On Prophets, Priests, and Prodigies

Dearest Father,

I was occupied with a particularly difficult problem a few weeks back. This was not one of the many philosophical and abstract issues that have plagued me for years now, but a mundane, earthly problem, one that concerned my chosen profession. I sat for hours puzzling over the issue, and after consulting with fellows in my trade I came to a hackish but working solution. Of course this was not the first difficult problem I have faced, and the only way it would be the last would be if my death were but a few days away. However, my struggle over this one issue drew my attention to something I appear to have overlooked in letters past.

I mentioned while writing you about free will that one of the many handicaps your children enjoy is our lack of perfect knowledge. At the time I used the point to illustrate how we are slaves to our ignorant, porous minds, minds that render whatever little freedom we possess rather pointless. After all why bother granting us free will when the very tool you’ve given us for making decisions is so easily distracted and cannot retain the things of utmost importance to our survival and salvation?

My recent brush with intellectual difficulty highlighted this in a manner most stark, as the “hackish” solution I came up with was simply a variation of one that a friend had described, hurriedly put together in order to preserve academic integrity. My problem wasn’t the first of its kind I’d seen, but that did not stop it from holding me hostage for hours. And yet this friend of mine, with little thought and even fewer words, managed to describe a solution that seemed so obvious in hindsight I felt a little foolish.

There are many of your children like this, people who can easily see things that millions of us go years if not lifetimes without even suspecting. In the more earthly circles these people are called prodigies, gifted fellows with minds that can see through the logical and mathematical and physical quandaries of our time and give us insights into the tangible nature of our universe. In Fatherly circles, however, we have priests and prophets, people you have chosen to reveal your truth to the huddled, ignorant masses. Of course while prodigies are universally acclaimed in their fields and arts, your prophets and priests are often only loved in select circles, circles that usually grow into compounds and compounds that often transform into Houses.

If one were to assume our earth was a cold uncaring rock that breathed life into our ancestors eons ago, it would not be too difficult to come to terms with the concept of prodigies. A universe that doesn’t care about us would hardly care that only a few of us could parse her secrets. One could even assume that the prophets and priests that act as voices for non-existent Fathers and Mothers were simply prodigies driven mad by whatever realisation had dawned on them, or devious manipulative people preying on the weakness and gullibility of their brethren.

But as all things are when faced with the fact that we have a loving omnipotent Father, the system of prodigies, priests, and prophets seems completely counterproductive. These brilliant people are essentially gatekeepers of knowledge and wisdom, guardians and visionaries without whom our people would still be hiding in caves, scared of their own shadows and worshipping the sun that cast them.  If our Father loved all of us and wanted us to come to him, why would he place this completely unnecessary bottleneck between himself and his children? Why would he limit revelations of his true nature to a very, very tiny segment of our population, tasking all to go through them if they are to truly know his will?

Ironically there are many in the House of the Cross that actually agree with this; they just happen to believe you have already solved the problem. They cite the verses in your Book that mention that your laws are written in our hearts as proof that we all know your will. They point to the very existence of the Book itself as proof that no man need act as gatekeeper to your kingdom; all can read it and see for themselves what you truly want from your people.

The problem with both these statements is readily apparent. If your will was truly written in all our hearts why do we need the Book at all? Why have a Book state what we all know when we could all just feel in our hearts that these things are true? And even more damning, the existence of the Book and the grand theory of liberation championed by its adherents have not led to fewer gatekeepers; they have led to more. These days any one of your children can pick up your Book, read a line of text that has been read by millions before him and claim to have seen something new within it. Such a person would shout from the rooftops that you have spoken to him and made him your prophet, and thousands would flock to him seeking to hear the new truths that they should already know. Of course with such a scenario it is little wonder your House has grown increasingly divided as the centuries have gone by; without authority vested in a chosen few your children have seen fit to disagree on the finer points of every single line in your Book, erecting fresh wings in the House the moment one man’s “truth” counters their own.

Quite evidently your truths are not inscribed in our hearts, or there would be no need for Houses or the prophets that build them. And quite clearly the system of prophets and priests and prodigies is by design, not by mistake. So ingrained is the nature of this system in the world around us that Platocrates and More did not bother to refute it when describing their utopias. Instead they built their cities around it, creating special classes for these priests and granting them stewardship over the perfect worlds they had constructed.

Left with all this one once again has to wonder how it all meshes with your love, Father. What grand plan could you possibly have that can only be served if but a select few know what you want? What great purpose could you have for the child from whom you have withheld both yourself and the capacity to find you? It is becoming increasingly more difficult to even pay lip-service to the concept of your love, dearest Father. When the majority of your children face such terrible odds for salvation, is it little wonder that so many have grown disillusioned with you?

