What about the native animals?
The doctrine of the kingdom says: “All Animals were of the Ark, and all are now of the Kingdom”. So the big question is… what about the native animals (the new ones, found in the colony) and how does the Kingdom, well, treat them?
Before we go further with this one, make sure to read Impact of the Ark Myth on Society.
The existence of native animals at all is a surprise and (at least) a minor ideological crisis. When the Southern Continent was found, the Kingdom was explicitly expecting it to be empty.
The statement previously was descriptive, it told of how the world is, and afterward, when it was shown that there are Animals who didn’t even know there was a Kingdom to be a part of, it had to be prescriptive.
Rejecting the doctrine would have been fatal for the Kingdom, as it discouraged dissenters from leaving or forming new communities by framing the Kingdom as civilisation itself, or even civility itself.
‘Where would you even go?’ they ask, ‘There is nobody and nothing outside the Kingdom.’
The important aspect of the doctrine was that there was no alternative to the Kingdom, even in theory, there simply didn’t exist any successful societies outside of the Kingdom, only dens of bandits and lunatics doomed to failure within a generation.
To make sure that the idea of no alternative to the Kingdom alive and well, the Kingdom had to take a certain stance towards the natives:
The Kingdom had to pretend that these natives never had a society, that they are simply backwards savages who never figured out a form of social organisation beyond a local village. The Kingdom cannot abide the idea that they have another ‘country’ as an enemy. Or any outside enemies at all. There is no one outside, so who could be an ‘outside enemy’?
Specifically, this means that they deny that there is a Monkey society, let alone a Monkey Country or Kingdom. There is a Monkey culture, that’s not weird, after all there is such a thing as Squirrel Culture.
Only the Kingdom exists
This ideological problem, ie. that there could not possibly be other cultural entities outside of the Kingdom, makes them ineffective at combating the Monkey Civilisation. After all not only is there no such thing. It couldn’t even exist.
They are treating the problem of an external force, like it is a law enforcement issue at best.
This is a kind of confusion like the one Umberto Eco ascribes to the fascists, even though the Kingdom is not fascist (just ideologically stiff at certain points in history).
How would you deal with this issue if you were in the shoes paws of the King? Let us know in the comments on our Facebook and Twitter!