XI-9-2C · Debating the final shape
Bungie · Entelechy
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPTION FOLLOWS
[RS6243199] We mustn't abandon the path to the final shape* simply because it is difficult.
[HNW047622] Difficult? You are being willfully obtuse. "Difficult" might describe a sustained effort or self-denial done with intent and care for one's own well-being. What you are describing is coercion.
[RS6243199] A moment's coercion to prevent a millennia's suffering! We can see what will happen if we sit idly by. If we choose to do nothing, and in our inaction allow this carnage to continue, then we are complicit. Thus the ethical choice is to act.
[HNW047622] At what cost? With what means? Would you advocate for the use of violence? Will you approve the murder of those who disagree? Will you and your [Merciful/Penitent/Benefic] cause lesser harm for greater good?
[RS6243199] No! Never!
[RS6243199] 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!
[HNW047622] 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.
[HNW047622] That we have failed to do so, even among the Consensus**, 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?
[RS6243199] What good is perfection if it is purely theoretical? All concepts are refined through practice. If we focus on ourselves to the exclusion of all others, if we refuse to help others and thereby pursue our perfect happiness at the cost of their interminable pain, what do we call that, if not selfishness?
[HNW047622] Humility. Acceptance of our own limited perspective.
[RS6243199] Indifference to suffering?
[HNW047622] 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.
[RS6243199] An improperly healed bone must be re-broken before it can set properly. An infected wound must be lanced. Do you abstain from uprooting weeds, even if they threaten to strangle your garden?
[RS6243199] If some suffering is inevitable, then surely it is better to seek the maximum good from it.
[HNW047622] If the choice is between greater and lesser evils, then the choice itself is flawed. I refuse to participate.
[RS6243199] I agree with you, in theory, but we do not exist purely in the theoretical. This suffering is already happening now, all the time, everywhere we look. Come see me, and I will show you the Observatory's readings. Such sights as we have seen, my friend, make me sick to my soul.
[HNW047622] I thought that the Observatory could only see possibilities. The future-branches of past visible-light readings.
[RS6243199] We have made improvements. The glass-minds*** trim the excess branches. What we see now are the strongest paths. And in the seeing, they become true.
[HNW047622] Then tell me what you have seen. I gain nothing from running from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable.
[RS6243199] Cities turning on themselves in a frenzy of self-destruction. Children offering up parents in superstitious sacrifice to bloodied gods. An entire people who would boil off their own atmosphere rather than let their neighbors enjoy fresh air! Great waves drowning worlds. Bodies which do not decompose, for everything, down to the very bacteria, has died as well. Machine-plagues carving their prediction-machines into moons.
[RS6243199] Your garden, destroyed. As the Observatory saw it, so it came to pass.
[RS6243199] I apologize. That was... I was unkind. I was wrong to bring up old hurts.
[HNW047622] As you say, sometimes an infected wound must be lanced before it can heal. You should not be ashamed of your physician's instinct.
[HNW047622] I have meditated on your words. I sat in my ship, keeping company with the pain I felt when I saw my worlds burning. That terrible loss. You would prevent such a thing from happening again. You have always wished to protect others from harm, and I honor that.
[HNW047622] But I have reached a different conclusion from you. As I saw the ruin of my great work, my thoughts traced a different path. If the final shape is the greatest good, then it must be [enduring/incontrovertible/self-fulfilling]. That my garden could be destroyed suggests that it was not a final shape after all. Perhaps the ships which came to burn it down understood its final shape better than I.
[RS6243199] Are you suggesting that the final shape of that system was its destruction? For it to be left a blasted ruin?
[HNW047622] Is it not a possibility?
[RS6243199] 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!
[HNW047622] 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?
[HNW047622] We have all studied our histories. We know what we are capable of. What we have done. What if the [Nihilists/Redolent/Accepting] are right, and our final shape is our own destruction?
[RS6243199] Are you seriously considering the words of a fringe group of self-flagellating pessimists? This is pure nihilistic indulgence. Abdication of responsibility. The existence of past evil does not invalidate future good. Should we deny what we can do because of what we have done?
[RS6243199] We of the [Merciful/Penitent/Benefic] have asked similar questions and reached our own answer. We have survived unimaginable suffering, even at one another's hands. The Gardener encourages our growth and improvement, day by day. Who better to understand the struggles of others, and guide them out of those miserable warrens into the light of day? We could help the whole universe to be better than they are, just as we are always striving to be better tomorrow than we are today. We could help them, and they will go on to help others. The good we do can compound, just as the evil has in the past.
[HNW047622] 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.
[HNW047622] 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?
[HNW047622] 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?
[RS6243199] 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.
[HNW047622] 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?
[RS6243199] This isn't like you, my friend. I am coming to see you. All will be well.
TRANSCRIPTION ENDS
SCRIBE NOTES
*The final shape is no longer described with a ternary semantic cluster (c.f. SCRIBE ARCHIVE XI-2-4A), but HNW and RS continue to use that structure to describe other concepts. Potentially reflective of semantic narrowing?
**Given the terminology, this Consensus might have been some sort of governing body, or a source of philosophical guidance.
***From the context, some sort of computational assistant? There appears to be some etymological overlap with the names of Vex Minds. Something to investigate later, perhaps!
My cross-check for the identification code in SCRIBE ARCHIVE XI-2-4A proved quite fruitful. The trail of datacrumbs led me to a databank retrieved from a Rainship originally downed on Mercury! The Saint and Osiris were kind enough to share it with me, along with a pot of tea.
Our conversation was most illuminating. I understand that Mercury was a scorched wasteland before the Great Machine's arrival. When it had finished, Humans could walk unprotected on its surface. What wonders the Great Machine can work! I can only hope that Mercury will return from the Witness's clutches, released as Titan was, so that I may see it for myself. I hear that, thanks to Sol engulfing its sky, one could study without pause… or at least until exhaustion proved greater than the desire to learn! Perhaps I could catch up on some light reading…
In any case, the concept of the final shape has worn many faces. From your encounters with the Disciples of the Witness, we know that they all had their own understanding of this concept - that they all saw what they wished to see in it. But this communications log, here, appears to predate all of them. If I am correct, and the parties communicating are among the Witness' precursors, then this may be the concept's original form. We can see in this log that HNW and RS, at least, were preoccupied with the concept of a higher purpose. They sought the final shape, but at the time of this exchange, they did not agree on what it was, or how to achieve it. RS speaks of how the final shape will prevent suffering and maximizing benefit; HNW expresses concern over the methods of achieving this.
I notice, however, that they never speak of communicating directly with the species they discuss. There is no consideration of consulting others, or even if they are capable of reaching the final shape for themselves and others. The most pressing matter, in their discussion, is if they should or should not intervene, and to a lesser extent, whether some coercion is acceptable for the greater good.
I understand that, granted the blessings of the Great Machine, Eliksni and humanity both have fallen into similar traps - the certainty of one's own rightness, the arrogance, the belief that receiving the Great Machine’s gifts confers superiority to others. Given the length of time between this record and SCRIBE ARCHIVE XI-2-4A, it appears that the Great Machine stayed with their civilization for millennia.
If it had stayed on Riis for that long - if humanity's Golden Age had continued unending, would we also have fallen victim to the same mentality? Lost sight of others as equals and seen them as animals to be herded.
I think I prefer where we have come to stand: together, walking the same streets, beneath the shadow of the Great Machine.