In charge of things
Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:20 pm
Once upon a time, there was a young man who wanted to know who was running the world. The people around him told him to go ask the politicians, since in theory those were the ones in whom authority over the world had been invested.
So the young man went to the politicians and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Heavens no," the politicians said, denying responsibility as they often did. "We'd never be able to control the world by ourselves. We need the backing of the military to keep our reins in place."
So the young man went to the military and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Hell no," the military said. "We'd never be able to back up the politicians without our weapons, and we'd never have our weapons if we didn't get them from the physicists."
So the young man went to the physicists and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Oh, no," they said. "We'd never be able to come up with the theories of physics that lead to the weapons used by the military to back up the politicians, unless the mathematicians told us how to formulate our theories."
So the young man went to the mathematicians and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"No," the mathematicians said. "If it weren't for the philosophers figuring out how logic works, we'd never be able to argue for the mathematics that end up underlying physics."
So at last the young man went to the philosophers and asked them if they controlled the world. "Maybe," they said, "but we prefer asking questions to issuing commands, so it's not likely that we're actually in control of anything."
Meanwhile, the theologians, who the young man never spoke with, continued to serve the being Who was, let us suppose, in control of the world, except that It had given humanity free will such that no one was supposed to be totally in control of the world anyway.
So the young man went to the politicians and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Heavens no," the politicians said, denying responsibility as they often did. "We'd never be able to control the world by ourselves. We need the backing of the military to keep our reins in place."
So the young man went to the military and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Hell no," the military said. "We'd never be able to back up the politicians without our weapons, and we'd never have our weapons if we didn't get them from the physicists."
So the young man went to the physicists and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"Oh, no," they said. "We'd never be able to come up with the theories of physics that lead to the weapons used by the military to back up the politicians, unless the mathematicians told us how to formulate our theories."
So the young man went to the mathematicians and asked them, "Do you control the world?"
"No," the mathematicians said. "If it weren't for the philosophers figuring out how logic works, we'd never be able to argue for the mathematics that end up underlying physics."
So at last the young man went to the philosophers and asked them if they controlled the world. "Maybe," they said, "but we prefer asking questions to issuing commands, so it's not likely that we're actually in control of anything."
Meanwhile, the theologians, who the young man never spoke with, continued to serve the being Who was, let us suppose, in control of the world, except that It had given humanity free will such that no one was supposed to be totally in control of the world anyway.
