kings and intellectuals

 Read a short book about Hobbes not too long ago.  He was largely a kept man as were most intellectuals of the day.  There wasn't much in the way of schools and the only places to go to show off your brilliance was to some king's court.  The kings liked to have a retinue of intellectuals around him to show off to the other kings, like modern day kings of their house like to have a splendid lawn to show off to their neighbors.

Off course the intellectuals had to be careful not to piss off the king because then it was off with their heads, but if they had fair warning about what was going to happen they could flee to the next kingdom where that king would be happy to take them in as another jewel in his crown, and maybe more importantly it would piss off the king of the country from which the intellectual had fled.  

Some writers think that this is what brought on the Renaissance.  In unified lands like China if the emperor didn't like what you were saying there was nowhere you could flee to and he would squash you like a bug and there would go all your deep thoughts.  But in Europe you could hop about and your ideas stayed alive and took seed and the next thing you know there was the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment and then Europe was king of the world.

I am not sure if I have dotted all my i's and crossed all my t's, but this is what roughly was going on.  Hobbes himself was more of an enlightenment guy in his youth, but grew more pessimistic as he grew older.  I suppose one could find a copy and read Leviathan, but it's a bit quicker to say that life is nasty, brutish and short.

I am just going to say that inadvertently wiping out a species is nothing like trying to eliminate a virus.  Apples and oranges.  It's like saying,We can put a man on the moon why can't we invent a better five cent cigar?

But I am not going to further comment on the rest because I have heard this all before, and there is no place for a logical argument once you bring Them into it.  Them is like god.  Why does this or that happen?  Because They want it to.  Period.

But Beagles is his own intellectual in his own kingdom in the swamp and he can say anything he wants to.