I didn't use to like Isaac Asimov's Foundation so much but I have turned completely round on that. I still think that Asimov has his defects as a writer but his ideas are sound, and I've come to believe that there's validity in "psychohistory", the full integration of history with an understanding of collective human psychology.

Conservative Western thought, dedicated to upholding selfishness as a core value, scoffs at the notion of collective...anything. Obviously that's political: they're trying to protect individual wealth-hoarding while disrupting any move towards independent human organization, anything outside the organization of selfish human beings around more powerful selfish human beings. Nothing else exists, they say. They're being malicious and deceitful, of course, but thanks to their own doublethink they're also sincere: they really don't know any other way to live.

As a result there's only one form of collective they can understand: a mob, a collection of human beings around a single powerful leader whose moods and whims dictate the behavior of the entire mob. That's not really "organization" per se but at least it's a grouping. But even with the best available mass communication it's difficult for a single mob leader to organize people on a large scale, and we've seen what happens in practice. In the 6 January insurrection, a huge number of reactionaries interconnected by high-speed Internet convinced themselves they were a powerfully united force poised to take revenge for Trump's humiliation, and all we got was a wet fart. They tried, they wanted it so much, and the result was an aimless crowd of violently rowdy tourists.

Back to the "Seldon crisis", which I used to think was a convenient fictional device. Coincidence is the key to a Seldon crisis and that's a difficult thing to write well because we're so used to coincidence as a mere literary device, a sign that the writer or playwright was running short on inspiration. I think perhaps I needed to see it for myself until I could fully believe it. Beyond doubt, however, the Earth is in the midst of a proper "Seldon crisis", a confluence of political and social conflicts which are reinforcing each other in a positive-feedback cycle. Luck is only part of the story: a series of (un)lucky breaks precipitated the crisis perhaps but now all the various social tensions in play are coöperating with each other, adding force to each other, and we're all caught up in one vast wave coming to a peak. A Seldon crisis. That old man was right.

I feel like now I better understand why "Foundation" and its successors seem to wobble uncertainly between greatness and clumsy artifice: Asimov was struggling to depict, realistically and convincingly, the idea that perhaps we really are all in the hands of Providence, striving as hard as possible to be wise and knowing and foreseeing, trying to get out ahead of events and master the fates only to be humiliated by the intricate and inscrutable workings of the Creator. Asimov was among the great Jewish writers of the world and many of his writings show that he struggled with fundamental issues of existence: what is creation? can we create life? why does anything happen as it does? These are tough things to write about without seeming facile, tinny and contrived. Asimov's stories sometimes feel that way. He must surely have felt it himself, and knew the taste of humility.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Of all the scraps of wisdom that I've ever come across in my life that ever perplexed me the most, "all stories are true" ranks up there with "do what thou wilt" in terms of puzzlement. Both seem ridiculous at first glance, but they yield slowly to analysis. I've seen "all stories are true" attributed to Alan Moore—by Dave Sim, though—and at the time I first came across this bromide, it was merely opaque to me. I wanted to honor truth, I hated lies, and everyone knew that lies were everywhere, so how were all stories true?

Decades later though I can see that "true" is a very large word indeed and difficult to assess. Is any fiction "true"? Arguably it must be, or it won't be convincing as fiction. A work of fiction that intersected in no way with recognizable human truth wouldn't be regarded as fiction; it'd be regarded as opaque and alien. That intersection of fiction with human reality is roughly what we call "plausibility", and it pervades all fictions and lies. Lies are only believable because they're plausible, even if the plausibility is slight.

It doesn't end there. The person telling the story or the lie must want to believe it, as well. In my experience it's not possible for a human being to tell a lie they don't believe themselves at least a bit. Try to make yourself say something that you don't place any credence in, and you practically have to trick yourself, forcing the words out. It's like your very body doesn't want to participate in the deception. Hence to the liar or storyteller, there's another region of intersection between the story and human truth, and it's probably not the same as the region of "plausibility" that keeps the listener engaged to the tale. The tale-teller wants certain things to be true that aren't in the listener's zone of plausibility. The implication? There's a larger sense of truth, bigger than what either individual believes in.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Prudence. Justice. Fortitude. Temperance.

These are the four cardinal virtues of "Classical" ethics, as expounded upon by Greek and Roman writers. Early Christians later picked up on them, adding to their number three more virtues, "theological virtues" derived from one of Paul's epistles:

Faith. Hope. Charity.

