Normal 0 0 1 1224 6978 58 13 8569 11.1287 0 0 0 When something is faulty, there are two ways to go about it: either you fix the faults, or you toss it out the window and start all over. And what if that something is a soul, and you are God? Same thing: You give a means of absolution, or you flood the earth. That whole messy system of redemption and absolution, the two stone tablets, the priest caste, the body and blood – or enough torrential rain to turn bodies into sponges and dilute blood until it loses the redness of its life. And what if that something is a tradition? What if, say, it is the tradition of aristocracy, and you are France? You might work from the inside, repairing the excesses of extravagance bit by bit as a sculptor chisels away the excess stone to reveal the good lurking within – chink by chink, raising the hammer again and again, sweating. But you didn’t. You beheaded the King, and erected the guillotine. Vive la Révolution! So goes the anthem of destruction, of a reduction of traditions to rubble, and of the wide-eyed giddiness that looks with the glee of a madman on all the possibilities present in an establishment that lies dead in broken stones. All those possibilities – a world reduced to ruins. The slow route traded for the express route, deliberation traded for action, and action now. Ancestors disgraced, the dead degraded, traditions shattered – but a new world, a brand new world, open to the whims of those left standing.
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