I would like, if I may, to ask you for a minute or two to
imagine.
Imagine living in a faraway land of witches and werewolves
and wizards.
In that land you are not a hero or a villain, you are one of
the ordinary villagers that are seen milling around the village square as you
buy provisions at the market.
In that magical faraway land your village, let’s call it
Albionia, is a nice place to live. It’s so nice most people in the whole
Kingdom would say it’s one of the best villages to live in.
There’s always supplies at the market. No one has had to
really fear ogres or giants for years and years and most of the villagers are
happy. But not all of them.
Some of the villagers are worried that folk from other villages
want to move to Albionia. Some villagers are upset that the lord of the manor
no longer makes all of the laws, some of them are made in a far flung part of
the Kingdom.
Can you see where I’m going yet? Subtlety is not a speciality.
So, anyway, one day the lord of the manor says to all of the
villagers that they can move to a new, possibly even better village. Although
on the other hand the village might not be any better than the one where they
live now.
To get to the new village all that they have to do is walk
down a path, but there is a problem, every villager should take the path or
none at all.
The villagers that aren’t happy say moving to a better
village is what everyone should do.
They say “The new village will definitely, almost certainly,
possibly be better” even though they live in a nice village right now.
What would you do?
One sunny day a few weeks before all of the villagers are
due to hold a vote to make their decision, the Lord of the Manor makes a new announcement.
“My dear villagers. When I told you about the path to what
might become our new village I forgot to mention something to you.” He said.
“Once you decide to leave our village, once you start along
that path, there is absolutely no turning back. You will have made your
decision.”
What would you do
now?
A few days later a group of very experienced woodsmen ride
into your village to stay for a night. They are woodsmen who know about science
and politics and business and a whole host of other important things. One of
the woodsmen even happens to be the King of the most powerful land in the whole
of your enchanted planet.
The woodsmen rise almost as one and say “Although your new
village may or may not be better than this lovely one the path you will have to
take is treacherous.
“There may well be dangers along the path, dangers which
even with all of our experience are impossible to predict.”
“All we know is that if you have started on the path, no
matter what, you can’t turn back and return to this very nice village.”
What would you do
now?
Now if you were a gung ho type of fellow you might say “WTF,
let’s take the path”
But most of us are not.
It’s not a fairy story to worry about walking into the
unknown with no option of turning back.
It’s not even Project Fear.
It’s called being sensible.
Seriously, when you are faced with a decision which is full
of uncertainty and a point of no return, surely is plain old common sense to
say “actually, my village right now is pretty splendid, why would I want to
step into the unknown for something which isn’t guaranteed to be any better
than I already have?”
In our far off land there are many, many types of people.
Maybe you could be like a little pig who builds his house
out of straw?
You could but most villagers are a lot more sensible than
that.
