Kol įpusėjau šią žinutę, Elfhild pasakė, kad jau yra normali tema, bet kadangi buvau įpusėjus, nusprendžiau ir pabaigti. Apie 1400 žodžių. Mažoka, bet reikia turėt omeny, kad čia imituoju ne pirmą žinutę, ir dar vis tiek reikėtų vietos atsikirtinėjimams (geras žodis "rebuttals" vertimui).
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Prop X post
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Colour codes
Black – main text
Bold underlined – headings (centered)
Italics – used for emphasis of certain points
Blue – quotations
Blue italics – quotation sources</center>
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Opening statement</center>
One of the arguments listed above by our team captain was that Mack made several appalling mistakes while complaining to the ‘highest turtle’. I would like to expand on this argument and prove that Mack should have either taken certain preventative measures while complaining to the King or not complained at all. I will argue that Mack’s behaviour was not appropriate and therefore caused much trouble both for him and for the turtles. In my post I will give evidence that there was a better way to stop Yertle’s hegemony. I will base my arguments on the assumption that Yertle was consistent in his actions while Mack was not and that his contradiction led to the final disaster.
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Main argument</center>
After one of Mack’s complaints, Yertle exclaims:
You've no right to talk to the world's highest turtle. - Verse XI. Though we may take these words as arrogance, there is a grain of truth in them, and in fact, one can prove that Yertle was not arrogant while saying them.
For this purpose we will have to have a look at the theory of Max Weber. This famous philosopher distinguished three types of political leadership, domination and authority:
charismatic, traditional and
legal. The
charismatic authority is based on the consent of the ruled to the ruler because of the ruler’s attractive image or personal qualities. This kind of rule is often found in authoritarian states, autocracies, dictatorships and theocracies. The
traditional authority is closely related to monarchy, in that the leader here maintains status quo - that , which ‘has always been that way’. The most familiar form of domination to us living in democratic countries is the
legal authority, which is attained following various laws and acts (factual information and terms taken from a
Wikipedia article,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber ).
To which type would we ascribe King Yertle’s rule? We know nothing about how he came to be
the king of them all – Verse II. Was he a
charismatic leader who arose because his abilities were above those of an average turtle? It may be so, due to the fact that when he orders the building of a higher throne, nobody opposes to him. There is no evidence of the repressive structures, the turtles merely swam to his stone after his command so they consent to be ruled by him. On the other hand, this feature belongs also to the
traditional authority. If everybody accepts the tradition, they do not think about not obeying. And even more, there is a slight possibility that Yertle was an
elected, therefore,
legal king. Before someone starts arguing that ‘king’ usually means someone with traditional authority, I have to say that kings were being elected in the state of Poland and Lithuania, also one cannot deny that a
traditional king can have
charismatic authority as well.
I would go for a hypothesis that Yertle was a charismatic ruler with certain amount of tradition and / or legality in his authority. The point I am driving at is that in Yertle’s way of commanding and ruling we find typical features of a leader. If he is a mixed type, that makes his authority even stronger, because he has both charisma and tradition on his side. Furthermore, it is clear that Yertle was an absolute ruler:
So Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand
And Yertle, the Turtle King, gave a command. – Verse III
He made the decision himself, so we must assume there were no ‘councillors’ and no ‘parliament’. Drawing the threads together, Yertle’s absolutism, the consent of the turtles to be ruled by him because of his charisma and possibly tradition, and the absence of repressive structures leads us to logical conclusion that Yertle was accepted by the turtles as the righteous king and the representative of the turtle state.
Now the king, as a representative, first has to regard the interests of the state, and put his own aside. He is a symbol, not a person. It was Machiavelli who pointed out those principles in his famous ’Prince’. As the symbol of the state, regarding the interests of the
state, Yertle first thought about his
state:
Yertle, the king of them all,
Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small. – Verse II
Although later he turns to ‘I’ and ‘me’, we must remember that ‘I’ in this case is equivalent to ‘the state’. Yertle’s kingdom was too small, and he wanted to enlarge it, to make it stronger and did this, following the principle ‘end justifies the means’. We may think it is cruel, but that’s how it is in the state affairs, and we cannot change this reality. Yertle, therefore, had good intentions and was honest in trying to fulfill them.
As a good ruler, Yertle always cares about his kingdom. That is why he answers Mack’s complaint: he is used to responding to all complaints because complaints of the ruled mean that something is ‘rotten’ within the kingdom. However, it is Mack who does the big mistake:
Beg your pardon, King Yertle.
I've pains in my back and my shoulders and knees. - Verse V
Notice that Mack is speaking about
his back, shoulders and knees. It shows that he cares about
himself and not the state. Meanwhile, Yertle is concerned with the matters of the state and busy increasing its power, so all complaints that should be relevant to him at that very moment are those that are connected with the
state – Yertle is a good ruler, and he puts personal matters aside. If Mack wanted his complaint to be looked into properly, he should have alluded to
the matters of his state, not his own back! It is obvious that Yertle made the right decision to disregard Mack’s complaint.
I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack. – Verse VI – those are Yertle’s words, and once again I am asking you to equate ‘king’ with ‘the state’. The state is above a single turtle.
Another big mistake of Mack was complaining straight to the king. As we all know, in feudal societies usually the complaints of the lowest parts straight to the highest ended up in bad consequences exactly for the low ones. Of course, the turtles may not know much about the feudal pyramid, but if Mack had had common sense, he wouldn’t have complained straight to the king. If we compare the turtle society to the feudal society, having someone equivalent to a ‘dirty tiller’ coming straight to the shiny palace of his lord is absolutely outrageous! My colleague will show bellow that Yertle is the top of the pyramid also in spiritual sense, since he is seeking higher than an average turtle. It was not wise of Mack to go straight to Yertle: if he wanted to achieve something, like to get his whining about the aching back heard, he should have complained to
the turtle above him. Most probably, that turtle would have also noticed his own pain and there is high likelihood that a chain reaction would have happened. In any case, two ‘dirty tillers’ are more visible for a spiritually driven king than one, and a revolution always does more than a petition.
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Closing statement</center>
All in all, while complaining to Yertle, Mack made two big mistakes:
1. He complained about
himself, forgetting to point to certain problems in the state.
2. He complained straight to the king, not thinking about the outcome.
Now we see that the main thing Mack was thinking about was his own discomfort. He forgot other turtles, whose help he could have used, and he forgot the matters of the state as well. We may say that he wanted to be a freelance turtle, hence his disrespect for the state matters, but why then complain to the king, hoping that he will help you? And in any case, he
did obey Yertle in the first place, so if he is following the rules of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, he should have followed them to the end. The freedom of such choice of following the rules is proved by the fact that Yertle had no repressive system and the turtles obeyed to him because of his charismatic and / or traditional authority.
The conclusion is that if you don’t know how to complain and if all that you cause is trouble for your friends and yourself, you shouldn’t complain at all. Thus, Mack was wrong to complain to King Yertle.