Man's Discourse

[Treshure 5817]

@thesmellypocket

A public response is penned to Father Pius after observations made in such an Orenian public journal.

 

"Father Pius,

 

You submit to your nation’s journal on religious authority. But for how long has this authority been vested? How many years has it taken to accumulate your insights? Perhaps you look to the youth in your parish gatherings, tap your greying hairs, and cite wisdom gathered over a long and well-lived lifespan. I will provide you perspective. I was born in the land of Asulon. I had become an elven adult when I watched bannermen of the White Rose and Orenian Empire sack Old Malinor. I heard the hushed rumors about what happened once Godfrey’s men breached the walls; of the elven civilians they immediately slaughtered, or the elven women that were dragged to the fate of a concubine, or worse. I now sit hundreds of years later by candlelight, likely penning the great descendent of one of these marauders, reading self-righteous drivel by the likes of “Supreme Good”, “Transcendence”, and “Higher Reality”. This again illustrates the inseparable veil between the likes of Elves and Man. Allow me to lend insight.

 

There is no such thing as Supreme Good. Much as there is no such thing as the Orenian Empire. In what way can we say that the Orenian Empire exists?  Is it the citizens? The Kingdom of Oren (in its past states) could declare itself as the Orenian Empire; every man, woman, and child of the Kingdom would instantaneously become an Imperial, despite having no participation in their lives beforehand. And by that same logic, if every citizen of the Orenian Empire were to drop dead, the Orenian Empire would still exist. It clearly does not reside in your citizenry.

 

Does it then reside in your holdings? If every Imperial holding was to be taken by storm tonight, then the Orenian Empire would summon an army to retake them tomorrow. Is it the locale? Providence is not the Orenian Empire. It can move its location by Imperial decree to any held city overnight. There are many Imperial swords, shields, and armaments bearing Imperial insignias, but these are obviously not the Orenian Empire itself. You now see that the Orenian Empire is a myth the human race has created for themselves - much as Haelun’or is a fiction of the mali’thilln, and Urguan an idea made by the dwarves.

 

I will illuminate your inferior mind, since you have chosen to cross the veil into a dialogue you are not recognized nor respected within. The centuries that separate us clarify many key differences. One is the ability to discern the irrationalities of our minds. You attempt to pry apart our wholly unique idea of purity before debasing it to something as irrefutable as divine transcendence. Neither exist. Both are fictions we tell one another to create networks of cooperation. These are the foundation of bands, tribes, kingdoms, and empires.

 

The human race, however, is forever cursed to believe that they are true. You must. Your lives are pitifully short. Much of it has been bound in serfdom and the brutal, life-long sentences of laboring for subsistence. Your societies build fictions of superstition to ward away that which you do not know, which is much. You build value around gold, land, fame, and women (and punish for the lust of such) because there is such little time to acquire any of it. The Orenian Empire must be the bulwark because you are weak. Your transcendent god must be immaterial because you are ephemeral.

 

The eerie reality is that we live in a world that does not care whether we live or die. There is no divine light to guide. Iblees’ temptations don’t actually lurk behind "sins" such as promiscuity or murder. And when we live in observation, we cannot know when reality itself came into being, or why. Our realm is one of many that are known. These realms contain hosts of separate gods, clawing over one another to fill our souls and use them as conduits for their celestial wars of power - they love us not. You and I are but droplets in a stream of souls without end, ceaselessly heading towards the blackness of death.

 

This is your “inconvenient truth”, priest. Cling to your beliefs, and I will cling to mine.

 

From one citizen to another,

Irulan Elibar'acal"
 

[TheNunnery 1853]

“ As the Valah would say, I do think this poor Mali was ’bit*h slapped‘ with some solid facts.” Alyssa Seregon said with a joking tone and a cocky smirk as she’d let out a couple light laughs while in the NGS museum’s minibar, drinking some red wine.

