First, in French, we have two words that can be translated as “power”: “pouvoir” and “puissance.” An author I like, Alain Damasio, stressed that we should seek “puissance”—the intrinsic ability to act by ourselves (like the power of a turbine), rather than “pouvoir”—which always relies on others (like the power of a king). The king is nothing without subjects.
Second, this distinction reminds me of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Friedrich Nietzsche :
“Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
Forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Be like the tree which you love, the broad-branched one—silently and attentively it overhangs the sea.
Where solitude ends, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there begins also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who make a side-show of them: these showmen, the people call great men.
Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creator. But they have a taste for all showmen and actors of great things.
Around the creators of new values revolves the world: -- invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.”
Your king is clearly the showman, and I think that the wizard can be the creator of new values if he decides to share his discoveries with the rest of the world. And around the creators of new values revolves the world. For The parallel with Nietzsche and your post holds if we slightly extend the definition of ‘new values,’ but why not?
Ok, your post made me think of two things.
First, in French, we have two words that can be translated as “power”: “pouvoir” and “puissance.” An author I like, Alain Damasio, stressed that we should seek “puissance”—the intrinsic ability to act by ourselves (like the power of a turbine), rather than “pouvoir”—which always relies on others (like the power of a king). The king is nothing without subjects.
Second, this distinction reminds me of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Friedrich Nietzsche :
“Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
Forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Be like the tree which you love, the broad-branched one—silently and attentively it overhangs the sea.
Where solitude ends, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there begins also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who make a side-show of them: these showmen, the people call great men.
Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creator. But they have a taste for all showmen and actors of great things.
Around the creators of new values revolves the world: -- invisibly it revolves. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.”
Your king is clearly the showman, and I think that the wizard can be the creator of new values if he decides to share his discoveries with the rest of the world. And around the creators of new values revolves the world. For The parallel with Nietzsche and your post holds if we slightly extend the definition of ‘new values,’ but why not?