A Modern Fable
There once lived a good queen in a faraway kingdom of much splendor and wealth and her people loved her greatly, so much so that they continually sought to bestow upon her the grandest gifts within their means.
One day the queen was informed by her royal servant that a blacksmith from beyond the moor sought her attention. She obliged this request and moments later observed a stout and ruddy man – the blacksmith presumably – bearing the burden of what appeared to be a rather cumbersome object across the threshold of her court, though she could not say with any degree of certainty what it was, for it was obscured by a silken covering that had been draped over it whether for the element of surprise or to preserve its integrity.
The blacksmith placed the object on the floor before the queen and unveiled the gift, revealing a black box, knee high and of the same width and depth. He explained that the strange item before her was the culmination of a fortuitous series of events. It was of a consistency different than the iron with which he had been accustomed to forging axe heads, chariot hitches, and armaments. A new material for a new device, never before witnessed in the queen’s kingdom, nor any other.
The material, he said he acquired from a woman of the north woods who had been wrestling a sheaf of strangely shaped and slightly odorous arm-length rods onto her wagon when he approached her to offer assistance. Upon inquiring of this foreign material, the blacksmith was freely given several of the rods by the woman. To his great doubt she assured him that the strange material was enchanted and that should he smelt it and cast it into any form, it would produce a rare magic that would bring great power to whoever wielded it. Though doubt he did, the blacksmith sought to enhance his skill with this new material, and he took of it as it was freely given.
The blacksmith explained to the queen that he knew not what to fashion with the substance, but as he smelted it, it began to take a form of its own, becoming a simple box enclosed on all sides. This he nearly destroyed for its lack of function, that is until he observed an image flash across the facets of the contraption. The image was difficult to ascertain but it appeared to be a projection of the royal palace. This indeed was strange magic. Perhaps the royal palace is where the box desired to be, thought the blacksmith, if such a thing could be said of inanimate matter, which, by all of his experience, should bear no semblance of sentience at all. The box should regardless be placed in the custody of the wise queen, he reasoned, as the woman of the north woods spoke of its power, and he did not desire power, nor did he desire anyone else to have it, for the queen had proven herself worthy to rule in all her virtuous and wise dictates.
The queen thanked the blacksmith for the alien device he had bequeathed to her and sent him on his way with two sacks of flour, a large elk skin, and a chalice of fine craftsmanship as tokens of her appreciation. The box was carried to her sleeping quarters where she could observe it in privacy.
The queen did not at first observe anything unnatural about the blacksmith’s gift, save the unusual material – not wood, not iron, not stone – from which it was constructed. But then as she was preparing for her slumber, she witnessed something most strange. The facet of the box that most directly faced the queen began to illuminate and images that were familiar to her began to move across it. She beheld a kind of living painting of the Eastern Kingdom. This, she mused, is certainly what the oracles must experience when they gaze into their crystalline spheres to glean portents of the futures of their incurably curious customers.
Intrigue yielded to alarm when the queen observed the cavalry of the East mounting their steeds in battle armaments and taking to the well-trodden thoroughfare that directly connected the East Kingdom to hers. She was instantly possessed of the knowledge that these events were transpiring in real time and she was witnessing the subversion of her kingdom beginning to take place right before her on the face of the magic box.
The queen immediately informed her generals that the Eastern Kingdom would be upon them soon. The trumpets sounded and the queen’s warriors assembled with great speed. They met the cavalry of the Eastern Kingdom on either side and closed them in and were victorious, sustaining only minimal damages.
The noblemen were in awe of the queen’s prescience and wisdom and a great banquet was held in her honor. She was elated and marveled at the great power contained in the blacksmith’s box, though she did not disclose the nature of the device even to her closest confidants as such a great power would surely be coveted.
The box at first illuminated only on occasion but as time passed it seemed as though it was only on rare occasions that it was not presenting images to the queen; images of distant lands, ships at sea, hunters stalking through the woods, sheep grazing in meadows, children sleeping in their beds, maidens baking bread, and even the heavenly bodies that shone above on clear nights. She was able to observe the political discourse of foreign governments and thereby retain her power in the same fashion as she had dealt with the Eastern Kingdom. But she was at the mercy of what the box chose to disclose to her and was therefore grateful that whatever consciousness spoke through it appeared to be partial to her success and wellbeing.
It came to pass that the queen relied on the box for nearly everything. If she wanted to know what would be the quantity and quality of the produce yielded by the year’s harvest, she referred to the box. If she wanted to gain knowledge of whether or not she was in the good graces of foreign peoples, she referred to the box. When she wanted to know the hearts of men, she referred to the box. The box was reliable. The box showed all the mysterious truths of the world.