[VIROS 2915]

James II, lying paralyzed in his bed, has the memo read to him by a nervous attendant. At the end he says "This heathen does not even know whom he addresses: Fr. Pius is a High Elf, born and raised in Haeulun'or. . . In all his ignorance, this man confidently denies the existence of morality itself. How I weep to see the vicious amorality that plagues the lands of pagans."

[frill 2277]

FR. Pius—

 

If a man doesn't believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. As your correspondence should be showing you, the poor beggar can believe in just about anything. To try to imply that a pious man as yourself places value in gold, land and women is to assume that one builds a castle in the sky out of bricks, and one can assume that this atheistic soul's been raising masonry above his head and letting it go to achieve the same end as your years of cloistered prayer.

 

Yours,

 

Vic. H— Armas.

[Jentos 9422]

"False deities slit each others throats behind starry veils, their corpses hanging in the heavens. In eternity, those aenguls, daemons, and entities face the knowledge that they will be destroyed one day. Their realms, their paradises will be shred by cosmic inevitability, the lives within drank by a voracious heavenly will. The souls will be awash with the thunderous screams of dying demiurges -- all will die by the sundry of wills and astral movements that will echo throughout the realms, throughout existence, throughout all realities. And we will be left with silence. This is the God. And none can stand in It's way."

 

Spoke Jaghari to a host of figures, a blood-stained, shivering hand clutching a Lorraine cross, fear twinkling in his eyes. 

 

"But to deny transcendence? It appears some have forgotten many a man, and many an elf."

 

He smiled dearly to a single-eye'd man.

 

"Heaven does not belong to the coward who sits, slumped over texts. Nor the warrior. Nor the wise man. It belongs to the fool, who beyond all doubt, and beyond all odds, defies the threat of void and its gift of nothing, trumping the very blackness of death, daring to surmount the God which cannot hear him, but yet still bids It to listen. He must covet the impossible, and forge from his will a veritable fairy-tale that will counter the meta-physics themselves. He shall then live in an unbelievable limbo, his form no longer able to be comprehended, to forever muse and bask amidst all that is, imagined, dead, and real, until the dying screams of false idols lull him to sleep." 

[Lojo613 1882]

Through a haze of incense, at the dim light of a candle, Goren's thin, weak body lies draped over a desk. Despite his horrendous corpselike state, he laughs. Painstakingly, he begins to pen an open letter to the arrogant elves.

 

"To those who have challenged Father Pius to an argument,

 

You have utterly ruined yourselves, and must now be prepared to be made fools of. I have spent decades arguing with Father Pius, and if you were prepared to use the same erroneous logic and reasoning to come to your conclusions as you illustrated in your essay, Pius shall not only make you seem ignorant, but do it with a kind smile. It seems you do not know who Father Pius is so I shall enlighten you. Father Pius of Sutica is an elf, and the way your argument reads, it seems you did not know this. I will confess, perhaps you are correct regarding his age, he may yet be younger than those of you who write, but to claim that therefore you now have more authority than him is a pure and utter fallacy. You gush history as if it somehow has given any weight to your argument, that there is no Supreme power because... why? Horrid events occur? There are monsters in the world? Perhaps you would also believe that there is no sun because it is night, and proudly proclaim about how long you have spent in the darkness as well. I suggest, before embarking on the endeavor that is debating Father Pius, you go back and read the dozens of arguments I have had with him, so that you may learn to lose with grace, because it is clear from the tone of your work that you lack it. In a world where Aenguls wage wars against Daemons, and you yourself have admitted to witnessing such horrors, it is more mad to claim that our continued existence, being so small and meek, is random chance rather than grand design. But given your age, you most likely are already insane.

 

Enjoy disgracing your nation,

Father Goren"

[thesmellypocket 1859]

Fr. Pius writes a reply.

 

"I regret,citizen, that I cannot write at the moment. I am bedridden and I know my time to depart from this world is coming soon. I am suffering from great physical pain. But my good friend Fr. Dima has kindly agreed to write down my response, in as many words as I am able to say.

