2026-01-05 - Ruler's Room
I'm going to stop lamenting about not writing blogs for long periods of time. I'm not getting paid or anything. I would like to put forth a sort of thought experiment. Let's say we have the ruler of a country. In all aspects he is perfect - intelligent, charismatic, strong. Not one person could hope to find a flaw with him, by all means the perfect leader. There are cameras on him at all times scrutinizing his actions and they find nothing wrong. But, every day, for 5 minutes at a time, the ruler goes into a room alone. Nobody knows what happens in this room, there are no cameras, the room is soundproof, and can't be surveyed. After the 5 minutes are up, the ruler leaves and continues his leadership duties unimpeded. There are no people in the room, examining the room provides no useful information. The ruler insists he needs this time every day and refuses to allow any surveying or to have this time taken away from him. The crux of this experiment is, does it matter what the ruler is doing in the room? After inspecting the room we find nothing of note, no people or things out of the ordinary. If the only person who knows what the ruler is doing is himself, and his actions affect no others, is there a need to know? The initial answer would probably be no, it doesn't matter. Which makes sense, what the ruler does in his own time is not very important if he's not affecting anyone else. But now let's say you have the knowledge of what the ruler is doing, perhaps he's getting off to some extreme fetishistic material. Does this change anything? Should it? In all respects the ruler is perfect otherwise, there's no way to detect from his behavior outside of the room what he's doing inside, and the activities are disconnected. But what if this material is heavily taboo to society at large? Should the people know? I would argue that what the ruler does in private should remain in private and that it should stay a secret. If there's no functional difference in his behavior before and after leaving the room, and he's otherwise perfectly fine in other aspects of his life, it can and should be left alone so he can function fine in the majority of his life. Additionally, if this is required "maintenance" for the ruler in order to maintain the rest of his appearance and behavior, then it's a necessarily evil in a sense.