User blog comment:Joekido/The loopy side of the Void Century/@comment-108.83.222.210-20200917025603

I cannot say for certain how regarding those kingdoms, however I will give my personal opinions. Please keep in mind these are my own opinions and anyone is free to disagree with me or tell me to leave. If you want me to leave, then tell me and I will. I have no desire to begin an arguement. Also, I apologize in advance if I get off track or talk too much, it is an occupational harzard of having these discussions. Firstly, we know that the world government is oppresive, cruel, and a number of other terms which they attempt to cover up using the marines preaching justice. The marines serves as the public face of the world government to protect powerful beings who can hide behind the marines as a powerful force. The celestial dragons are one such example with the Five Elder Stars even stating such. They in turn serve as a public face for Im. Whatever their gripes with the old kingdom real or imagined, that does not justify them bring tyrants themselves.

Having said that, this next part is pure conjecture on my part. It is possible that there are indeed secrets that the old kingdoms possesses that could legitimately worry people. I recall one fiction series in which the characters discover over the course of it that their tyrant of a leader was the only one who knew the truth of a threat that he spoke of in his origin stories, the ones that he used to jusify portraying himself as a god. He erased every single trace of detail regarding it because he knew that this force could alter things to its design save for specific methods. He left behind clues in the hopes that someone would defeat the threat in the event he died or failed even as he acknowledged that he felt it was completely pointless to try if he could not do so.

You might be wondering what further relation this has to the earlier points, well here is an answer. This individual erased all other peoples, their history, their culture, their beliefs, their very existence. He did this because of his own desire for power, his desire to become almighty and left only vague references of the threat to make it seem as though he deserved his title as a god. Why do the celestial dragons say that they are the decendents of the world's creators when clearly the world existed before they did? The answer is to make it seem as though they and the world government are the beginning of everything and thus make their ideas, polices, methods, and beliefs beyond question or arguement. In another work of fiction I have watched the leader who began a war against the rest of the world had all references to history before him hidden away to make it seem that his nation began with him and therefore their warmongering was an essential part of their culture. In the book series, the tyrant has some justification given that he used up most of his power trying to alter the world and the people in it to fit his image, and even more trying to fix his mistakes leaving them with the broken world they lived in. He assumed that when the power returned again he would be able to do things better despite his statements that he has never made a single mistake in his life and his beliefs that his system is perfect and that complaints or arguements merely reveal a lack of intelligence or gratitude.

It should be noted that in the book series I mentioned, the tyrant while destroying cultures, raising people up, and enslaving those percieved as his enemies did not spare his own people from this despite the fact that many supported him and he had promised to make them superior to all others. Clearly based on their experiences, they were both privledged servants and yet also the most unfortunate people in his empire. He didn't want his own people to challenge his power, his authority and that superseded his promises just as his arrogance caused him to avoid sharing news of the threat he knew about because he felt that if he could not defeat it then no one could. In the end, he is part of the reason that they characters had to seeks out answers and stumble around in the dark hoping to find answers. He hid that information and others from people both as a defense against this force and also to consolidate his own power for those who are ignorant of the extent of his power cannot defend against it. I think some part of him enjoyed the idea that the world's survival in a sense revolved around him.

My point is that it is possible that the world government is keeping people ignorant of the past for what could be interpreted as altruism, it is also possible that they are keeping people ignorant because it keeps them in power. If people live their whole lives in a certain way, they can come to assume that things are the way they are naturally and that nothing they do can change it. In one movie I watched when I was young, the setting has a strict hierarchy where the lives and deaths of those lower on it are determined by those higher up. Some live to work, others live to die at the times that those higher up determine appropriate, and it is accepted because as one character stated "The only way you are going to find happiness is to accept that they way things are is the way things are" Another character higher up on the hierarchy stated of one person who disliked the way things are "He should accept what he is and be grateful for it. That goes for everyone". You might notice that the second person is in a much better position to deliver that assertive statement while the other person spoke in resignation. Those higheest up on the hierachy have nothing to fear, they will live to a ripe old age. Others they are not so lucky and they see little point in fighting it.

In another movie when the main character was observed to be hated by those around him for their assumptions of him despite his attempts to prove them wrong stated that he has always been treated as well as can be expected. When questioned if that was all he expected he answered "It's all I know". In his mind why should he expect people not to treat him like a plague? Most people where he is treat him like a disease, the people he lived with before scarred him, his own parents abandoned him to die, so why should he see anything wrong with being mistreated when the number of people who don't do so can be counted on the fingers of one hand? These things are made stronger by their environment just as the world government enforces their view of the world to remain strong. If people believe that the world government is the way that the world always was, then what right do they have to fight against hundreds of years of this? Who are they to assume that they know better then however many untold numbers of humans beings many of which they would see as wiser then themselves and can see more clearly then those individuals? Those at the top of the world government perpetuate this because it keeps them in power.

If the past is revealed, then it would offer another option and people who are angry with the world government could well take it. That is why the revolutionaries are dangerous even if some fans do not believe that they are in fact doing anything (they are doing quite a lot, but that is a different discussion) because they offer an alternative to following the world government and being bound to them. It is why the Yonko are a threat beyond just being powerful forces with powerful crews, because they give pirates a way to remain free from the world government and challenge them. The Yonko offer an alternative and represent that fighting the world government is possibe.

Most of all, Luffy is a threat for multiple reasons. His ability face and win against the world government's powerful agents (shattering their image of invincibilty) is only the most obvious part of this. It is also not just because he as a rising power offers an alternative to both the government and the Yonko although that is a part ot it. It is most of all because he destroys the world government's justifications for many of the cruelties they commit in the name of justice. The world government opposes pirates for the fact that they cannot control them and because it gives them an enemy against which they can be as cruel and sadistic as they desire. Therefore any darker impules or desires they have can be explained away as necessary evils or results of constantly fighting evil. Therefore certain things such as the torture of Impel Down, the killing of civilians, the lack of concern for the lives of others can be seen as being forged by facing evils far worse. In their minds, as long as they have pirates whom they can compare themselves to, they can commit the most evil of acts and the people of the world will bite their tongues and supress their anger which is helped by the world government's power.

Luffy is a danger because he destroys this image of pirates as monsters beyond any cruelty that the world nobles, marines, or other agents of the world government can ever be. He is a pirate, this is true beyond any measure of a doubt and Luffy would happily state that he is not a hero, but he is also a good person when it comes down to it. He is willing to help people out and oppose any force no matter how mighty for the sake of those he calls friends or for those whom he empathizes with. In that sense he is much like the late Whitebeard in that he ruins the image of what people expect a pirate to be since as a pirate and someone who opposes the world government he should be to the world, a monster in the shape of a human. Yet, how many times has he been helped by allies he has made along the way for one reason or another? He makes those allies because he is not a typical pirate. Naturally he is not the only one who fits this description, his friends, his crew, they all are the same in this regard, it is not something unique solely to him. The Strawhats are not even the only example of this in the One Piece world, they are merely the strongest example. They are supported by people who see them as trustworthy and are willing to support them in spite of them being pirates. At any rate, I fear I have run my mouth for far too long and that I have said quite enough of a mouthful. Putting aside the rudness of talking with my mouth full, I think I have said all I wish to say as the moment. I hope my opinions provide food for thought for anyone seeking to take the time to read them. I hope everyone has a good day.