8th Candelabram - Phone

[firstofthefallen]

What is paradise?

For the person who brought us here, this place is paradise. After all, they can play with their toys all they want, break them all they want, and repair them all they want. The same for their play set. And in a way, I guess that is a valid paradise, isn't it? In the end, comfort is what everyone wants to some degree. And this place must make our captor comfortable, so I suppose that then is paradise.

But what's paradise to one person isn't to another, as we're finding out here. I suppose, then, if you had to design paradise, a perfect world: what would it be?

Comments

[firstofthefallen]

I disagree.

Even if there is no inherent equality in the universe it will be created by our own hands in the end.

[pinkscarflady]

I suppose anything is possible. But my point was really more that it doesn't matter whether anyone achieves something so fleeting and subjective.

[firstofthefallen]

Is anything truly lasting? What isn't fleeting or subjective?

[pinkscarflady]

Absolutely nothing, idioms about 'death and taxes' notwithstanding.

[She pauses. Perhaps she's being too hard on him? He sounds fairly young, so he's certainly entitled to his idealism without having to debate with a grown woman on her fifth martini. Then again, she'd never pulled any punches with Rose....]

And should you find a way to achieve this equality, how would you enforce it? In any group of sentient beings, it is really only a matter of time before one of them decides that he or she is somehow better than the others.

[firstofthefallen]

Exactly.

The strong thrive, the weak die. Equality is not made by enforcing the idea that all are equal, but the fact that the strong will ultimately overtake the weak and continue to cut one another down until only the pinnacle survives. While "leadership" via one might arrive on account of that one being the strongest, these pinnacles remain equals and brothers in their abilities.

I suppose not traditional "equality" but an idea of a meritocracy based on the concept of thinning the herd until only the strongest remain.

[pinkscarflady]

But on what criteria would superiority be judged? Is strength alone enough?