 

First of all, as has already been pointed out, I am not a citizen of Oren. Nor do I hold up Oren as some standard which is to be imitated. I am a blessed son of Malin, like yourself, and have lived my life in divers countries.  Those who know me best know that I am very critical of immoralities in Oren. I have written an essay on patriotism - perhaps you will be so good as to read it - in which I published in the same journal last month. Love for one's country ought to be like love for one's family: just as it is our duty to love our family, so it is our duty to love our race and country, and I would say the greatest patriot is the greatest critic. For a man who loves his mother, if she became a drunkard, would not indulge that evil in her, but attempt to help her overcome it. In the same way, know that I wrote my journal article not out of hate, but out of love, a love for my own mother, and a love as dear and true as any who are fortunate enough to call themselves Mali'aheral. And as I confessed in that essay, the nation is truly right and good and moral when she tries to strive for purity, but she goes about it in the wrong way, pretending that it can be achieved by ourselves. It is not a very sound philosophy of life for the reasons I gave.

 

You write of my "inferior mind." Doubtless you are correct in this. But here is another problem with you and our countrymen: they do not see the difference between wisdom and knowledge. No doubt, your mind has a superior capacity for scientific and historical knowledge than mine. No doubt, you have lived longer and have learnt from more experiences than I have. And no doubt, you can process all this knowledge with greater clarity than I can. But a little bit of humility might go a long way for our people. First of all, because we did not earn our own intellects, they were given to us, and you, who were given a greater intellect than I am, ought to use this freely-given and unearned gift without holding yourself above others. Secondly, because the more we know, the more we realise we don't know. The more scientific knowledge we have, the less we realise we do have. Therefore, a man who accumulates more and more knowledge ought to realise he knows less and less. For I wish I knew one thousandeth of what I thought I knew when I was a young student in Haelon'ur! But God has given me the grace to know but a little more natural knowledge since then, and, in knowing it, I realise how little I did know, how little I do know. It seems to me, that two classes of men have wisdom. The first, is those who know they know nothing. The second, is those that know they don't know everything. Never the man who is self-wise and thinks that he knows. Your life will become most more joyful and virtuous when you embrace this philosophy. For I have observed that the truest joy is gratitude: if I were to hold myself and compare myself to others for being born into the race that I was, I should be miserable. Rather I recognise that I did not earn it and thank the good God for the gifts that I do have, fewer though they be in comparison to yours. 

 

Point I. The Author Writes That What the Orenians did was Evil, for He Writes that Women were "Made Concubines, OR WORSE." But This is Irrational Apart from Belief in a Transcendent Moral Standard.

 

But knowing this, I don't see the relevance of your recounting of the historical atrocities of Oren, as if they belonged to me, or as if I had any purpose as claiming them for my own. My point was that purity, and truth, and goodness, are not rooted in any nation, or empire, for nations and races, being imperfect things, act imperfectly, and sometimes with utter malice and evil, as you yourself have well proven here. And that nation could be the Orenian nation, the Dwarves, and so on, and so forth, but the same truth holds true.

 

