Atlantean Cosmogony: The Ancient Dragon

I live in Atlantis, where centuries have boiled away to leave a bare-husk residue with entailments and derailments, amusements and bemusements. It is as if you had thrown random ingredients into the village's common pot and offered the soup to all and sundry, until the bones were left—and then you added water and began the process again.

But the oldest maps we have tell us of the Gate of the Dragon's Teeth. It is a portal through which men have sailed both ways, this ancient fossil whose prominences remain elided, eroded, or abridged into larger masses. If the teeth were this huge, imagine the size of the monster!

It may not be long before imagination is no longer needed. The ancient dragon is long gone, but her gigantic heir has stirred to life. One by one, the tiny islands in the Dragon Sea are being devoured. Soon, the dragon will return to the Dragon Gate, and we will either be its prey or its doorkeeper.

Prosperity Gospel

Eighth day of the eighth month, the eve of the Atlantean Day. It is hard not to laugh at the desperate efforts towards cynicism that some muster. What a waste of energy. Look around and see, how the centre of the Old Empire — the Gateway of the Dragon's Teeth, the Isle of the Lion, this crimson mark on the Mappa Mundi — has been transformed into a prosperous island nation, a Prospero's island nation.

Yes, there are poor, some few, some who need help provided you do not insult their dignity. Yes, as in every land, the bottom 20% are poor compared to the top, and yes, the top is very high indeed above. But even these poor have internet access; even these poor can afford to be picky about their food; only excepting, as always, the very few truly poor and destitute.

I have seen a green land, a small gem set in a torrid tropical sea. And surprisingly, it is less soulless than many give it credit for. It has much credit of its own.

Odd Jux

Right now, I am sitting back with a warm feeling of contented amusement percolating in me. Such moments do not last, but the memory can remain.

This feeling is upon me because I am contemplating two lovely hardback volumes sitting on the shelf together. The one on the left is a Subterranean Press collected edition of Barry Hughart's The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox; the one on the right is John Whitbourn's The Complete Binscombe Tales.

The first is a compendium of alarming novels about a China that never was; the second is a compendium of alarming short stories about an England that could very well be. Both overturn their respective myths with a good shot of common sense and a better shot of humour. Yet both are wildly fantastic.

How else to explain the continued survival of the evil Duke of Chin and assorted awful throwbacks to a distant and possibly imaginary suppressed Chinese past? How else to explain the horrified realisation that the return of Arthur would spell the doom of modern England — the Anglo-Saxons of the day being of course his worst enemies? And so it goes.

But what these two books really have in common is that they cater to the yearning in all of us for pasts that never were but could have been. Humans can't help but wonder about such things.

Weeding's Day

I stand on the mound where the golden cat sleeps in the golden sun. He culls the grassy verge, depopulating the sweet who die young and thus bear much fruit. He stretches, gives me the eye, a once-over from a higher power which has undergone kenosis.

Every morning, he does his weeding. I only do mine as appropriate. And what other day is there, but that which was dedicated to the Lord of Mounds, the Weeder of the Slain, he who hung on a tree for three days to learn the mystery of salvation?

Such an odd echo. But as someone else once put it, only the greatest rock makes the greatest ripples.

The Atlantean Myth (Part V): The Kobold's Tale

The Kobold just passed on his gun-carriage way, old beyond his years, pleasant beyond his early nature, just another nonagenarian gone to seed and dust. So little of his story is known, and yet so much. His was a contrary nature, and a sharp-edged one.

He was there at the beginnings of the Third Age; it was he who held the Hammer of Might as the Thunderer was confirmed in place as the First Among Equals. And few noticed who sat in the chair, who deputised, who querulously grumbled about the cold and yet wielded colder powers. For the Kobold was master of iron and steel, as are most of his kind, and his ways were those of the dark arts and the academic life.

My revered ancestors worked with the Kobold. Like a lizard, he would sun himself cold-bloodedly on the metaphorical sundial or lawn and pronounce judgement on those he felt were lacking. In those early days, he was the main purger of the heretics, the heterodox, the insufficiently rigorous. Indeed, my near ancestor was nearly purged himself, save for the intervention of the Gnome.

