I recently had the opportunity to spend time in a remote province of the Himalayas, a land of three valleys watered by the three branches of a mighty river called
Ambition in the local tongue. The valleys are geographically separated enough to allow three distinct cultures to arise. Looking at the poverty of one and the wealth of another, one would think that the valleys had been blessed with wildly varying levels of fertility. In fact, however, I found that all that distinguishes one from another are their inhabitants attitude toward Ambition's mighty force.
The oldest civilization, on the right fork of the river, is centered around the village of Rand. These people have developed something of an animistic religion centered around the worship of Ambition. They revere it to such an extent that they refuse at all to stem its course - it ebbs and flows unabated with the changing seasons. Convinced that they understand Ambition's course and its unmitigated goodness, the people of Rand are known to place their farms and houses on any spit of land they can find, as close to the water as possible. In truth, the well-watered land is quite fertile, and in good times the Randians reap abundant harvests. Ambition, however, is a fickle mistress, sometimes favoring one, sometimes another. It's not uncommon to see what was a working farmstead yesterday completely submerged or parched half a mile from water today. Those still enjoying Ambition's blessing are often inclined to claim this is the result of the dispossessed farmer's incompetence, or more often the fault of their insufficient trust in Ambition. Correspondingly, they are not at all loath to sell their harvests to their starving neighbors at greatly elevated prices. The estates of Rand are a sight to see, first for their splendor, and second for how many of them are in the process of being washed away like sandcastles, their owners finally realizing that what Ambition granted, Ambition can and will just as easily take away.
The village of Karl on the left fork of Ambition was first settled by a group of refugees from Rand, disheartened and disillusioned at the heartless destruction wrought by their supposed God. While Rand remained convinced that Ambition's indomitable will reigned supreme, fledgling Karl resolved to dam it up. And Dam it up it did - within a few short years, the left branch of Ambition had been turned from a great river to a massive, stagnant lake. At first, the slaying of the demon was cause for celebration among the people. Soon, however, they saw that lacking Ambition's natural irrigation of the soil, their land was turning to dust. Neither the dirt nor the seeds nor the atmosphere had changed, but with Ambition removed, the civilization could eke out only the most meager existence. In fact, they likely would have starved altogether had a brave group not volunteered to set up camp at Ambition's edge and fish sustenance from Ambition herself. For a while, this too was a success. Soon, however, the men of the fishing camps, seeing Ambition's bounty first-hand, reverted to a form of Rand's religion. The difference was that unlike Rand's communal reverence of Ambition, Karl's fishermen opted to worship her in secret. Before long, they began to question why they should share the bounty of their mistress with the hateful masses. Their shipments back to Karl's people began slowly to decline, until the town itself was again living near abject squalor, while the fishermen themselves accumulated wealth enough to live like the merchant princes of Rand.
Things might have continued like this indefinitely for Karl, if it were not for simple physics. Ambition was far too powerful a force for Karl's engineers to contain. In time, leaks inevitably began to form, each one allowing Ambition a little closer to its natural course, each one weakening the foundations of Karl's dam. It was only a matter of time before the great heap of masonry collapsed under its own weight, and the weight of the unstoppable force it hoped to contain. On the morning Ambition broke free, the devastation among Karl's people was unimaginable. Karl's architects had not built the city to withstand Ambition - when it came sweeping through the city, it swept practically the city's entirely livelihood along with it.
In the wake of Karl's disaster, the citizens of the city broke into two camps. The first remained loyal to Karl's original mission, blaming the dam's engineers for its eventual collapse. Had it been built more in line with the original blueprints, they argued, Karl would have stood for eternity. This group immediately set to work rebuilding the dam and the city. Karl today looks almost the same as it did all those years ago, when the city was a grand new experiment. The second group, however, saw the writing on the wall - Ambition could not be denied, as in Karl, but neither could it be indulged, as in Rand. Perhaps, then, it could be worked with as a partner? These pioneers set off to test their theory on the banks of Ambition's middle fork, in a valley they named Ruz-Velt.
Like Karl, Ruz-Velt elected to dam their branch of Ambition. Unlike Karl, however, they built their dam with a spillway. Rather than blocking Ambition, they merely regulated it. Ambition still flows through the valley of Ruz-Velt, but in a predictable fashion. When the rains are heavy and the river gorged, the dam only allows a modest increase in Ambition's flow. When the rains are light and the valley parched, Ruz-Velt's dam draws down reserves from its lake. Like Rand, the valley of Ruz-Velt is a fertile place, well-served by Ambition's power. But unlike Rand, Ruz-Velt is not subject to the constant cycle of feast and famine, flood and drought.
Keeping up then Ruz-Velt dam in a constant challenge. The spillway must be maintained in such a way that it will allow so much of Ambition through as to be beneficial, but not so much as to cause harm. Unlike Rand, which can simply allow Ambition to act of its own accord, or Karl, which can robotically act to thwart its every move, Ruz-Velt must keep a constant vigil, not only working to maintain its much more complex machinery in working order, but also to plan for situations it has not yet encountered. Ambition, after all, can react unpredictably to the slightest perturbations in the weather - an unexpected storm could easily send Ambition overflowing Ruz-Velt's gates, sweeping the city away like Karl.
The people of Ruz-Velt appear up to the challenge of nature, however. In fact, their greatest challenge comes from their neighboring lands of Rand and Karl. While those two civilization were far enough separated to forget each other's existence, both are near enough to Ruz-Velt to be constantly reminded of it, and both see Ruz-Velt as an affront to their very being. Rand takes offense at Ruz-Velt's disrespect toward its God; Karl is angered by Ruz-Velt's intimacy with its sworn enemy. Neither can stand to see Ruz-Velt's success as compared to their relative poverty; both have been known to send saboteurs to the Ruz-Velt dam. Rand's agents seek to break the floodgate open and unleash Ambition in its full, unregulated power upon Ruz-Velt's people. Karl, unsurprisingly, seeks to seal it shut. Thus, the people of Ruz-Velt need contend not only with the possible failures of their own plan, but with the known failures of their neighbors. A mere single unguarded moment, and the people of Ruz-Velt could find themselves inundated or stricken by draught, all so their neighbors can prove a point. Only time, I suppose, will tell of their success or failure.