You claim that transcendent morality rooted in the Good is a lie made to sustain society and to appease men who fear their imminent deaths.  Well, if morality has no real existence, and if transcendent moral truth is a lie of convenience, wherefore are you so woeful? They just did what was necessary to expand their Empire and society, using the bendable principles of morality. You can no more blame them than a tiger who eats a gazelle, according to your view. What they did cannot be called right or wrong; there is only the interest of the state, and, in doing what was in the interest of the state, they, in fact, acted rightly, since according to your principle, the state and society begat morals, instead of right morals begetting a society, thereby the state having just cause to bend morals to its own need, as they did here. Your reaction, therefore, is itself only an irrational and emotional reaction, for this, according to your own principle, is the only way in which morality really exists: feelings. You must therefore concede to one of two points: either a)this transcendent standard of goodness does not exist, and was invented for the utility of the state, and therefore the Orenians were perfectly right and justified in slaughtering our babies, and therefore your stance is entirely irrational and has no basis, and in fact, you ought not to blame the Orenians for using morality in its right place, but rather to praise them, or b)you have already intrinsically accepted the idea that there is a transcendent moral good by which these actions can be objectively measured, which exists outside of space and time. For to assert the objective existence of positive evil does not disprove positive good, but rather it proves that it exists, for we knew about Good before we knew about evil; we cannot call it evil objectively unless we know what is good objectively. Nihilists, as the name implies, have nothing to be outraged about; that is contrary to reason. Your relatives were, by your own reckoning, "droplets," what matter if they are killed? You should be happy and praise the Orenians for acting in accordance with your philosophy! There is no better or worse - there is only expediency!

 

Point II. The Author Proves my Point About Progress: Either a)Progress is a Lie and the High Elves aren't Progressing Toward Anything, or b)There is some Intrinsic Standard of Good to Which one can Progress to or from. This is Exactly the Point I Made in my Journal Essay. The Author of this Response is a Truly Despicable Person.

 

Also, as I wrote before, Haelon'ur speaks of "progress." Progress cannot exist without a goal, for progress must exist toward something. There must be a point at which perfect goodness in your society is reached. For a man who was building a house, could be said to "progress" when he lays the foundations, to have done still further once he has acquired mortar, and so on, and so forth. But if the man had no plan or goal, but was just lumping arbitrarily building material unto building material, and told you he was making "progress", we would call him mad, because he has no goal. Moreover, if a society is progressing toward something, then goodness cannot be vested in that society, but something higher than it. For you claim that the conception of transcendent goodness is something that comes from society, but if society is progressing, then that implies a prior understanding of what goodness is before the existence of the society.  Indeed, the yardstick we use to measure progress must be outside of time, because progress is within time. Progress, implies goal, goal implies perfectibility, perfectibility implies perfection. Progress cannot therefore exist without a prior idea of what a positive movement toward the Good would be, and therefore you must either concede that a)There is no transcendent standard of good, by which progress can be measured, therefore our society's idea of progress is an arbitrary lie, and we are not progressing, just arbitrarily moving, or b)There is one, and we can progress toward or go away from what is good. If law in Haelun'or were to fade, and all men were to become murderers, you would no doubt say this is "against progress"; if they were to lose all the virtues of purity, temperance, justice, liberality, and so forth, no doubt you would grieve, because these virtues are good.  It would not be "progress" if the whole society agreed on infanticide; therefore a society can only progress if there is some ideal of goodness that precedes it. Therefore, you DO agree that progress is a lie, that your society is built on falsehood, and you consent to the point of my essay. So you haven't actually disagreed with what I said. I wrote, that you must either believe in a transcendent standard of goodness, or progress is a lie. You have chosen the latter option: you utterly despicable man, truly evil and cowardly, you look down on Mankind for believing so-called fictions, but you indulge what you believe to be lies knowingly for the purposes of expediency. If there is no Good, progress is a lie, and if you believe there is no Good, you are therefore a liar.

 

Point III. The Myth that the Mali'aheral are Governed by Reason.

 

I may be "weak" and therefore find life and goodness and truth and wisdom outside of my own self-absorbed, nihilistic and disdainful-of-those-"beneath"-me philosophy, but you are "egotistical" and therefore refuse to see any life or truth outside of yourself and your own subjective sense experience. The idea that the Elves are purely rational creatures is a myth springing from pride and self-importance. The existence of impurity proves that purity is violated, which shows your reason does not rule you, but that you are the slave of passions and emotions. If the Mali'aheral acted on reason any more than any other race, there would be no need for laws, for their actions would be in accordance with right reason.  

