PROLEGOMENON

THE GRAND PLAN

 

 

 

From time to time the population of the earth becomes too much for it to bear, so certain methods are employed to thin out the density of its peoples and reduce numbers to a safe and acceptable level. Some say these steps are taken by nature, wisest of nurses. Or else human instinct is at work on an inscrutable level, a self-regulatory strategy scribbled deep into the genes. The religious sort say that the problem is addressed not by mortals, who are incapable of controlling themselves, but by the powers above us. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a survival tactic for a human race too clueless consciously to look after its own affairs. Neutral nature or the benign and merciless gods: they’re the same thing, really. It just depends on your choice of terminology, and that’s naturally determined by your beliefs.

Let’s go with myth then, for the moment. Let’s occupy the ethical and imaginative high ground. Let’s leave reason aside.

Once upon a time, as they say, there was a great race of men, a god-like race, a race of heroes. They were called Greeks. And there was another race, almost as illustrious, called Trojans. And these mortals, though separated by a wide and unpredictable sea called the Aegean, thronged the world to such an extent that Zeus, in his wisdom and his pity, hit on a plan to deliver the all too fruitful humans from themselves. That plan was war, an effective means of easing the squeeze on population. Specifically, the Trojan War, in which vast numbers of both Greeks and Trojans were killed, nature triumphed, the gods’ will was done and the earth’s burden was considerably relieved.

True, that’s how some saw the war. It’s how some people will always see a war – as anything other than what it is: blind, brutal destruction. The men who fought it knew different. Soldiers in the field always know different, and better. I was a soldier. On the ground we knew precisely what caused the war: greed. Wars are always about ideology or greed. Or both. And in spite of all the hot air, it was no ideology that took us to Troy.

But it’s always tempting to imagine a grand plan, even to believe in one. Penelope liked the idea of the grand plan. And under her cunning hand, the gods saw the problem and reached for something they had kept hidden. That something was a woman. And there she lay, naked and smirking in the lap of the gods, biding her time. You can see her in the opening scene of the web, wearing that salacious smile, the one that loosened so much sperm, so many nerves, knees, lives. She was the argument, the agent, the exterminating spark. She was the excuse. She was the weapon of mass destruction. And we were sent to Troy to find her.