturbing, revolting, even shocking. Picassos "Guernica" is certainly anything but pleasant - yet it's great art.



This does not only hold for artworks of your time and my future. Tragedies like King Oidipos or Macbeth are certainly not pleasant, yet they are art. Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece is certainly anything but pleasant: A crucified Christ whose skin is full of wounds and abscesses.



More generally, the passion and crucification of our Lord has always been a disturbing, even shocking subject of art. It's troubling for happy and satisfied people, yet consoling for people who are suffering for themselves. Your time has even more pushed forward the disturbing aspect of art - I can't easily imagine someone being consoled from the Guernica. But in any case, be it pleasant or disturbing, art provokes emotions.

Is this the point? Is art anything that's manmade and provokes emotions?

If this would be the case, a public execution or torture would be art - which is certainly not the case. Yet some people seem to believe that art is everything that provokes emotions - like this young man FearTheReaper mentioned in todays "Asshole Fuckface Roundup" who did public coprophiliac acts with a tied-up person as "art performance". Even on this site, this pattern can appear - It's not so long ago that the SG community was shattered by a shocking and disgusting "set" which was certainly not art.

But why do some believe that they become artists by shocking people? This seems to come from a formal fallacy known as Fallacy of the Consequent. It goes like this:

True art provokes emotions
My creation provokes emotions
---------------------------------------
Hence, my creation is true art

Which is, of course, nonsense. A similar "artist's fallacy", very popular in your century, goes like this:

True art is not understood by coevals
My creation is not understood by coevals
-----------------------------------------------
Hence, my creation is true art

I've the impression that in your time, there are legions of pseudo-artists who believe in this fallacy, and who make their patrons believe in this fallacy. In consequence, museums are full of ununderstandable pseudo-art like wholly black canvasses, dirty bathtubs or pieces of scrab, and full of visitors who think "I don't understand this, hence it must be art created by a real genius". Which does, of course, not mean that all artworks in your museums are worthless.

But back to the definition of art. If provoking emotions is not enough to create art - what is then art? I've the impression that the initial "manmade beauty" definition still comes very near to the truth - if we don't limit beauty to what's pleasant to the senses. Beauty is certainly more. The Guernica is not pleasant - but beautiful, in a strange way. Grünewald's Christ is beautiful, in a disturbing way. On the other side, something can be pleasant to the senses, but without being beautiful, because it's too simple. In the Holy Empire they have a word for this: "Kitsch". Does art equal "manmad beauty" ? Maybe. I don't know.

With this approach, we are, alas!, back to the question "What is beauty"? I don't know how to define beauty, even if I have some ideas about this subject. But enough for today - maybe I'll describe my ideas about beauty in another entry...

But now I ask you, dear reader, whether you are artist or not: What do you think? What is art?

What is television for?

When I first read about this fabulous invention called "television" on your electrical net, I thought it was kind of a mechanized Punch and Judy show. I imagined that the spectators choose what play they want to see, start the television's sophisticated mechanism and then watch the play - or the news or whatever he wants to see. I thought television was mainly used for entertainment (like theater plays) and information (like newspapers).

But it seems I am wrong - many people seem to use it as "background noise box". A female 21th century friend reported me that many people have the television apparatus running all day long, whether they watch or not. She asked a friend why he leaves the apparatus running, he replied "When it's off, I feel lonely" - which is a bit strange because this man lives with his charming wife, three children, a mistress, three cats and a goldfish. (Ok, ok, I made up the mistress and the third cat but you get the idea.) Other people gave similar responses. It seems that many of your coevals use this apparatus not for entertainment but for having a "background noise".

Personally I don't understand this. I wouldn't support a constantly talking box in my apartments. I once had a mistress like this, talking all the time without saying anything, no matter whether I listened or not. I quit her after one week, I couldn't bear it. Of course, I like background music, like a string quartet during breakfast, but that's not the same as a talking box (or mistress). I'm not saying is a vice to let the TV run all day long, I just can't get it.

So, dear readers, could you please answer me two questions:

• Do you have your television running all day long ?


• If yes, why ?

On religious politicians

Every time I hear US politicians blather aboud God, I get annoyed. Some of them may use religion just to get votes, but some of them - and that's the worst kind - seem really to think that God is on their side. Would god vote republican? Is the war in Irak god's will? Sometimes I wish that the Allmighty would form a habit of striking by lightning everybody who claims exactly knowing His will.