 

Mali accept dogmas just as much as men do, except men are more honest and call them just that, dogmas. No one can live more than 24 hours sanely without accepting premises that can't be proven, and can only be accepted, which we call dogmas. Mankind is therefore much more sane, happier and clear thinking than us. For despite our long life-spans, we are barely more technologically advanced than Man. In matters like science, mathematics and astronomy they seem to have as great a capacity for advancement as we do, in terms of art, architecture, cultural achievement and so forth, in terms of martial advancement - how is it we do not simply out-develop their armies despite our greater intellect and long years? How is it men were able to slaughter our ancestors if we were so much better than they? One reason at least is Man's capacity for clear-thinking. Man does not delude himself, he is precise and knows what dogmas he accepts. Man absorbs less knowledge in a shorter life-span, but he integrates that knowledge into a view of the world that is sane and wise. The sons of Malin, most especially our race, tend to have our minds muddled by a contemptible pretended scepticism we mistake for "reason", when, in fact it is riddled with an unconscious dogmatism, which is the worst dogmatism of them all.

 

Even the concept of "expediency", accepts certain dogmas. You say, there is no standard of good, only what is expedient, and virtues therefore must have no real value. But by acting to do what is expedient, doesn't that already imply that you have interests which are good and bad? For example, if you, out of this principle of expediency, were to cite morality (in your view, lie) to justify self-defence, and, were to kill a man in that defence, have you not already accepted that it is better to live than to die? If you have placed value on self-preservation, and you consider it good that you and others should preserve their own lives, and that this is expedient for them, you have already accepted that it is inherently better for them to live than to die. There is no proof that it is better to live than to die, so why do you consider it expedient that you should live? If expedient is defined as acting in the interest of that thing, does not that show that you have already accepted that there are certain things that are good and bad for a person prior to this principle? If the Mali launched an attack on the Orenian grain supply, and used the concept of "progress" to justify what was truly an attack of expediency, have they not accepted the dogma that to eat and live is better than to starve and die?

 

Point IV. Seeking Immaterial Truths in what is Material is to Make a Category Error.

 

Two plus two equals four. Two plus two would equal four if all of material creation ceased to exist. Some truths, then, are immaterial, being known by logic in reason, irrespective of material truth. Nor do these truths exist in the mind alone, for if we ceased to exist to think about it, even if all rational minds ceased to exist, two plus two would still equal four. Mathematical truths, therefore, exist immaterially, not materially. You cannot see the number "2 centillion." Where can you show 2 centillion of anything? In your holdings? What about in your citizens? What about the mathematical concept of Infinity? Nowhere can it be found in Orenian or any other holdings. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but rather mathematical truths are immaterial truths known by reason, and not by scientific examination. They are truths that exist outside of and irrespective of space and time. To seek them within space and time is foolish. But they do prove that things outside of space and time can be known, if not comprehended.

 

If you expect me to go and point to you to some empirical proof of this goodness, you are as a man blindfolded. I can't prove the existence of God by pointing to a cloud and saying "look, there is God", or an Empire, or anything that is contingent and empirical. But I can know His existence by the natural light of reason. 

 

A Canonist is simply this: it is someone who has plucked up the wild yet thrilling conclusion that there is something in this world wiser than himself. I am sorry you cannot see or know my joy at this time.  The truly thrilling joy of life is in humility and gratitude, in putting yourself at the service of others and losing yourself, I mean really forgetting yourself. Then your life is as light as a feather, whereas snobbery - yes, that is what the men of my race are, snobs in the main, all their virtues - makes you heavy as lead, and prevents you from reaping the harvest because you never sowed the seed. I am now experiencing the full harvest of my hope. That is why I shall say no more. My time is nearly up, and I shall presently write my last testimony. Nevertheless my last prayers shall be for you.

 

May the blessing of Almighty God, fall down upon you and remain with you forever and ever. Amen. (+)"

[thesmellypocket 1859]

On 1/7/2021 at 1:52 AM, thesmellypocket said:

Fr. Pius writes a reply.

