Last night myself and Catherine and her mum went to the fireworks down in Tower Hamlets. This in itself is probably a story as Catherine is living in Norwich and her mum in Swansea but it's probably a dull story, so whatever. These firework celebrations weren't the classic Guy Fawkes burn-the-papal-whore-ist1 celebrations though, much to the Daily Mail reading percentage of the population's3 disgust, these were celebrations based around the Bengali folk story of the Emperor and the Tiger. The show and the fireworks were excellent, especially when they looked like they were going to set fire to the trees, but the story left something to be desired.
The plot is this. There is a greedy Emperor who decides he wants to be really rich and have a tiger for a rug so he puts up tax, the people complain and he is unrelenting. The people go to the local shaman / guru / wiseman and say "hey, he's oppressing us!"4 to which the wiseman says quite perceptively "hey, I'm just a wiseman". He then recommends they go speak to the jungle spirits who send a tiger to go speak to the emperor. The tiger arrives at the emperor's house with a man on his back and then when the emperor acts a bit cocky and threatens to shoot it and make it into a rug the tiger promptly maul's him. The emperor quickly sees the errors of his ways, is forgiven and they all live happily ever after.
Now the problem I have with this story is the idea that somehow being threaten by death by tiger will somehow grant anything other than a short term hypocritical change in moral nature. What, somehow the emperor is now going to cease to be proud and desiring of money because he got threaten by a tiger? The threat of a tiger has no moral efficacy in turning somehow's heart away from their proud nature. The second that tiger has gone back to it's Jungle the emperor is going to start thinking "that tiger wasn't so big, it was probably more scared of me than I was of it" and before you know it taxes are back up, oppression is in fashion and there's a large bounty on the head of all tigers.
1 Sorry, been reading to much of the Puritans again2
2 Sorry, for the 90% who don't find this funny
3 Article text here bonus points to the Daily Mail for using the phrase "political correctness gone mad" in scare quotes that weren't attributed to anyone. Good skills.
4 Bonus points to me for not making any Monty Python jokes! Also while I'm throwing points around, bonus points to me for not making an Idlewild reference with the title!
Man, I'm sick of people coming up to me to complain about the emperor.
I just a wiseman
No bonus points for me for not avoiding that terribly easy link.
I'm too proud to ask you to change that poor sentence structure up there. The irony value is worth it.
that daily mail article... why did they burn a model of the houses of parliament/ i don't have the greastest grasp of history, but surely guy fawkes failed/
yes, my shift key is dead, and i don't beleive in caps-lock.
This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.
Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.
This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.
Benjamin
Whilst on the topic of wild animals and maulings, we read 2 Kings 2:23-25 last Sunday at church. Whilst the point of ignoring God's message having consequences is well-taken, I do think it would be a great solution to the UK's youth problems if we went all-Elisha on them kiddies...