Quote Originally Posted by RainInSpain View Post
I keep thinking and thinking about the fall of Gilead, with questions far outweighing the answers.

On the one hand, the gunslingers rule had served the baronies relatively well for, what, a few centuries? Which means that it wasn't all that bad, and it must not only have served the purposes of the ruling class, but also matched the then-current stage of the societal development. Sure, they must have had their share of internal 'opposition', for lack of a better word, but would their government have fallen when it did, had it not been for the outside intervention?

Or, on the other hand, we do not know much about their society as a whole, so perhaps, it was just that the time had come for the political system to change because it became obsolete for the needs of the society, and it would have changed even without the aid of an outside force? (With Farson and his master being just agents of change in this case - and this touches another huge question of whether there is a greater force in their world that's beyond the Crimson King and Gan.)
I guess so, if Gan is one with the White, Gilead's ideal of civilization. But then, that leads in turn to the question of whether that greater force is amicable to humanity.
In TDT, Arthur Eld apparently received commision at the Dark Tower to rebuild society, and presumably authorization to establish the gunslingers... so we're left to wonder whether imposing order is Gan's whole idea of goodness, or possibly a corruption of their mission that they might have brought to it.
If we feel that a revolution like Farson's should have led to social progress, rather than simply leading to complete destruction of that society, then we might say that King is not such a good writer, or just that he's not writing about such a good multiverse. Since the books may suggest that Gan is also a creature of the Prim, it could be that the Prim, and not Gan, is the actual God in the DT cosmology; but if this God (the Prim) is impartial regarding conflict between the humans and the demons then what hope is there really for human social progress?
Insomnia says that there may be no Random above a certain level of the Tower: we can imagine the Red being made to serve the Purpose of a God who favors mankind, yet wants us to be strengthened by adversity. On the other hand, if Gan is fallible and limited and the true power belongs to something mindless, then the painful rise and fall of various empires might just go on and on.

It comes to whether Gan is a type of being who is constantly trying to promote the White, or one who chooses a strategy meant to promote it in an ultimate sense.
Does war serve heaven, or does heaven serve war?