What I learned from Game of Thrones

Reading Game of Thrones books has now consumed at least sixty hours of my life so I better have come up with some good lessons right? Here are all three of them:

I guess this is lesson number four!

1. If you punish someone, have the guts to carry out the punishment yourself.

2. If you have a dungeon, make it underground with no light or sound, or high in the air with only three walls and a downward-sloping floor.

3. Everyone wants something; destroying people is only a matter of finding out what they want.

That's about it. The most important lesson George R. R. R. R. Martin teaches us is this: If you make a decision based on anything other than the most rational way to achieve your stated goal, you will lose. By lose I mean die. If your victory isn't worth sacrificing your love and honor to cold calculation, why are you fighting for it?

Twisted, I know. 

 The most ridiculous thing I hear about Game of Thrones is that it's a great treatise on political intrigue. Next time you hear this, correct your friends with these simple facts:

1. Westeros is a feudal society; the modern world is not. The peasants and farmers and knights swear fealty to the lords, and the lords swear fealty to the king. That type of sovereign system doesn't exist anywhere today. In the books there is no parliament, system of checks and balances, electoral process, or anything else that is a hallmark of modern government. Even most authoritarian regimes look more like democracies than they look like Westeros.
2. Wars of succession do not typify modern politics. Total war with multiple factions trying to obtain power is now the exception rather than the rule in modern politics. Unless you are trying to claim that Mexican drug wars and Somalian civil war represent typical contemporary politics, don't pretend that you are learning about modern politics by reading this series.

The common denominator between the politicians in the Song of Ice and Fire series and modern politicians is that both groups covet power. But since the types of intrigue used to obtain power have changed completely since the 1100s, and life and death are now rarely on the line, there is no merit in comparing fact to fiction.

So if you're reading the books, just follow my lead and admit that you got sucked in by what happens to each of the individual characters as their tale unfolds. This is basically Ye Olde Dayes of  O'ur Lyves and I can't wait for my story to come on.

Post Script: If you like the show or the books, I think you'll like this too. But there be spoilers!