Maybe you are surprised to read such harsh words by me, the very catholic majesty Louis XIV. But let me tell you that there is a crucial difference between a christian monarch and a "christian" politician in a democracy. The point is the following:

Nobody becomes king or president by coincidence. Every leader or monarch gets his power from someone, be it God, the people, a superior leader - whoever. In consequence, the monarch is responsible to the person or persons who put him in charge. Pilatus was responsible to the roman emperor. An elected leader is responsible to the people who elected him. I, king of France and Navarre by the grace of God, am responsible to God.

That means that I am not a despot, I cannot do what I want without consequences. I once said "When you can do what you want, it's not easy to only want what you are due to." ("Quand on peut tout ce que l'on veut, il n'est pas aisé de ne vouloir que ce que l'on doit.") I am responsible to God for my acts. "Whatever I do, I will have to answer for to the Allmighty. " That does not mean that I have an idea what's His will, it means that when I do a bad job, He will (excuse my french) kick my royal ass. I don't claim to have done everything right - Lord knows I haven't. Even when I thought I did His will, it sometimes turned out that maybe it wasn't - for example the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But I know that for all my acts, I will have to answer to God, so I try to do my very best. This attitude makes me think twice about every act, and, more important, it makes me humble. I may be the Sun King, before God I am nothing. That's what it means to be a christian monarch.

History - particularly the part of your history which is still my future - knows monarchs and leaders who have been put in charge by themselves, and feel in consequence answerable to noone. Napoleon. Stalin. Hitler. They were not christian leaders, they were tyrants. Europe - your Europe - has seen what happens when such a monster is unleased.

But what about so called "christian" politicians in a democracy? Well, they have been elected by people, so they are responsible not to God, but to people. In consequence, they should not primarly serve God, or an abstract "Nation", but the people. By serving people, they will please god - not by praising Him and claiming to speak in His name. Besides this, those who claim speaking and acting in His name are the worst of all. Like, "Whatever I do, I will have the Allmighty on my side." That's not only stupid, that's highly dangerous, because it leads to the hybris of always doing the right thing. The worst and longest wars are those where both sides claim to have the Allmighty on their side.

To resume, beeing a christian monarch makes humble, beeing a "christian" politician may lead to a dangerous hybris. That's why I, a christian monarch, distust "christian" politicians in a democracy. Although I think that 21th century's France goes too far with their strict separation of religion and politics, I admit that it has it's advantages.

On a side-note : Am I the only one who has the impression that all those oh-so-christian US politicians who always blather about Jesus only know the Old Testament?

(Sometimes I have the impression that it was a bad idea to put Europe's worst religious fanatics and trigger-happy adventurers on boats and to tell them to sail far, far away to found whatever Jesus-and-firearms nation would come to their mind. Because they did... )

On time loops

Sir grayness posed me an interesting question:

I discussed this question extensively with Samuel Madden, a young Irish inventor born in 1686, who was the first to connect to your "Internet". It's due to his invention that I'm able to write you this letter. In fact, the fundamental question is not "What happens when you change future?" but "Is it possible to change future?"

The answer is: No, it's impossible. We can build future, or destiny, or "timeline" as you might call it, by making descisions, and we're doing it all the time - but we cannot change timeline. Change is per se a temporal process, a succession of events on the timeline. Changing timeline would mean that the timeline follows a second timeline, which is per se impossible. There is no timeline "before" and timeline "after", because "before" and "after" are notions within the timeline.

Consider time as a giant clockwork. The 1700's cogwheels link to the 1710s cogwheels, which link to the 1720s cogwheels and so on.



In case of knowlege moving backwards to the past, as by Madden's invention, there is a loop in the chain of cogwheels - but the clockwork is build such that the loop does not break the mechanism. Why? Honestly I don't know. As Christian, I believe that the creator built the clockwork such that it does not break. Others may think that a Demiurge or Fortuna or whoever build thousands of clockworks, most of them defective, and we are part of the clockwork that works. Why is our clockwork working? The question has no sense - it's like standing on an island and wondering why the creator put some land just under your feet.