 

"I regret,citizen, that I cannot write at the moment. I am bedridden and I know my time to depart from this world is coming soon. I am suffering from great physical pain. But my good friend Fr. Dima has kindly agreed to write down my response, in as many words as I am able to say.

 

First of all, as has already been pointed out, I am not a citizen of Oren. Nor do I hold up Oren as some standard which is to be imitated. I am a blessed son of Malin, like yourself, and have lived my life in divers countries.  Those who know me best know that I am very critical of immoralities in Oren. I have written an essay on patriotism - perhaps you will be so good as to read it - in which I published in the same journal last month. Love for one's country ought to be like love for one's family: just as it is our duty to love our family, so it is our duty to love our race and country, and I would say the greatest patriot is the greatest critic. For a man who loves his mother, if she became a drunkard, would not indulge that evil in her, but attempt to help her overcome it. In the same way, know that I wrote my journal article not out of hate, but out of love, a love for my own mother, and a love as dear and true as any who are fortunate enough to call themselves Mali'aheral. And as I confessed in that essay, the nation is truly right and good and moral when she tries to strive for purity, but she goes about it in the wrong way, pretending that it can be achieved by ourselves. It is not a very sound philosophy of life for the reasons I gave.

 

You write of my "inferior mind." Doubtless you are correct in this. But here is another problem with you and our countrymen: they do not see the difference between wisdom and knowledge. No doubt, your mind has a superior capacity for scientific and historical knowledge than mine. No doubt, you have lived longer and have learnt from more experiences than I have. And no doubt, you can process all this knowledge with greater clarity than I can. But a little bit of humility might go a long way for our people. First of all, because we did not earn our own intellects, they were given to us, and you, who were given a greater intellect than I am, ought to use this freely-given and unearned gift without holding yourself above others. Secondly, because the more we know, the more we realise we don't know. The more scientific knowledge we have, the less we realise we do have. Therefore, a man who accumulates more and more knowledge ought to realise he knows less and less. For I wish I knew one thousandeth of what I thought I knew when I was a young student in Haelon'ur! But God has given me the grace to know but a little more natural knowledge since then, and, in knowing it, I realise how little I did know, how little I do know. It seems to me, that two classes of men have wisdom. The first, is those who know they know nothing. The second, is those that know they don't know everything. Never the man who is self-wise and thinks that he knows. Your life will become most more joyful and virtuous when you embrace this philosophy. For I have observed that the truest joy is gratitude: if I were to hold myself and compare myself to others for being born into the race that I was, I should be miserable. Rather I recognise that I did not earn it and thank the good God for the gifts that I do have, fewer though they be in comparison to yours. 

 

Point I. The Author Writes That What the Orenians did was Evil, for He Writes that Women were "Made Concubines, OR WORSE." But This is Irrational Apart from Belief in a Transcendent Moral Standard.

 

But knowing this, I don't see the relevance of your recounting of the historical atrocities of Oren, as if they belonged to me, or as if I had any purpose as claiming them for my own. My point was that purity, and truth, and goodness, are not rooted in any nation, or empire, for nations and races, being imperfect things, act imperfectly, and sometimes with utter malice and evil, as you yourself have well proven here. And that nation could be the Orenian nation, the Dwarves, and so on, and so forth, but the same truth holds true.

 

