"The small boys came early to the hanging."
So begins Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, one of the most memorable opening lines in modern fiction.
What follows is even more unsettling. Follett describes medieval boys:
The passage has remained with me for years.
Not because it describes medieval England, but because it describes something timeless.
The boys are not reformers. They are not builders. They are not seeking truth or justice. They delight in destruction. They find amusement in suffering. They wear contempt as a badge of honour.
The uncomfortable reality is that the small boys never disappear.
They are not defined by age.
Some are twelve. Some are fifty. Some occupy positions of authority. Some gather in crowds. Some hide behind anonymous screens.
What unites them is not youth but attitude.
They delight in tearing down what others have spent years building.
In recent years we have seen churches vandalised and burned, monuments defaced, public institutions mocked, and shared spaces neglected. The targets vary, but what interests me is not the politics of any particular example.
The deeper question is why destruction so often attracts applause.
Why does contempt appear more fashionable than respect?
Why is mockery celebrated while stewardship is dismissed as " unfashionable?"
The answer may lie in a simple truth.
Building is hard.
Destruction is easy.
A fire can undo in minutes what took generations to create.
A cruel joke can destroy a reputation that took decades to build.
A mob can tear down in an afternoon what countless people patiently assembled over centuries.
Yet the issue is not really churches.
Nor is it monuments.
Nor politics.
It is respect.
Not obedience.
Not blind acceptance.
Respect.
The recognition that some things possess value even when they are imperfect.
One of the most fascinating sections of The Pillars of the Earth is the election of the prior in the woods. Even among monks devoted to God, power struggles emerge. Ambition exists. Factions form. Personal interests collide.
Human nature remains human nature.
The monastery is not perfect.
The church is not perfect.
The people are not perfect.
Yet despite all this, the cathedral is still built.
That may be the deepest lesson in the novel.
Civilisation is not created by perfect people.
It is created by imperfect people striving toward something greater than themselves.
The stonemason may have been jealous.
The bishop may have been ambitious.
The nobleman may have sought prestige.
Yet together they produced something that endured for centuries.
A thousand years later, we do not remember most of their arguments.
We remember the cathedral.
This applies far beyond architecture.
The child born with Down syndrome may never satisfy society's modern obsession with perfection, yet may bring extraordinary love and joy into the lives of others.
The elderly person whose memory is fading may no longer recall yesterday, yet still possesses dignity, wisdom, and humanity.
The old church may have flaws.
The old traditions may have flaws.
The institutions we inherit may have flaws.
So do we.
Respect does not require perfection.
In fact, respect becomes meaningful only when we recognise imperfections and still see something worth preserving.
Perhaps that is what troubles me most about our age.
The belief that because something is imperfect, it is therefore worthless.
The belief that inherited things deserve ridicule simply because they are inherited.
The belief that destruction is somehow more virtuous than stewardship.
Every generation inherits a world it did not build.
The roads were laid by others.
The freedoms were secured by others.
The churches, libraries, bridges, schools, and public institutions were built by people who knew they would never see the final result of their labour.
They were custodians.
Not owners.
That sense of stewardship is what separates builders from spectators.
History remembers the fires because they are dramatic.
But civilisation survives because of the builders.
The boys come early to the hanging.
They come early to the burning too.
They always have.
Yet centuries later we do not gather to admire the ashes.
We travel across oceans to stand beneath cathedrals.
We marvel at the creations of generations long dead.
We look upward at stone, light, and beauty fashioned by imperfect hands.
The laughter echoes loudly in the moment.
The stones endure.
And perhaps that is the lesson.
The boys come and go.
The builders leave a legacy.
The question for every generation is simple:
Will we be spectators at the burning?
Or will we pick up the stones and continue building?
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