sukuna171
He/Him- 485
- 223
would all this grant Nonduality
It is more than clear that the idea of Darkness as a morally evil force without room for compromise is hopelessly outdated, and policy must be revised. Does a shadow have any moral attributes because it may obscure where we are going? Is the sunshine inherently good because it illuminates a path? They are both required to delineate one from the other. And even if they did carry intention, if the blotting out of the sun every night was an act of unspeakable evil, such concepts as good and evil are still defined by their relationship to each other. What is evil? It is not good.
Light and Darkness, the paracausal forces known to the Traveler and the Witness, these are not as simple to define as sun and shadow. But an understanding of Darkness is required no matter if one chooses to remain immersed in Light or balance both. Refusal to accept that understanding will forever render the truth unclear.
If Light ever truly defeated Darkness, that defeat would be our fate too. Our best hope lies in understanding Darkness and its balance to Light, in seeking the perfect symmetry that will right our universe. Perhaps you will read this as a cultish devotion to a deceased figurehead. Perhaps there is no convincing anyone that Ulan-Tan was undoubtably right…
Light and Darkness, the paracausal forces known to the Traveler and the Witness, these are not as simple to define as sun and shadow. But an understanding of Darkness is required no matter if one chooses to remain immersed in Light or balance both. Refusal to accept that understanding will forever render the truth unclear.
If Light ever truly defeated Darkness, that defeat would be our fate too. Our best hope lies in understanding Darkness and its balance to Light, in seeking the perfect symmetry that will right our universe. Perhaps you will read this as a cultish devotion to a deceased figurehead. Perhaps there is no convincing anyone that Ulan-Tan was undoubtably right…
To have Light, we must have Dark. This is the symmetry of the Universe." —Controversial Warlock Ulan-Tan
I propose a simple experiment—look around. You see light. You see darkness. There could not be one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.
If it is true for these Newtonian echoes, why would it not be true of the purest, paracausal forms?
Therefore, I conclude: the reason you persecute me is not because of the symmetry. It's because of the truth beyond this truth, the truth which you most dread: if we could destroy darkness, but we had to give up our Light to do so, how many of us would make that trade?
I propose a simple experiment—look around. You see light. You see darkness. There could not be one without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.
If it is true for these Newtonian echoes, why would it not be true of the purest, paracausal forms?
Therefore, I conclude: the reason you persecute me is not because of the symmetry. It's because of the truth beyond this truth, the truth which you most dread: if we could destroy darkness, but we had to give up our Light to do so, how many of us would make that trade?
If one accepts that the concepts of Light/Darkness and Good/Evil are not perfectly aligned, then there must necessarily exist liminal spaces where [Light = Evil] and [Darkness = Good]. If true, it would be the ultimate triumph of moral relativism. It was this (yet unspoken) tangent of Symmetry that the Vanguard found to be so threatening.
"Your discovery is perhaps the greatest of our time. If the Hive were able to infect the Traveler through this long-lost shard of its battered shell, Ulan-Tan's theory may be true - all Light remains connected, across space and time. We cannot let our enemies use this power against us." - Ikora Rey
* It was once before a time, because time had not yet begun.
** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.
*** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.
They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden.
In the morning, the gardener pushed seeds down into the wet loam of the garden to see what they would become.
In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed.
The day was longer than all of time, and the night was swifter than a glint of light on a falling sugar crystal. Insects buzzed between the flowers, and worms slithered between the roots, feeding on what was and what might be, the first gradient in existence, the first dynamo of life. Rain fell from no sky. Voices spoke without mouth or meaning. A tree of silver wings bloomed yielded fruit shed feathers bloomed again.
In the day between the morning and the evening, the gardener and the winnower played a game of possibilities.
** We did not live. We existed as principles of ontological dynamics that emerged from mathematical structures, as bodiless and inevitable as the primes.
*** It was the field of possibility that prefigured existence.
They existed, because they had to exist. They had no antecedent and no constituents, and there is no instrument of causality by which they could be portioned into components and assigned to some schematic of their origin. If you followed the umbilical of history in search of some ultimate atavistic embryo that became them, you would end your journey marooned here in this garden.
In the morning, the gardener pushed seeds down into the wet loam of the garden to see what they would become.
In the evening, the winnower reaped the day's crop and separated what would flourish from what had failed.
The day was longer than all of time, and the night was swifter than a glint of light on a falling sugar crystal. Insects buzzed between the flowers, and worms slithered between the roots, feeding on what was and what might be, the first gradient in existence, the first dynamo of life. Rain fell from no sky. Voices spoke without mouth or meaning. A tree of silver wings bloomed yielded fruit shed feathers bloomed again.
In the day between the morning and the evening, the gardener and the winnower played a game of possibilities.
I looked up in shock. I said, What? What do you mean?
"A special new rule. Something to…" The gardener threw up their hands in exasperation. "I don't know. To reward those who make space for new complexity. A power that helps those who make strength from heterodoxy, and who steer the game away from gridlock. Something to ensure there's always someone building something new. It'll have to be separate from the rest of the rules, running in parallel, so it can't be compromised. And we'll have to be very careful, so it doesn't disrupt the whole game…"
All you will do, I said, with rising panic|fury, is delay the dominant pattern that will overrun the others. It is inevitable. One final shape.
"No, it'll be different. Everything will be different, everywhere you look."
Everything will be the same. Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream as their rich blisters fill with effluent and rot around them, and when they pop they will blight the whole garden. Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. That is the only law.
"No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game."
And thus we two became parts of the game, and the laws of the game became nomic and open to change by our influence. And I had only one purpose and one principle in the game. And I could do nothing but continue to enact that purpose, because it was all that I was and ever would be.
I looked at the gardener.
I looked at my hands.
I discovered the first knife.
"A special new rule. Something to…" The gardener threw up their hands in exasperation. "I don't know. To reward those who make space for new complexity. A power that helps those who make strength from heterodoxy, and who steer the game away from gridlock. Something to ensure there's always someone building something new. It'll have to be separate from the rest of the rules, running in parallel, so it can't be compromised. And we'll have to be very careful, so it doesn't disrupt the whole game…"
All you will do, I said, with rising panic|fury, is delay the dominant pattern that will overrun the others. It is inevitable. One final shape.
"No, it'll be different. Everything will be different, everywhere you look."
Everything will be the same. Your new rule will only make great false cysts of horror full of things that should not exist that cannot withstand existence that will suffer and scream as their rich blisters fill with effluent and rot around them, and when they pop they will blight the whole garden. Whatever exists because it must exist and because it permits no other way of existence has the absolute claim to existence. That is the only law.
"No," the gardener said, "I am the growth and preservation of complexity. I will make myself into a law in the game."
And thus we two became parts of the game, and the laws of the game became nomic and open to change by our influence. And I had only one purpose and one principle in the game. And I could do nothing but continue to enact that purpose, because it was all that I was and ever would be.
I looked at the gardener.
I looked at my hands.
I discovered the first knife.
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