You claim that transcendent morality rooted in the Good is a lie made to sustain society and to appease men who fear their imminent deaths.  Well, if morality has no real existence, and if transcendent moral truth is a lie of convenience, wherefore are you so woeful? They just did what was necessary to expand their Empire and society, using the bendable principles of morality. You can no more blame them than a tiger who eats a gazelle, according to your view. What they did cannot be called right or wrong; there is only the interest of the state, and, in doing what was in the interest of the state, they, in fact, acted rightly, since according to your principle, the state and society begat morals, instead of right morals begetting a society, thereby the state having just cause to bend morals to its own need, as they did here. Your reaction, therefore, is itself only an irrational and emotional reaction, for this, according to your own principle, is the only way in which morality really exists: feelings. You must therefore concede to one of two points: either a)this transcendent standard of goodness does not exist, and was invented for the utility of the state, and therefore the Orenians were perfectly right and justified in slaughtering our babies, and therefore your stance is entirely irrational and has no basis, and in fact, you ought not to blame the Orenians for using morality in its right place, but rather to praise them, or b)you have already intrinsically accepted the idea that there is a transcendent moral good by which these actions can be objectively measured, which exists outside of space and time. For to assert the objective existence of positive evil does not disprove positive good, but rather it proves that it exists, for we knew about Good before we knew about evil; we cannot call it evil objectively unless we know what is good objectively. Nihilists, as the name implies, have nothing to be outraged about; that is contrary to reason. Your relatives were, by your own reckoning, "droplets," what matter if they are killed? You should be happy and praise the Orenians for acting in accordance with your philosophy! There is no better or worse - there is only expediency!

 

Point II. The Author Proves my Point About Progress: Either a)Progress is a Lie and the High Elves aren't Progressing Toward Anything, or b)There is some Intrinsic Standard of Good to Which one can Progress to or from. This is Exactly the Point I Made in my Journal Essay. The Author of this Response is a Truly Despicable Person.

 

Also, as I wrote before, Haelon'ur speaks of "progress." Progress cannot exist without a goal, for progress must exist toward something. There must be a point at which perfect goodness in your society is reached. For a man who was building a house, could be said to "progress" when he lays the foundations, to have done still further once he has acquired mortar, and so on, and so forth. But if the man had no plan or goal, but was just lumping arbitrarily building material unto building material, and told you he was making "progress", we would call him mad, because he has no goal. Moreover, if a society is progressing toward something, then goodness cannot be vested in that society, but something higher than it. For you claim that the conception of transcendent goodness is something that comes from society, but if society is progressing, then that implies a prior understanding of what goodness is before the existence of the society.  Indeed, the yardstick we use to measure progress must be outside of time, because progress is within time. Progress, implies goal, goal implies perfectibility, perfectibility implies perfection. Progress cannot therefore exist without a prior idea of what a positive movement toward the Good would be, and therefore you must either concede that a)There is no transcendent standard of good, by which progress can be measured, therefore our society's idea of progress is an arbitrary lie, and we are not progressing, just arbitrarily moving, or b)There is one, and we can progress toward or go away from what is good. If law in Haelun'or were to fade, and all men were to become murderers, you would no doubt say this is "against progress"; if they were to lose all the virtues of purity, temperance, justice, liberality, and so forth, no doubt you would grieve, because these virtues are good.  It would not be "progress" if the whole society agreed on infanticide; therefore a society can only progress if there is some ideal of goodness that precedes it. Therefore, you DO agree that progress is a lie, that your society is built on falsehood, and you consent to the point of my essay. So you haven't actually disagreed with what I said. I wrote, that you must either believe in a transcendent standard of goodness, or progress is a lie. You have chosen the latter option: you utterly despicable man, truly evil and cowardly, you look down on Mankind for believing so-called fictions, but you indulge what you believe to be lies knowingly for the purposes of expediency. If there is no Good, progress is a lie, and if you believe there is no Good, you are therefore a liar.

 

Point III. The Myth that the Mali'aheral are Governed by Reason.

 

I may be "weak" and therefore find life and goodness and truth and wisdom outside of my own self-absorbed, nihilistic and disdainful-of-those-"beneath"-me philosophy, but you are "egotistical" and therefore refuse to see any life or truth outside of yourself and your own subjective sense experience. The idea that the Elves are purely rational creatures is a myth springing from pride and self-importance. The existence of impurity proves that purity is violated, which shows your reason does not rule you, but that you are the slave of passions and emotions. If the Mali'aheral acted on reason any more than any other race, there would be no need for laws, for their actions would be in accordance with right reason.  