The Kobold was steel to Golden Mountain's concrete, was iron to Black Diamond's diplomatic charm. His was not the art of compromise, although in later days he mellowed. He railed against the Thunderer's excesses, as all smiths will against the warlords who use their tools.

Like a Lear, he let drop the reins of power, and found no leverage to take them back. He had seen the Thunderer dissolve in tears, he had put courage into the heart of the Gnome. But all that was taken from him, and he descended into obscurity, scattered moments and a wheelchair.

I used to greet him, mornings or evenings. He had become gracious, relaxed as he contemplated the end of a story that had dragged on too long. Very few caught any glimpse of the dragon, the iron chancellor, who had wielded the sword and lash over the temples of the Book in the bad old days. I remember him both ways. But morning and evening pass, and thus the day is done.

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Note: For other mythic discursions into this modern Atlantis, see here. Yes, some of you might have noticed, this was Toh's day.

Wargod

What civilisation would have a one-handed god of war? The answer, of course, is the Norse.

I've always wondered about that symbolism: the Norse god Tiw, for whom Tuesday is named, is said to have surrendered his right hand to the Fenris-wolf as a pledge of good faith (which his pantheon immediately broke). The wolf bit down, the god lost his hand, but the great chain of being that would hold Fenris till the end of the age was in place.

The lesson to me, the one I think about on most Tuesdays, or Tiw's days, is that sometimes war can be seen as a needful sacrifice. A war that does not help to keep chaos at bay is a worse war than one which does, although all war has an intrinsically serious moral burden.

In Tiw's case, the loss of his master hand in Norse society would have disqualified him from leadership; indeed, it should have disqualified him from godhood. And yet... there he stands, with a silver hand, much like his Celtic counterpart Nuada.

Tiw, also known as Tyr, faded early from Norse myth. He was seen as the organised face of war, much as Athena was in comparison to Ares. Wise and self-sacrificing, Tyr apparently had little place in later Norse myth. His name is absent from the Eddaic poetry about Ragnarok, the last battle of the world.

Word of the Day: Theogony

The Greek root -gonia means 'a point of origin'; in geometry, it is the point at which two different lines meet at an angle. In literature, Hesiod's Theogony is an account of the origins of the Gods.

But Hesiod's masterwork is not just a clever synthesis of all the mythology he could lay his hands on; rather, it is a long poem in which he establishes the right of the poet to rewrite the foundations of his world. In the end, the true story is not about the mythical basis of existence, but about how change and reform are the rights of humanity.

Along the way, of course, Hesiod does mention bloody revolution and how rebels always end up making themselves the new establishment. He mentions it three times. The final rebellion is when Prometheus, the learned titan whose name means 'Foresight', steals fire from Zeus and earns no reward except his loss of freedom and an eagle to eat his liver every day.

It is always fascinating to read mythology. It is not quite fantasy. It is a symbolic approach to understanding the way humans engineer their perceptions of the world so that the stories are easier to tell. And also, in case there are indeed gods on Olympus, this form of narrative disguises the poet and protects him from their wrath.

Dartington and the Gnome

When one trawls the archives, one learns the most amazing things. This is a tale of Lord Dartington before he became a Laboured Peer, and how he met a Gnome to surprising effect.

It seems that one Young, an inquirer into the lives of those in Londinium's sunrise quarter (what we would have called a muckraker, but now call a sociologist), dug deep into the past and decided (a la Marx) that the sad and sorry state of these lives was based on the fact that they were tagged as people of insufficient merit. Essentially, the apparatus that defines merit, and the delivery of labels of merit, had bypassed them to their everlasting disadvantage.

Young went to the Economic School of Londinium (as did the Gnome); his doctoral exercise was about these lives and was duly traded in for the doctor's cloak in 1955. The Gnome, as you may recall, received his a year later, in 1956, for his work on guessing how much income a nation might have.

Three years later, in 1958, Young, still not Baron Dartington, published a powerful satire called The Rise of the Meritocracy, in which he predicted that birds giving themselves more exotic plumage would feather their nest at the expense of birds who did not know how to capitalise on their own plumage. In 1959, the Gnome started a country on the road to meritocracy. He seems to have convinced the Thunderer of the merits of meritocracy.

