Entelechy: Difference between revisions

The purpose and the means are inseparable. It is simple teleology. We are not advocating for needless cruelty. There are countless methods of intervention at our disposal with compassion as their guiding pillar. The [transition/uplifting/enlightenment] would be uncomfortable, naturally, but the alternative is to sit idly by and watch the inevitable extinction of a species. An extinction we could prevent!

If the final shape truly is the greatest good imaginable, then its rightness should be self-evident. It should be so clear to anyone and anything that comprehends it that we should never need to do more than share the information for them to reach the same conclusion.

That we have failed to do so, even among the Consensus<span style="color:#40678e;">**</span>, suggests imperfections in our own understanding. If we cannot prove an apodictic final shape even to each other, to our own kin whom we strive to understand as well as our own selves, then how can we possibly declare it fit to teach to others?

Indifference to suffering?

I am not indifferent! I would gladly endure pain if doing so would help others. It is a different matter entirely to force it upon someone else, even for the sake of another.

We have made improvements. The glass-minds<span style="color:#40678e;">***</span> trim the excess branches. What we see now are the strongest paths. And in the seeing, they become true.

Then tell me what you have seen. I gain nothing from running from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable.

I apologize. That was... I was unkind. I was wrong to bring up old hurts.

As you say, sometimes an infected wound must be lanced before it can heal. You should not be ashamed of your physician's instinct.

Then what we have seen through the Observatory might as well be the final shape too! Suffering and misery, anarchy, endless self-consuming hedonism, utter sterility. How can any of that be considered a greatest good? The core of the final shape is improvement!

Consider the virus, my friend. The parasite. The predator. These things that exist only by taking from others. To these things, improvement may well entail causing greater and greater harm to others-not out of malice, but as a simple fact of existence. When you eradicate an illness, are you stamping out a microscopic final shape? Should we care less for the final shape of a disease, simply because it is smaller than us? Or because it does us harm?

And yet we, the first chosen of the Gardener, cannot agree on our own way. The Gardener offers us no guidance. No principles with which to use the gifts it gives us. No reassurance for the doubts that plague us. No answers for our questions.

Why have we been chosen? Why does the Gardener, in its power and wisdom, not achieve perfection itself? If my garden was not meant to be destroyed, why did it not stop the invaders?

And why does it allow its gifts to be misused? It did not correct the [Profusion/Bountiful/Swarm] on their path to their great, fatal error. It did not stop the [Conquerors/Primacy/Sovereign] from using the gifts it granted for subjugation. Are we to accept that these, too, were meant to happen? If you reject the notion that destruction can be a final shape, how are we to accept that the Gardener allowed us to make such grievous mistakes?

Even after all these millennia, there is much we do not understand about the Gardener. Perhaps we will not understand until we have achieved the final shape for ourselves.

And when we have reached the final shape, will it all make sense? Will we all be able to live in a universe where people act, as they have always acted, for the self-evident good? Where evil does not exist because we do not allow it? Where all are aligned without suffering or doubt?