In 1398 a ruthless guy named Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) had his soldiers kill 100,000 Hindu people. Like those he killed, Tamerlane is dead. The Great Leveler makes a mockery of Pride’s seeking Power.
Those who might argue that we all possess an a priori knowledge that underlies experience need to look around. Pride’s seeking Power never leaves the planet, but the Great Leveler mocks it. If we truly had a priori knowledge, the Proud might not repeat the atrocities or even petty cruelties they perpetrated in the past. But of course, every generation has Tamerlanes.
One fact we do know is that no amount of learning seems to save the Proud of any generation from the final mockery. Of course, I’m not the first to say this. Percy Bysshe Shelley captured the thought more eloquently in his poem “Ozymandias.” The poem tells of a great king and the Leveler. The inscription on the pedestal of an ancient fallen statue of Ozymandias reads, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.” Nothing, of course, remains of those works. They have gone the same way as Timur the Lame and his empire—into the hands of the Great Leveler.
The lesson of Death never seems to come with foreknowledge in the Proud. If we had a priori knowledge, ensuing generations might never see Pride seek Power. With a warning, with foreknowledge, possibly, one hundred thousand Hindu people would have lived longer. And today, those who suffer or perish because of Pride’s seeking Power might neither needlessly suffer nor prematurely perish.
There’s no consolation in the final mockery of the Proud, of course. When the Great Leveler acts on the Proud who sought Power, it is after their cruel effect. And no one born into the succeeding generation seems to carry innately the lesson of the final mockery. Tamerlane and Ozymandias are dead, but so are those on whom they inflicted suffering and death. That’s a sad fact.
Will anyone ever be born with an a priori warning? If someone were born with innate foreknowledge, could that person convince the Proud that their end is foreshadowed by the ruins of empires?
Those who might argue that we all possess an a priori knowledge that underlies experience need to look around. Pride’s seeking Power never leaves the planet, but the Great Leveler mocks it. If we truly had a priori knowledge, the Proud might not repeat the atrocities or even petty cruelties they perpetrated in the past. But of course, every generation has Tamerlanes.
One fact we do know is that no amount of learning seems to save the Proud of any generation from the final mockery. Of course, I’m not the first to say this. Percy Bysshe Shelley captured the thought more eloquently in his poem “Ozymandias.” The poem tells of a great king and the Leveler. The inscription on the pedestal of an ancient fallen statue of Ozymandias reads, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.” Nothing, of course, remains of those works. They have gone the same way as Timur the Lame and his empire—into the hands of the Great Leveler.
The lesson of Death never seems to come with foreknowledge in the Proud. If we had a priori knowledge, ensuing generations might never see Pride seek Power. With a warning, with foreknowledge, possibly, one hundred thousand Hindu people would have lived longer. And today, those who suffer or perish because of Pride’s seeking Power might neither needlessly suffer nor prematurely perish.
There’s no consolation in the final mockery of the Proud, of course. When the Great Leveler acts on the Proud who sought Power, it is after their cruel effect. And no one born into the succeeding generation seems to carry innately the lesson of the final mockery. Tamerlane and Ozymandias are dead, but so are those on whom they inflicted suffering and death. That’s a sad fact.
Will anyone ever be born with an a priori warning? If someone were born with innate foreknowledge, could that person convince the Proud that their end is foreshadowed by the ruins of empires?
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