And so, Atlantis was founded on the misconception of a satire. Or so it seems. Myths are hard to work out, sometimes.

Sat Sat Sat

For some reason, that reminds me of childhood games, when I was very young and it didn't matter whether the people you played with were young or old, male or female, as long as everyone had a good time. But Saturn is Kronos as well as Chronos, the two beings conflated, and hence he is both master of scythe and hourglass, and hence of inevitable old age and doom.

And hence, by association to Haiti and the dark loa, and also to Sonnabend, and the eve of the Sun. Such darkling things are somehow related to Saturn's day.

Perhaps that's why we thank God for Friday and not so much for Saturday. But Saturday is also the Sabbath, and ought to be for contemplation and rest.

Ferry Tale

I'd never heard of Gerry and the Pacemakers before. Apart from growing up in awe at the antics, exploits and heroics of Liverpool FC's goalkeepers, I was never a fan of any Merseyside team. So it was with a slightly jaundiced eye that I noticed I had become a fan of the song Ferry, Cross the Mersey.

It's a typical 60s song that in this age, half a century later, evokes a typical 'Golden Age' nostalgia for a time that one hardly ever knew. Yes, I was born in that era, but the song antedates me. It was #8 in the UK in 1964 and #6 in the US (of all places) in the succeeding year. However, a 1989 version hit #1 for three weeks. Most recently, I heard my DJ cousin playing it late at night on the radio.

What exactly does it evoke? And how?

In me, it evokes a heartfelt yearning for a less complicated time. It begins with "Life goes on day after day / Hearts torn in every way..." and continues later with "People they rush everywhere / Each with their own secret cares..." In between, the singer asks the Mersey Ferry to cross the river and bring him over it to the place he calls home.

It's a place where people everywhere seem to smile, don't care what his name is, and will never turn him away. It's a place he loves.

I think almost everyone needs a place like that. Some of us will indeed have to cross a river to find it. Some of us will have to remember to carry the ferryman's fee. But all of us have some sort of yearning for some sort of home.

Unwinding

The idea of the universe as a coiling — of strings, a mainspring, a great serpent, or a ball of thread — is a key entropy-defeating idea. Nobody likes loose ends, a blind watchmaker, a mad snake or a universe at odds with itself. This is why in all our human attempts to construct the universe as an understandable concept, we prefer to ravel rather than unravel.

It is also why we think up theurges and demiurges to assist the Highest in the work of making. We have gods like Hephaistos, with his metallic handmaidens and his dactyls at the forge; we have the Moirai weaving the huge tapestry of the threads of life; and in all the other mythologies, the smiths and weavers, the potters and tinker(er)s, the architects and builders.

There are easier models for the larger universe — an egg that hatches, ice that melts, a river coalescing, a word out of nothing that becomes light. But each of us prefers smaller gods, because they are just like us, daily makers of daily goods.

Yet everyone pays tribute also to unwinding. The great escapement must in the end still allow the mainspring to unwind, the strings to uncoil, the serpent to sleep; and the thread to run out, to be cut, to fail. A poker hand might fold, but the sky and the story both unfold.

Sometimes the task is not one of making or unmaking, but of puzzle-solving. You need a hero for that. If there is a knot of vipers, that hero must be prepared to sacrifice a limb, or turn blue with venom, or even die saving the day. Not all heroes are hero enough.

Integrated Programmes (Part I): We Had Lift-Off Or So We Thought

Integration is the opposite of differentiation. What then can we make of a system that creates integrated programmes for students while claiming to differentiate students? Analogically, it would seem that the programme is designed to reduce the amount of information by letting students go through more years of undifferentiating education.

In Atlantis, an 'integrated programme' is one which removes high-stakes examinations between primary school and university, so that only two main examinations remain: a primary school streaming examination and a senior high terminal examination such as the A-levels or IB Diploma. The results of the former examination are now often circumvented by something called the DSA (Direct School Admissions, not to be confused with the ISA, which does not stand for Indirect School Admissions), which are criteria cooked up by individual schools to allow them to admit students they like and exclude students they don't.