 

Mali accept dogmas just as much as men do, except men are more honest and call them just that, dogmas. No one can live more than 24 hours sanely without accepting premises that can't be proven, and can only be accepted, which we call dogmas. Mankind is therefore much more sane, happier and clear thinking than us. For despite our long life-spans, we are barely more technologically advanced than Man. In matters like science, mathematics and astronomy they seem to have as great a capacity for advancement as we do, in terms of art, architecture, cultural achievement and so forth, in terms of martial advancement - how is it we do not simply out-develop their armies despite our greater intellect and long years? How is it men were able to slaughter our ancestors if we were so much better than they? One reason at least is Man's capacity for clear-thinking. Man does not delude himself, he is precise and knows what dogmas he accepts. Man absorbs less knowledge in a shorter life-span, but he integrates that knowledge into a view of the world that is sane and wise. The sons of Malin, most especially our race, tend to have our minds muddled by a contemptible pretended scepticism we mistake for "reason", when, in fact it is riddled with an unconscious dogmatism, which is the worst dogmatism of them all.

 

Even the concept of "expediency", accepts certain dogmas. You say, there is no standard of good, only what is expedient, and virtues therefore must have no real value. But by acting to do what is expedient, doesn't that already imply that you have interests which are good and bad? For example, if you, out of this principle of expediency, were to cite morality (in your view, lie) to justify self-defence, and, were to kill a man in that defence, have you not already accepted that it is better to live than to die? If you have placed value on self-preservation, and you consider it good that you and others should preserve their own lives, and that this is expedient for them, you have already accepted that it is inherently better for them to live than to die. There is no proof that it is better to live than to die, so why do you consider it expedient that you should live? If expedient is defined as acting in the interest of that thing, does not that show that you have already accepted that there are certain things that are good and bad for a person prior to this principle? If the Mali launched an attack on the Orenian grain supply, and used the concept of "progress" to justify what was truly an attack of expediency, have they not accepted the dogma that to eat and live is better than to starve and die?

 

Point IV. Seeking Immaterial Truths in what is Material is to Make a Category Error.

 

Two plus two equals four. Two plus two would equal four if all of material creation ceased to exist. Some truths, then, are immaterial, being known by logic in reason, irrespective of material truth. Nor do these truths exist in the mind alone, for if we ceased to exist to think about it, even if all rational minds ceased to exist, two plus two would still equal four. Mathematical truths, therefore, exist immaterially, not materially. You cannot see the number "2 centillion." Where can you show 2 centillion of anything? In your holdings? What about in your citizens? What about the mathematical concept of Infinity? Nowhere can it be found in Orenian or any other holdings. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but rather mathematical truths are immaterial truths known by reason, and not by scientific examination. They are truths that exist outside of and irrespective of space and time. To seek them within space and time is foolish. But they do prove that things outside of space and time can be known, if not comprehended.

 

If you expect me to go and point to you to some empirical proof of this goodness, you are as a man blindfolded. I can't prove the existence of God by pointing to a cloud and saying "look, there is God", or an Empire, or anything that is contingent and empirical. But I can know His existence by the natural light of reason. 

 

A Canonist is simply this: it is someone who has plucked up the wild yet thrilling conclusion that there is something in this world wiser than himself. I am sorry you cannot see or know my joy at this time.  The truly thrilling joy of life is in humility and gratitude, in putting yourself at the service of others and losing yourself, I mean really forgetting yourself. Then your life is as light as a feather, whereas snobbery - yes, that is what the men of my race are, snobs in the main, for all their virtues - makes you heavy as lead, and prevents you from reaping the harvest because you never sowed the seed. I am now experiencing the full harvest of my hope. That is why I shall say no more. My time is nearly up, and I shall presently write my last testimony. Nevertheless my last prayers shall be for you.

 

May the blessing of Almighty God, fall down upon you and remain with you forever and ever. Amen. (+)"

((sorry, this was unintentional. Please delete this second post.