I don’t blame you for being skeptical. You are surrounded with doubtful claims and fictions of every sort. Hard not to be a bit cynical about the world as is. But you aren’t living in the first Age of Doubt.
You know the story of the sword in the stone? Remember? Arthur pulled the sword from the anvil and stone and became king. Fiction? Probably, but the story foreshadows our own doubts about today’s many claims, both true and false. People have always demanded proof when something just doesn’t seem right, when something counterintuitive seems to occur, when the matter at hand doesn’t quite fit into a template. Proof and trust: One is embedded in the other like the famous sword in the stone.
In chapters 5-7 of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur young Arthur has to pull out the sword a number of times because no one believes him. His first attempt: Sent to retrieve his stepbrother Sir Kay’s sword at home and finding no one to help, Arthur remembers there is another sword outside the cathedral, so he takes that one to Sir Kay. “Hey! Where did you get this sword, Arthur?” his stepfather then asks. No one saw the first extraction, so Arthur has to demonstrate for stepfather and stepbrother his ability. He puts the sword back. They try and fail to extract it. He does so again. Subsequent attempts: The knights of the realm don’t believe a kid can do what they have failed to do, so he performs the trick at Christmas, at Candlemas, at Easter, and again at Pentecost. (“How many times do I have to do this in front of witnesses?” you can imagine his asking)
All right, that story of skepticism is fiction (unless an “Arthur” knew some trick the others didn’t, much like a modern magician performing a seemingly impossible task in some Vegas stage show). If there was a real King Arthur, he lived a long time ago, maybe at a time not long after Rome fell and lost its grip on Britain. Arthur’s story traveled around Europe and back to England, where Caxton published Malory’s account in the fifteenth century about a millennium after the days of any “real” Arthur.
How many sword extractions do you need to believe someone? “Prove it” is a reasonable demand. Science does that all the time. “Prove it,” then prove it again, and again. In science there’s no end to the demand. Anything worthy of the designation “theory” or “fact” is never completely final. Even when in the main a theory is proven, it often has questionable parts.
But what about nonscientific stuff? The everyday stuff? The stuff of relationships. Or what about the statements or acts of those entrusted with power or responsibility of any kind? Once the sword has been extracted not once, but twice or several times, do you still need to see yet another proof?
Time to ask yourself if you have asked some Arthur in your life to prove something multiple times even though each previous demonstration had the same result. In the story, Arthur willingly submits to the requests. When at Pentecost the knights apologize to him for making him repeatedly demonstrate his ability to pull the sword from the stone, they kneel and accept his claim to the throne. Arthur’s response? He forgives them.
And now it’s time to recall when you were asked for additional proof of something (Whatever: loyalty, behavior, belief). Did you willingly and patiently provide it? Oh! And when they who questioned you finally accepted your proof, did you, like the young king, forgive them for doubting you? If you didn’t, then why would you expect someone else to be a modern Arthur?
You know the story of the sword in the stone? Remember? Arthur pulled the sword from the anvil and stone and became king. Fiction? Probably, but the story foreshadows our own doubts about today’s many claims, both true and false. People have always demanded proof when something just doesn’t seem right, when something counterintuitive seems to occur, when the matter at hand doesn’t quite fit into a template. Proof and trust: One is embedded in the other like the famous sword in the stone.
In chapters 5-7 of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur young Arthur has to pull out the sword a number of times because no one believes him. His first attempt: Sent to retrieve his stepbrother Sir Kay’s sword at home and finding no one to help, Arthur remembers there is another sword outside the cathedral, so he takes that one to Sir Kay. “Hey! Where did you get this sword, Arthur?” his stepfather then asks. No one saw the first extraction, so Arthur has to demonstrate for stepfather and stepbrother his ability. He puts the sword back. They try and fail to extract it. He does so again. Subsequent attempts: The knights of the realm don’t believe a kid can do what they have failed to do, so he performs the trick at Christmas, at Candlemas, at Easter, and again at Pentecost. (“How many times do I have to do this in front of witnesses?” you can imagine his asking)
All right, that story of skepticism is fiction (unless an “Arthur” knew some trick the others didn’t, much like a modern magician performing a seemingly impossible task in some Vegas stage show). If there was a real King Arthur, he lived a long time ago, maybe at a time not long after Rome fell and lost its grip on Britain. Arthur’s story traveled around Europe and back to England, where Caxton published Malory’s account in the fifteenth century about a millennium after the days of any “real” Arthur.
How many sword extractions do you need to believe someone? “Prove it” is a reasonable demand. Science does that all the time. “Prove it,” then prove it again, and again. In science there’s no end to the demand. Anything worthy of the designation “theory” or “fact” is never completely final. Even when in the main a theory is proven, it often has questionable parts.
But what about nonscientific stuff? The everyday stuff? The stuff of relationships. Or what about the statements or acts of those entrusted with power or responsibility of any kind? Once the sword has been extracted not once, but twice or several times, do you still need to see yet another proof?
Time to ask yourself if you have asked some Arthur in your life to prove something multiple times even though each previous demonstration had the same result. In the story, Arthur willingly submits to the requests. When at Pentecost the knights apologize to him for making him repeatedly demonstrate his ability to pull the sword from the stone, they kneel and accept his claim to the throne. Arthur’s response? He forgives them.
And now it’s time to recall when you were asked for additional proof of something (Whatever: loyalty, behavior, belief). Did you willingly and patiently provide it? Oh! And when they who questioned you finally accepted your proof, did you, like the young king, forgive them for doubting you? If you didn’t, then why would you expect someone else to be a modern Arthur?
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