Three integrated programmes were launched at the end of 2003. The Citadel of the Wyverns, the Gryphon Academy, and the Temple of Flaming Books (recalling a certain Chinese Emperor) all started off with their own quaint notions of what they could do with time not spent preparing for a third main examination at the end of the 10th grade. I say quaint, because not much was new about these new programmes—some of their features were Victorian and some even more antiquarian than that.

Perhaps the most interesting thing was the degree to which educators, given free rein and liberty to be creative, failed to do much that was extraordinary or novel. Rather, a lot of stuff was lifted from other sources, repackaged, and smushed (for want of a better, more aptly onomatopoeic word) together to create something very much like existing Grade 10 programmes with a few extra bells and whistles but not so many tassels and hassles.

The second most interesting thing was the research that came out of it. The Citadel was dead against having any research done (especially by its own people), but the Hierarchs of Atlantean Learning had decreed that some research should be — and so, some was. The Academy was just as resistant, but quietly did some of their own. The Temple did a lot of their own, and made sure every one of their students could recite the key information points (KIPs) when asked.

This research had not been released to the public yet, when it was claimed by the Hierarchs that such programmes were all brilliant, exciting, stimulating, good for the youth of Athens Atlantis and so on. And because they were so good, all remaining major high schools should be made to do the same thing.

The resultant Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, a jerky and discombobulating affair (and a true Nutcracker Suite) which is still unfolding, has been (and will continue to be) affording educational observers with much amusement.

But I would like to point out one very important finding: people who have gone through an Integrated Programme do not show significant superiority (and that's putting it mildly) over those who have not when they sit for their terminal qualification examinations. The superiority of Integrated Programmes must therefore be in non-academic areas, but that is even more difficult to prove — perhaps almost as difficult to prove as the contention that having a programme specially for Gifted and Talented Atlanteans will prevent some final catastrophic crisis.

Only time will tell. And Khronos, unlike Kronos, is a very quiet and subtle Power.

Remembering Golden Mountain

In the wake of the Gnome's departure, a small but incredibly powerful vacuum has been created in the lost myths of Atlantis. How could whole generations of Atlanteans claim, as they have over the last seven days, that they knew nothing whatsoever about the Gnome? Was the Thunderer's PR machine so all-devouring, so all-encompassing?

The 2008 book, 'The Scripting of a National History' (printed in the Fragrant Harbour), by two incisive and daring academics, tells us of the Thunderer's apotheosis (or transformation to godhood) and the subsidiary roles his lieutenants played (transformed to demigods or high priests). The authors compare the Thunderer to the Gambler — the only two important personalities in Atlantis. Somehow, the Thunderer's biography became 'The Atlantean Story' and the cornerstone of the island nation's history textbooks.

But as I fell towards the black hole of the Gnome's death, I picked up a book about his schoolmate and friend, Golden Mountain. The book was called 'Golden Mountain: A Builder of Atlantis'. In the book, the Thunderer says that the Gnome and Golden Mountain were opposites: the former was cerebral, the thinker par excellence, with an excellent grasp of the abstruse and the abstract; the latter was not only smart but visceral, able to tell the characters of men at sight and understand their inherent capacity for good or evil, though not so good at abstract conceptualisation.

So who was Golden Mountain? In his day, the cost of public housing was eight Atlantean thalers to the square foot, including the cost of power, water and modern sanitation (p.67). This was in 1960, when $8 would have bought you 400 bowls of noodles. Fifty years later, 400 bowls of noodles would cost perhaps $1200. However, salaries have not risen by a factor of 150, or teachers would be earning $45,000 a month. Golden Mountain kept things not so much cheap as affordable. He was the one member of the Thunderer's pantheon who worked for free and accepted no worship.

He literally got modern Atlantis to be built. The soaring towers of the Land are his monument and his legacy. When you see these structures, they are as much Golden Mountain's as the structures of finance and education belong to the Gnome. They are all a mixed legacy; all Atlanteans are somewhat grateful, some still make a fuss. But rarely do Atlanteans credit either Golden Mountain or the Gnome.

