To my former allies,

As I sit drafting this missive in the artificial wilderness of Paradise
Park, I realize that I can no longer can participate in our cause.

I no longer see as I once did, when I sit in our city's Paradise Park;
or when I am amongst the gracious scholars strolling in the house of
Averroes. I have been accustomed to seeing the emblems of a way of life
firmly grounded in immutable goods: beauty, art, civility, fraternity.
Now I see bristling, organic forms forced to assume geometries wholly
unnatural to them.

The concept of the immutable is important. It describes not only the
nature of Good, but its goal. The subtext of our ideology, the imagined
paradise at the end of our interminable struggle, is defined as
immutable, changeless.

We wish an end to history. The life we have in Shallam, in our
imaginings, will simply expands beyond the walls to encompass all
Sapience and then perhaps all the planes and lands beyond Sapience, in
one shining life that is best not only for us but for all.

Shallam is ramparted; the Basilica is buttressed. And so in our fanciful
futures the ramparts of Shallam extend to the seas on all coasts; the
walls of the Basilica encompass the walls of all places of worship.

And when, at the end of history, our task is done, we will all lay down
and drift into a stupour. What are we expected to feel and what are we
expected to do in that time? No art will be created of any worth. No
science will be done because no further technology will be needed. No
one will rejoice over victory or sorrow over defeat.

I no longer desire an end to all mortal endeavors of consequence. I am
no longer prepared to accept the stance of our divines and of our sages
that the values of acts and experiences can be placed in two categories:
those that have no value, and those that have values precisely equal to
one another. In fact this system makes everything a nullity, and yet we
hear the continuous insistence that we are on the road to paradise.

Within the ambit of Good, the relative values of things are judged based
on a standard propagated by the gods. I have based my life up to this
point on that standard, believing that the gods had a connection to
something essential and eternal that could allow them to speak
authoritatively of absolutes.

This I no longer believe.


Penned by my hand on the 11th of Phaestian, in the year 541 AF.