If you still wonder why looking into the future does not change present, consider it the other way round: There has never been a present where I was not looking into the future. If you look into your history books, you may discover that up to now, I have always loved wars. But you may also discover that on my deathbed, I will advise my successor not to imitate me, particularly concerning wars with our neighbours. What your history books don't tell is that I changed my opinion after having contact with 21th century's ideas, in particular the ideas that war is a sign of failor of politics, and that peace is a constructive element of civilization. I even consider demanding peace to Habsburg to end the current war - maybe next year. You can look up in your history books whether or not I will do - personally I try to avoid to inform myself on my own future decisions, it would be like cheating in a cards game by looking what cards are coming. Again, I don't use what I know of your time to change the future - only to construct it.

Two questions may remain. Firstly, how can I say that I construct future while believing that the clockwork of time has already been constructed? In other words, where is the free will in all that? Honestly I don't know. I do believe in destiny, and I do believe in free will - although the two ideas seem contradictory. It's a question too big for our mind to answer.

Is there a destiny or a free will? Both, and none of them. Is light a wave or a stream or particles? Both, and none of them - according to your scientists. Is a pyramid a triangle or a square? Both, and none of them.

The second question is, why does history not know of my secret connection to the future? Because I keep it a secret. Not because I fear a change of future - this is impossible. But because I fear another phenomenon: Cultural shock. When two cultures on different stages of development clash together on a large scale, the effet is usually catastrophic for the less developped one. It happened to the natives in european colonies, and it would happen to 18th century France if the whole population would start surfing in the Internet.

It's for the same reason that Samuel Maddens "Memoirs Of the Twentieth Century", to appear 1733, will only be vaguely inspired by what he learned about your time. At least that's what he promised me.

Who killed Epicurus?

I decided to write an electric diary, what you people call a "blog". I will not write about the daily life at Versailles or the War of Spanish Succession - that's stuff you can look up in every history book. I'll rather write about how I, the Sun King, am perceiving your century. You're living in a world that seems like Utopia for me - you guys would call it "science fiction". It's not only about flying ships, thinking machines and speaking boxes - it's about wholly different ideas, lifestyles, concepts. It would be interesting to write about this. And maybe - just maybe - it would be interesting for you to get kind of an "outside view" on your world.

When you read my diary, please don't forget that I'm writing from the year 1707. Some might consider me as a racist, a warmonger, an intolerant person, a misogynist, a tyrant. But those who do forget that my time does not know concepts like human rights or feminism. It's like accusing Moses of not respecting the new testament, or blaming Galilee for disregarding relativity theory.

(Besides this, if I would be, say, reborn in your time, I would probably have wholly different political convictions. So the opinions of the 18th-century-Louis have nothing to do with the convictions of a hypothetical 21th-century-twin. I'm not sure whether you get it what I'm trying to say. Never mind.)

Let's start with something not-so-political. One of the 21th-century concepts that puzzles me is the concept of Diet Coke. That's of course a pars pro toto for your whole "thin is beautiful" paradigm. In my time, corpulent women are considered attractive. (Personally I like both variants, thin and corpulent.) When a person is thick, this shows that he or she is a bon vivant, an epicure. So, being corpulent is a sign for joie de vivre, for zest for life, for vitality. In one word, pleasure is positive.

Your era seems to inverse this idea. Thickness counts as ugly, being thin is a necessary condition for being beautiful. (I'm talking of general 21th century fashion, not of SG where things are a bit different.) Little girls get skeleton-like puppets as toys, fashion is presented by skinny "supermodels", teenagers starve themselves to death. Sugar and fat are demonized, science creates food and drinks without any nutritional value. In consequence, the pleasure of eating is ruined by bad conscience. You're either hungry or ashamed. In one word, pleasure is negative, suffering is positive.

And the pleasure of eating is not the only pleasure that is "forbidden". Smoking is banned from public life. Sex and nudity are considered dirty (not on SG, of course). Political leaders broad about not drinking alcohol. Even playing tag is forbidden in some schools. A lot of people seem to follow the unofficial motto of Puritanism : "You can do what you want as long as you don't enjoy it." In order to get eternal life, they killed Epicurus. What a shame.



(The funny thing about Puritanism is that it even is contradictory to the new testament. The Lord himself was considered as "glutton and drunkard" - see Matthew 11, 19 - and His first wonder was to save an alcohol shortage on a wedding.)

Luckily, this Puritanism seems to keep out of Suicide Girls. When I discover girls of all weight classes on this site, when I see beautiful Baroness Tea proudly presenting her delicious chocolate-banana-cream cake or divine Flux waxing lyrical about butter, I say to myself : There is hope.

Maybe Epicurus is not dead...