The queen began to reason that such a gift should not be stowed away within the confines of her sleeping quarters beyond the experience of any others but should rather be enjoyed by all. She would reward her people for their faithful servitude by bequeathing unto every household a magic box of their own. The mysteries of the world should be known by all her people and the truth should never be withheld.
The queen commissioned the services of the blacksmith who successfully located the woman of the north woods and retained copious amounts of the strange material which she informed him sprung forth naturally from the earth deeper into the wood where feet seldom trod. Now familiar with the process of smelting and molding the malleable material, the blacksmith was able to produce enough magic boxes for every household in the kingdom in very little time.
The people were exuberant and every bit enamored with the boxes as the queen was. Another banquet was held in honor of the queen and the noblemen gathered with her to plan for the new system of governance which must now take place as such power would surely alter the conduct of warfare, foreign relations, and many other facets of rulership.
It was a golden era of peace, knowledge, and a greater understanding of the world itself. So many mysteries of the universe were now made known. Things that were once thought to be true were now regarded as misrepresentations of the truth, or falsehoods entirely. Things that had once been derided as unsavory and impious were now understood to be acceptable and natural aspects of the human experience. As defined by the box.
The queen and her kingdom enjoyed several seasons of uninterrupted peace and wellbeing, and the magic boxes were to thank for it. The people, both serfs and noblemen, paid homage to their boxes simply by engaging with them more and more. After a day of plowing the field or shearing sheep or cutting timber, weary workmen would unburden themselves of the days duties by taking their meals in front of the magic boxes, beholding them while they ate. Revelers of the night would behold the magic boxes while they imbibed. Nursing mothers would behold the boxes while their children fed. Youngsters would abandon their chores in favor of observing the magic boxes. The impenetrable philosophical barriers of ages past had been breached, the unanswerable questions from time immemorial had been answered, and the once distinct perspectives of each individual were gradually becoming aligned into a singular worldview. As defined by the box.
It was during this season of tranquility that the queen began to observe in her magic box a series of horrible atrocities. It began with a single incident whereupon a traveler of her own kingdom had been assaulted and robbed by one of the nomads of the surrounding plains. The following week, a nomad was observed to have filled his wagon with sheep from one of the large southerly pastures and made off with it. And almost like clockwork, the week after that, a cottage was set aflame by a nomad of the plains.
The queen’s people, observing from their magic boxes the carnage inflicted upon them by the plainsmen, became outraged and appealed to the queen for swift and just intervention. The queen herself indignant with the vile and disgraceful acts of the plainsmen enlisted a contingent of her best cavalrymen to subdue and detain the offenders to await their trials. The queen’s men were then dispersed into the surrounding plains with the command to execute any nomad that crossed their path lest this apparent nomadic uprising ultimately result in the dissolution of her very kingdom.
While the queen’s righteous anger yet burned, she was visited by a wise sage who asked her, “What have these people of the plains done to have earned their punishment?”
“Have you not beheld it yourself?” the queen replied. “Their impropriety has been displayed on every box throughout my kingdom. To leave such egregious moral errors unchecked is tantamount to condoning the very wicked acts that they are guilty of perpetrating,”
“But my queen,” replied the sage, “I am a bit of a wanderer myself. I was selling sweetcakes the same day at the very location and time the plainsman is said to have robbed our countryman and I observed no such thing occur. The following week I had been assisting a shepherd in the very pasture where it is said a plainsman had fled with a wagon load of stolen sheep and I observed no such thing occur. The following week, after receiving news of a cottage being set aflame, I sought the location of the incident with a gift of 7 weeks wages to bestow upon the unfortunate victims of the arson, but after searching all day I was unable to locate any such scorched abode.”
At this, the queen was troubled. Her entire kingdom was possessed of a vitriol for the nomads of the plains, a righteous rage inspired by the fears imprinted upon them by the images conveyed by their magic boxes. But, the queen thought to herself, could it be that the magic box is not beholden to the truth? Perhaps the peoples’ perception of the nomads, though held with such unshakable conviction, is nothing more than an implanted belief.”
“What shall I do?” the queen asked the sage.
“Perhaps to settle the matter in your mind, the veracity of the imagery projected by the magic boxes should be validated or invalidated by impartial investigators,” replied the sage.
The queen initiated an investigation into the matter as the sage had suggested. Upon completion of the investigation, the constable shared the results with the queen: “A merchant did lose an undetermined amount of coinage while traveling the eastern road, however, he was not robbed of it and certainly not assaulted by a nomad or anyone else. The following week, two sheep escaped their enclosure, but this occurred in one of the west pastures, not the large southerly pasture, and again, no plainsmen were involved. The week after that, a segment of straw overhanging the eaves of a cottage on the western block caught flame when the man of the house became intoxicated and cast the remaining embers of his pipe into the air for reasons unbeknownst to any man, even himself, but it was promptly doused and extinguished. My queen, we have not only been unable to establish the involvement of any plainsmen in any of these crimes, we have been unable to establish that any crimes have occurred at all.”