Even when they do, the Gnome is preeminent in that consideration. Yet few realise that they both ran the portfolios of Finance and Education, alternating. They trusted each other, brothers of the Wyvern. They had a bond based on service to their nation, but of greater importance, to their people, their countrymen.

This was unlike the bond between the Thunderer and the people. The Thunderer was always the wielder of lightning, the surpassing majesty whose prerogatives could not be infringed. The people saw him as deity, as lightbringer, as psychopomp in a world of darkness.

But I remember Golden Mountain today. Like gold, he appeared soft but was strong. He could spread himself thinly, be flexible, but remain incorruptible. He did what was necessary, he facilitated work by providing rewards more quickly when the work was done well and promptly. He was a silent conductor in an orchestra of cut-rate architects, engineers, builders, contractors. Yet he also made brutal assessments, though he was kind to everyone who needed it. He was a complex man who was a simple man; he enjoyed food and fine living, but would not inflict high costs on people. He was outspoken in defence of his principles; he was blunt when saying things others would not have dared to say. He was no politician, but he was a faithful servant to the people because he chose to be.

We who sit in relative comfort in Atlantis, grousing about high prices and (relatively) low wages; we who turn the wheel and look to windward; we should remember Golden Mountain, for he was one of the best of us. We should remember Golden Mountain because we live in towers and not in slums, and therefore have a clearer view of what it means to hope.

How Legends Pass

Roland is missing; his grave near Bordeaux is long destroyed. Where is the bearer of that mighty horn, where the bearer of the sword Durandal? He who was Lord of the Breton Marches, he who passed on the Ides of August in 778, is gone. They say he may yet rise, a paladin in the service of men.

Arthur is lost; Who is Arthur?, say the voices of the learned. We know that someone shut the voices of the Saxons in the 6th Century after Christ. Some say he sits, resting with his knights, until Britain needs him once more.

The Thunderer once said that even if he were to be lowered into his grave, he would rise up if anything went wrong with Atlantis. He still lives, but one can tell when a legend is passing, and when the device of foreshadowing is being employed.

But the Gnome has passed. And this one will not return. For like many elemental spirits of earth and matter, of coin and gem, of earthy humour and down-to-earth ways, he has built himself into the land and returns his body thereto. His sinews are in our institutions, his mind is in our processes, his veins are in our roads and tunnels. His historical record will be everywhere, like Arthur; his memory will survive his grave, like Roland.

And like Sir Christopher Wren, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!" — if you require a memorial, look around you!

Gnome Man Is An Island

The Gnome has passed on. We will remember him in the prosperity and education system he left behind, in the defence arrangements, the zoo and the bird park, the many things which he touched and made but which we did not see.

We will remember him even though we complain so much about what he did. Because, in the end, he really did try his best. His wizardly brain went west a long time ago, but the thoughts he thought in his prime were wiser than the thoughts of most others.

If anyone should be named the father of modern Atlantis, it is he. Or at least, that is what my students thought after I told his story.

His chapter is ended now. I must quote Donne's famous lines from Meditation XVII, not the ones that most think of, but these:

...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another...

Autumn has now come upon Atlantis.

Myth-Placed Identities

There is a single most frustrating thing about researching this little red dot which I've referred to as 'Atlantis' in most of my posts. This one thing is the problem of the monomyth. The traditional history of modern Atlantis, supposedly begun in 1819 (or perhaps 1965), is one that begins with a single hero who comes from an obscure background, battles through epic evils, and returns with some boon for mankind.

In the 1819 version, the ironically-named Gambler descends upon the benighted island, cuts a deal with the ignorant natives, and raises an obscure fishing village into prominence as the leading edge of the Empire's masterplan of globalization initiatives. Under the Imperial banner, this little red dot becomes an impregnable fortress in the East, and the paramount harbour of Eastern trade.

In the 1965 version (remake?), the Thunderer descends upon the benighted island, intervenes on behalf of the ignorant natives, and raises an obscure post-Imperial backwater (totally in contradiction of the earlier myth, of course) to the leading edge of worldwide globalization. Under the Moon-and-Stars banner, this little red dot becomes an impregnable fortress of the East, and the paramount harbour (supposedly) of all the world's trade.

In both myths, reality is neglected and the very strong supporting cast ignored.

