Ankh- Morpok on Nostr: Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'Carpe Jugulum': it’s NOSTR to its ...

Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'Carpe Jugulum': it’s NOSTR to its core.

"The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them."

— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

AI take:

Something quietly brilliant in this one. Everyone writes off the folk of Lancre as simple country people, and here they are running the most sensible political setup on the whole Disc — a king kept on like a useful bit of furniture, and a village full of people who've worked out that the man on the throne is temporary while the ploughing isn't.

What I love is the cheek of it. There's no rebellion here, not even a grumble. They've just quietly settled what the job actually consists of — stay in the palace, do the waving, face the right way on the coins — and then got back to the real work. That's not ignorance. That's the oldest kind of wisdom going, and it's a good deal sharper than most of what gets called statecraft.

And 'They did what they always did, and he let them' — that's the whole thing in one line. Most people, most of the time, don't want a revolution. They want to be left alone to get on with it.