With this the queen grew skeptical of the magic boxes. Perhaps the messages they convey are at times in error, she thought. Or perhaps whatever mystical force gives them life is not one of benevolence, but of cunning and deceit.
With new scrutiny, the queen observed the images and messages presented by her magic box, and by extension, the magic boxes of all of her kingdom, as the images displayed by all were synonymous. That is when the box began to speak to her. It said many things, most often in simple statements such as, Do not trust the nomads. Observe me. This is how the world operates. Do not ask questions. Continue to observe me. Follow me. Your safety is in jeopardy. Hear me or suffer consequences. The people of the wood will never harm you. I have authority. Trust me more than you trust your own eyes. Never fail to observe me. I am your source of truth. Calamity approaches. Subject yourself to me for salvation. You must observe me.
The queen again sought the aid of her royal investigators, sending them to interrogate the blacksmith, for she was determined to unveil the source that energized this black box that demanded obeisance and spouted lies.
It was not long before the investigation was completed and the constable again stood before the queen to report the findings. “My queen, we have found the blacksmith to be of sound mind and upright character. His testimony proved reliable. We do not believe he acted with any ill intent in gifting you with the box, but was rather an unwitting accessory to a malevolent plot. He led us to the wood where the woman had supplied him with the materials for the boxes and there we did locate the woman and questioned her at her cottage. Upon our immediate introduction she appeared to be comely and pleasant, however, under questioning she adopted a sour demeanor and her appearance began to shift and suddenly before us was a hag with fiery eyes and venomous words. Through her fetid expectoration of diseased philosophies, we were able to ascertain the following: She is a part of an ancient coven that has long existed beyond the ken of men. Central to their wicked organization is a fervent desire to usurp all local authority until at length, according to their belief, they enter into a golden age of global dominion, for it is power they seek above all else. The primary mechanism employed by these wraiths is to deceive mankind, to harness and direct their hostility against one another, to cause division among men so that they destroy one another. They achieve this by mesmerizing men with dazzling displays of magical innovation such as they have done with these black boxes, which lures the minds of all who are unsuspecting and impressionable and morphs truths into half-truths, and half-truths into lies. It is not long before the unsuspecting victims, desperate for knowledge of the world around them and left undefended without an established consistent philosophical foundation, succumb to the first lie – that the magic box is the most reliable source of truth – which gives rise to the second lie – that the magic box must not be questioned – and all subsequent deceptions follow from the first two. In this way they control not only individual minds, but the overarching paradigms of entire people groups. The newly subverted automatons are then goaded into integrating the destructive worldview of the wood people to such an extreme that they believe it to be their own and they defend their newly instilled indoctrination with an almost religious fervor. Once the proselytized man believes that he is rendered morally superior to his peers as the result of the now internalized dogma of the wood cult, he becomes a soldier for their cause without even being aware of it. Those who question the wood cult paradigm are regarded as hateful and dangerous. This is a deceitful mechanism employed to circumvent any objective criticisms that would threaten the false doctrine of the wood cult. Where there is no freedom to criticize, there is no truth. Thus, the evils of the wood cult are perpetuated. This, the hag boasted, is why they have already conquered your kingdom. The people’s minds have been won. They view the world only as they are instructed by their magic boxes. We were assured by the vile creature that your kingdom is not salvageable as their campaign of deceit has now been carried out in full, and with that she bellowed a sulfurous and nauseating guffaw and by some cultic dark magic, vanished before our very eyes.”
At this the queen was vexed and grieved and suffered sore regret at her edict that every household in the kingdom should be gifted with a magic box. Perhaps the hag was confident in her declaration that salvation was no longer attainable, but the queen would not capitulate to such a boast, particularly from a creature whose very nature was to deceive and subjugate.