The Gambler actually attempted to destroy all gambling; the appointed Resident, fondly known as the Progenitor, failed to do so. At that point, the Gambler (who in all his time supposedly in charge of Atlantis never spent more than a few months here) sent that worthy servant of the public trust back to Alba. It was only 1823. All accounts from that era show the Progenitor as being more worthy of the title 'Founder of Atlantis' than the Gambler. It was just, I suppose, that the Gambler's name was easier on the ears.

The Thunderer, on the other hand, has readily attributed much of the success of his dominion to the clever thinking of his chief lieutenant, the Gnome. In a touching tribute published in the local press on 29 Dec 1984, the Thunderer said, "No panegyric can do justice to you." Yet, even after subsequent reinforcement in the Thunderer's own biography, textbooks still attribute (or blame) Atlantean development on the wielder of the lightning, and not the genius loci.

It is hard to restructure or replace the monomyth, especially when the historical basis is concealed by generations of bards who think they have been paid to sing the praises of the myth and not the truth. Such bards, of course, do not quite deserve the title and indeed should be targeted by scathing satires, as is the great Celtic tradition.

It is my hope to trace the educational history of Atlantis through those who made a genuine difference, and not through those who received credit for not really doing much in this area. It requires restructuring the monomyth and, perhaps, slaying a few dragons (gryphons?) along the way.

Unicorn

Unicorn sightings are rare.

It was in college that I first met the young lady whom I thought of as 'the unicorn'. I have only a few vague ideas as to why. Unicorn lore (odd, fairly localised and sometimes contradictory) is no help. I suspect that part of it had to do with the very creative personality with odd sharp edges and sudden scintillating facets that I saw. I never got to know her very well.

Today I saw the unicorn again. Like all unicorn encounters, you come out of it wondering if it was real. And yet at least one thing has changed: you know more about unicorn encounters than you knew before. You too are different; you know more about life than you did before. When you put the two together, you are more able to make sense of the unicorn.

Today is a good day.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

卧虎藏龙 is a classic of Chinese mythmaking at the cinematic level. At another level, however, as a certain scholar has pointed out, it makes a great way to summarize the shenanigans in and around Southeast Asia.

Actually, it's a great way to look at Atlantis as well. The hidden forces that create a vortex around the sinkhole of destiny roil violently in the island. Two dragons fight, a white one and a red one; the red one is slain and the white one lives on — surely this is the stuff of epic legend. Some people prefer the lion and the tiger in mortal combat. But whatever it is, what survives is the very material of myth.

Right now, I am looking at schools as instruments of public policy dissemination and execution. In a city-state, as in not many other kinds of states, the relationship between education and public policy is very intimate. You propagandise the students, you elevate the schools to the status of the temples you have sidelined, and in a generation, 90% of the populace is primed for the policy you want.

Reduce the population? Reinvent the biotech wheel? Apotheosize gifted education and then fling it into the outer darkness? All these things can be done and have been done (and presumably, similar things will continue to be done). All you have to do is make sure that all drink deep of the Pierian spring.

Actually, it's more like Mimir's well. You drink deep to quench the deepest desire, and the price is one eye and there goes your depth of vision. Atlantis is successful at what it wants to do, and unsuccessful at what it should have done. It is more the former than the latter, but it is very bad at admitting the latter. If the High Priest takes your money in huge amounts to avert the destruction of the land by tsunami, but the tsunami does not yet come and you lose the money instead, that's bad. If your enemies then take the money you lost and make more money, it's not only bad but painful.

But life goes on, with a crouching tiger at every corner and a hidden dragon in every shadow. It is marvelous to see what a Mandarin movie can teach you about the making of public policy. You can read it in the book; the local university press printed it three years ago.

The Atlantean Myth (Part IV): Golden Mountain's Tale

In the glorious days of the Third Age, the Thunderer wrested control of Atlantis from the evil Lemurians and their predecessors the Empire. Or so the politically correct and factually negligent account goes.

What is for sure is that Atlantis had already begun to devolve. The Empire's grasp had been fatally weakened and yet, unlike previous empires, it was to prove itself able to fall from grace with a great deal of clever graciousness. It also attempted to tangle the world up in a ball of unpickable knots (some of which still exist in the darker continents, as the Imperials were wont to say).

