March 27 | After Me the Flood

“Après moi, le déluge” – King Louis XV

The nice thing about trying to leave the world in better condition than how you found it is it doesn’t mean you have to keep things as they are. 

King Louis the 14th built the palace of Versailles as he built France into a world power. Two generations later, there were no more Kings named Louis. No amount of cake would stop the heads of aristocracy from rolling.

You could make the argument that both Louis the 14th and Louis the 16th left France better off than they found it, for profoundly different reasons. One built up a great nation at great moral cost. The other helped tear it down, albeit unwillingly. 

It was the Louis in between who seemed to do neither. The phrase “after me, the flood” is attributed to him later in life—a somewhat nihilistic view of his own long term policy. 

It seems like the two ways to leave the world better than how you found it is either to build something right or tear down something bad. Louis the 14th rebuilt after a flood of sorts, Louis the 16th became a flood of sorts.

It’s the person who won’t make the world a better place who simply holds up their hands in exasperation and refuses to either build or destroy anything, saying “after me, the flood.”… Read the rest