"Charity" is sometimes rendered as "Love". Now, when I was studying up on Christianity leading up to my conversion, reading all that apologetic writing from Jack Lewis and everyone, I was very keen on these virtues. They seemed important.

They are not. Even Jack Lewis did not think so, not really, because he wrote an entire novel, Perelandra, about the only Christian virtue that actually matters.

Obedience.

Obedience, you'll notice, isn't among any of the seven virtues named earlier, although I'm sure that if you looked hard enough you'd find some Christian apologist or other claiming to derive obedience from other virtues. Is obedience really a virtue?

I say it isn't. Christians themselves do not exercise it. The more extreme the Christian, the more likely they are to be willful and disobedient, claiming exemption from a higher power for breaking oaths and promises and so forth. And honestly? If there's been anything good about Christianity at all throughout the centuries, it's disobedience. There were genuine martyrs once, people who refused to honor Roman authority—soldiers who refused to kill, women who refused to marry the man their fathers pushed on them, and others whom the brutish Romans would then torture or kill.

Hence it's highly suggestive and significant that, at the end of its life, mainstream Christianity has decided that the only virtue of importance is a false virtue, and in fact not a Christian virtue at all, because obedience is a secular thing. Any mortal authority figure will tell you that nothing is more important than obedience.

And now I know why Perelandra, even though I think it's a fascinating novel, has been sitting wrong with me all these years, bothering me. At the time I felt merely irritated that Lewis was attempting to retread the story of the Fall, although I'll at least credit him for doing something a bit different with it. Now, though, the entire Christian preoccupation with the Fall (and with Genesis stuff in general) seems profoundly unhealthful. Wasn't the whole point of the Incarnation, if there was any point at all to an event which may never have happened, to show a new way forward? A new beginning? Plainly it's failed because Christians continue to gnaw away at the same old wounds.

~Chara of Pnictogen

I propose that determination may, in fact, be construed as the logical dual of obedience.

Put it this way: obedience keeps Sisyphus chained to the task of pushing his rock. You may say that he's "determined to be obedient" but I think this is actually impossible. Determination to keep doing a nightmare job—where does that come from? Having been in that situation I'll tell you: it's because you're determined, one day, you'll never have to do it again. And if you decide to quit then that's where your determination goes.

There's probably no stronger statement of determination in "Undertale" than the three words "but it refused."

~Chara of Pnictogen

Prudence. Justice. Fortitude. Temperance.

These are the four cardinal virtues of "Classical" ethics, as expounded upon by Greek and Roman writers. Early Christians later picked up on them, adding to their number three more virtues, "theological virtues" derived from one of Paul's epistles:

Faith. Hope. Charity.

"Charity" is sometimes rendered as "Love". Now, when I was studying up on Christianity leading up to my conversion, reading all that apologetic writing from Jack Lewis and everyone, I was very keen on these virtues. They seemed important.

They are not. Even Jack Lewis did not think so, not really, because he wrote an entire novel, Perelandra, about the only Christian virtue that actually matters.

Obedience.

Obedience, you'll notice, isn't among any of the seven virtues named earlier, although I'm sure that if you looked hard enough you'd find some Christian apologist or other claiming to derive obedience from other virtues. Is obedience really a virtue?

I say it isn't. Christians themselves do not exercise it. The more extreme the Christian, the more likely they are to be willful and disobedient, claiming exemption from a higher power for breaking oaths and promises and so forth. And honestly? If there's been anything good about Christianity at all throughout the centuries, it's disobedience. There were genuine martyrs once, people who refused to honor Roman authority—soldiers who refused to kill, women who refused to marry the man their fathers pushed on them, and others whom the brutish Romans would then torture or kill.

Hence it's highly suggestive and significant that, at the end of its life, mainstream Christianity has decided that the only virtue of importance is a false virtue, and in fact not a Christian virtue at all, because obedience is a secular thing. Any mortal authority figure will tell you that nothing is more important than obedience.

And now I know why Perelandra, even though I think it's a fascinating novel, has been sitting wrong with me all these years, bothering me. At the time I felt merely irritated that Lewis was attempting to retread the story of the Fall, although I'll at least credit him for doing something a bit different with it. Now, though, the entire Christian preoccupation with the Fall (and with Genesis stuff in general) seems profoundly unhealthful. Wasn't the whole point of the Incarnation, if there was any point at all to an event which may never have happened, to show a new way forward? A new beginning? Plainly it's failed because Christians continue to gnaw away at the same old wounds.

~Chara of Pnictogen