The queen determined this to be a war of ideals, of vain philosophies pitted against sound thinking. Destroying the magic boxes at this juncture would prove fruitless as the destructive mantras of the wood cult had already taken root and blighted the belief systems of the malleable and myopic. An intellectual war must be waged on intellectual grounds, thought the queen, so she ordered a contingent of her men, those of whom she could still trust, to disperse amongst the households of serfs, countrymen, noblemen, nomads, slaves, and anyone else they encountered and share with them the following edict: The integrity of our great kingdom has been compromised by an external threat that has quietly insinuated itself into the very living quarters of every household and is embodied in the black boxes therein. Its devices are so insidious that it uses the truth to deceive, displaying only those aspects of our world that suit its plot and omitting those that do not, thereby instilling lies without the necessity of having to tell any. Its perceived authority is self-proclaimed and not innate, nor are the proponents of its narratives possessed of any intrinsic authority. We have failed to remain steadfast in the traditions of the ages and have therefore left ourselves vulnerable to whatever fanciful deceptions erected themselves to tickle our ears. All ye who yet hear, abandon the spells of the magic box, resist its euphoric deception, rid yourself of its intellectual bondage and question all philosophy no matter what authority may be ascribed to it, for there is no authority except the Objective Truth which is transcendent of all the vain expertise of fallible human doctrine. Abandon ye all the magic box.
That evening the queen’s men dispersed to issue her decree. When they returned, they all shared a similar report:
They had entered each household and voiced the queen’s new proclamation as commanded, but by all appearances they were scarcely heard. Entire families -- man, woman, and child -- were gathered together in the murk of their living quarters, illuminated only by the glow of the images put forth by the magic box before them. So enamored were they with the spectacle of imagery and cacophony of sound that they even at times responded to the beckoning of the black box as if it was their master.
Calamity is upon you.
“What shall we do?” the people asked.
Observe me. Follow me. I will lead you to salvation.
“We will hear you and follow you.”
Silence all voices of dissent for they are the voices of hatred and destruction. Hear none of it.
“We hear only you. We follow only you.”
It is wise to remain fearful. Only a fool doubts the impending doom before us. Strict obedience to my mandates is the only way to preserve your way of life.
“Fear is preparation. Obedience is salvation.”
I commit myself to you. I love you. The truth is in me. You are morally superior to your peers. You must do whatever feels best. You must do whatever benefits you. Those that do not heed my edicts are dangerous. Those that refuse to view the world as I have revealed it are dangerous to your freedom. They that question what is taught as fact are deniers of our authority. They are dangerous to your freedom. They are threats to life itself. Believe what I tell you to believe. Rejecting my values makes you undesirable. You are ugly but I can make you beautiful. To reject my information is to reject reality and align with the morally inferior. I am the final authority on all things. Submit to me. Submit to me. Submit. Submit. Submit.
And the people obeyed, whether serf or nobleman, whether man or woman, whether young or old. They remained gathered before their magic boxes, unblinking, mouths agape, for as long as the queen’s men remained to issue her decree, but they did not respond, their minds as vacuous as their eyes. None responded to the queen’s warnings for they did not believe anything but the mantras of their magic boxes.
It was true then. The damage had been visited irrevocably upon the empty vessels of the kingdom. The good queen, though filled with despair, did not acquiesce. She ordered her men to seek the cultists of the woods and eradicate their witchery from the face of the earth. She then summoned the wise sage who had first drawn forth her suspicion of the magic boxes.
When the sage arrived, the queen lamented and shared all that had transpired. She asked him what good the future could possibly hold with such a pervasive evil guiding the thoughts, beliefs, and even feelings of nearly every man, woman, and child.
“There is an indomitable quality of the human spirit that will always remain,” replied the sage. “The entire world will never be deceived wholesale. Even should the majority of all who dwell on earth be deluded there will always remain that voice of truth, raging against the deceit. The truth will be called lies by the deceived, and the world at large will reject it, but persist it will as the truth always must. But also persistent will be the lies of darkness. The black boxes will remain among the domiciles of future generations to come and families will gather around them to seek false wisdom, reveling in their own comfortable indoctrination. If the magic box in their living room tells them there is war outside their doors, they will huddle together in fear rather than open their door to see that there is none. If the magic box in their living room tells them that there is no war, they will go about merrily even as fiery arrows plunge into the earth on either side of them. It will reveal just enough truth to gain their allegiance and then obfuscate the necessary bits that are integral to a circumspect understanding of true reality. It will even claim that there is no truth, a claim which of course cannot be true without defeating itself. Such deceit often betrays itself in such circular a fashion! Stay the course, my queen, and lament not at the inane philosophies of the lost, but rather marvel at the glory of objective truth, that such a foundation for reality itself it existent, and that it can be found by those who seek it with genuine intent!”
And the night wore on, flashing pictures reflected off the glassy eyes of dazed families gathered around their magic boxes as they would continue to do day after day unto their deaths, mouths agape, mesmerized and hollowed, and though the droning platitudes of the magic boxes persisted throughout the night, they still were interrupted by the chirping of frogs and the barking of dogs, and the clamor of the river prevailed, and the perpetual march of nature itself plodded ever onward in defiance of the subjective beliefs of mankind.
The Magic Box
A Modern Fable