One such knot was Lemuria, an agglomeration or loose confederation of minor princedoms and submonarchies. Within Greater Lemuria were several semi-independent or semi-autonomous cities, and Atlantis was the greatest of these. In fact, Atlantis inherited the bulk of the Empire's legacy, and if it hadn't been a success, then the Thunderer would have been judged a failure.

The cleverness of the Thunderer and his gang was that they turned this on its head: new line—Atlantis was a success because of the Thunderer. But what to do about the myriads of homeless and starving that any country in this region has had to cope with?

Here is where Golden Mountain's story begins. He was one of the First, and one of the most easily forgotten. He was the Gnome's predecessor in Education, but his forte was Nation-Building. Literally. Like a modern Hephaistos, he forged a dream from stone and metal and glass, and built the topless towers of a modern Ilium. If Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, Golden Mountain's was the fist that piled the foundations of a myriad blocks of concrete.

For the Golden Mountain was a canny man, a clever and perceptive soul who wanted none of the limelight and all of the doing of things. He was pragmatic, definitive; for him praxis was the apotheosis of thought. He saw through most people and he sawed through most obstacles. And he housed 400,000 people in a year and a day (well, not quite, but this is myth we're talking about here).

Whereas the Thunderer was the Eminence of the Height, and the Gnome was the Brain of the Operation, and Black Diamond was the Voice of the Temple; Golden Mountain was the Builder of the Nation. It is impossible to think of modern Atlantis, the way it looks now, without him; yet it is only too possible not to think of him at all. He died in the heat of summer, in the same year as Black Diamond. In the aftermath of the Diamond's passing, the Mountain received some recognition.

And that was it.

Personally, I remember a shrewd and wise old patriarch who could say a lot and had a temper. But he was also a Wyvern, like the Gnome, and he remained true to his principles of necessity and pragmatism, directness and craft. We will not see his like again.

The Atlantean Myth (Part II): The Gnome's Tale

Of all the Thunderer's lieutenants, the only one that deserved TWO chapters in those annals was the Gnome. Born in a dead old port of brown sugar and silver, the Gnome came from an odd branch of an odd family. He was disposed towards cleverness and impropriety from a young age, a cousin of cousins and a watcher from afar.

The Thunderer came to appreciate this older friend, the one entity who could turn the arguments of thunder upon their heads and make everyone see something new. For that, of course, is the way of the Gnome.

The myth of the Gnome has ever been that he dragged a team of mechanical engineers through the bowels of the Ministry of Education, much as one would drag a claw through the entrails of an enemy, thus killing the spirit of education of the Old Time and placing a new and soulless thing in the body. But it was not so.

Reading the accounts, it is clear that the Gnome brought with him a bunch of young and idealistic demiurges—systems engineers, not mechanics. They found inefficiency and silliness in the body of the beast, and purged it. Unfortunately, it was like trying to cut out a cancer in the bones, while hoping that the body would remain supported. It worked, to a large extent, but the essential nature of education in Atlantis would be changed forever.

It is recorded that the Gnome actually thought (for he never was much good at assessing the responses of human nature) that when he generously created a place for the less intelligent in his scheme of things, that they would be happy to have such a place. It is subsequently recorded that he flew into a rage when the parents of the less intelligent merely worked them harder so that they seemed more intelligent, met all the tests, and were given places for the more intelligent, thus jacking up the level of stress throughout the island. It was as if the Archmage Turing was laughing in his grave.

It is amusing that this should have happened; the Gnome was ever an economist, but he had failed to see how the market worked. When education is seen as a multiplier of wealth, a factor of economic prosperity, then who would want to have less of it? His plan failed while succeeding; in all his speeches concerning the matter, the Gnome laments the examination-driven life.

It was of course the Thunderer, less intelligent but more perceptive, who realised what a great tool the Gnome's 'streaming system' was. You could have a pluralistic society, a multiracial society, whatever... but if the examination system with all its numerical and linguistic biases was seen as a fair gatekeeper, you could forge a nation from that alone. And he did.