 

With a deficient mind,

Your Prodigal Son

On Words and their Meanings

Dearest Father,

As you have probably surmised, my discoveries on free will and justice have not exactly set me ablaze with love for you. Where I sought to discover the freedom in your children that absolved you of the harshness of your justice, I found instead puppets and strings, little subjects moving to the whims of their master. I have thought long and hard on what these conclusions mean for my prospects of returning home, and I must say Father that it does not look good. I do not understand the crude nature of your justice, but if your children are not freely choosing to turn their backs on you, how is their punishment fair? How can you condemn them to an eternity of suffering when they are simply fulfilling the very destinies you created for them?

Of course I would be remiss if I did not mention that my once little friend has not been silent as I have thought these thoughts and asked these questions. He has tried all too often to find flaws with the reasoning that brought me to this point, and he has failed at almost every turn. One of his statements, however, has stuck with me these past few days and it is one I wish to share with you. I do not think he has found a way to give me hope though; in fact the implications of his words may have served to drive me even further away from the House I once called home.

His words to me were thus:

“You cannot say that your Father is not just, or that you are not free, because he has said that he is, and that you are. He is the Great Arbiter; his word is truth.”

If you remember Father, in our bid to discover the meaning of truth we realised that a lot of what we took as fact was nothing but simple arbitration, statements that appeared to make sense but lacked the proof that would reveal their real truth value. We concluded then that absent verification all statements must remain arbitration, neither true nor false but open for discovery and deliberation. We also concluded that even under such rules you remain untouchable, for you are the Great Arbiter; your arbitrations become truth from the sheer force of your will.

We referenced this viewpoint when we discussed free will. Unwilling to accept that you were a simple machine, bound to always pick the good option when presented with a choice, we surmised that you must be above good and evil. You made good and evil; whatever you dictate to be good becomes good. Whatever you dictate to be evil becomes evil.

Applying the same concept to justice and free will gives you the crux of Doubt’s statement to me. You are the Great Arbiter. Whatever you define to be free is free; whatever you define to be just is just. I cannot claim that your justice is unjust. It is your justice; it cannot help but be just. I cannot claim that our freedom is bondage. It is your gift; we cannot help but be free.

If one ignores the powerfully circular nature of this argument it would appear that Doubt has floored me completely. But as I mentioned before his statements only served to drive me further from you, as the true implications of this point seem almost too terrible contemplate.

I would like you to consider what his statement really means, Father. It means that we cannot, not now, not ever, know what anything means. Your children, of limited minds and hearts, have (for as long as we can tell) used signs and sounds to communicate. When we say or do certain things there is a tacit agreement amongst us for what those things mean, or what they are supposed to mean. It is this agreement that has enabled to us to form societies. Without it even your noble House would not have been built, as the children that remained after the Brother-Saviour would not have been able to communicate with the world and spread your word. This tacit agreement is what allows us to have general feelings (if not outright definitions) for such words as good, evil, love, freedom, and justice. Now these definitions may vary from culture to culture, from House to House, but within these cultures and these Houses they are generally agreed upon. The very existence and survival of their institutions depends on this.

Now consider yourself, dearest Father. We are told that you love us. That all the other Fathers and Mothers and Uncles and Aunts in all the other Houses are not only false, but that they do not love us the way you do. Only you truly cares. Only you truly wants what’s best for us. These messages, coupled with the sacrifice of the Brother-Saviour, have been among the biggest reasons that many have been brought to the House, and that many have stayed within it. And accompanying these statements is a fundamental understanding of the concept of love, of benefit, of harm. That which brings fulfilment is borne of love, that which brings happiness is beneficial, and that which causes suffering and pain is harmful. You are none of the latter, Father, and all of the former, or so we are told.

Against this one looks at the world born from your lips and sees pain and suffering, fear and hurt, bondage and predetermination. We see a justice apparently motivated by as much negativity and spite as the crude offerings of your flawed children. We see punishment for punishment’s sake, pain for no other reason than pain itself. We see children created solely for salvation, and others only for damnation. And if we are to believe that you are the Great Arbiter, and that you have termed these things good and loving and just, then we must also believe that this pain and suffering, this our lack of freedom, is indeed good and loving and just.

Thus the words that we use to communicate the love and justice and freedom and happiness that we believe come from your House are apparently meaningless, for they can have their meanings changed at will. They can mean one thing and their complete opposite at the same time, for you have spoken it. Does freedom today mean bondage? Does it mean predestination? Does it mean captivity? Does good today mean genocide? Does it mean the condemnation of little children for the sins of their fathers? We cannot, of our own admittedly feeble faculties, say. We must first consult with you, and hope that you deign to bestow upon us your answers.

Perhaps more terrifying is the fact that this means that a good amount of the people called to your House have had the wrong impression about you from the very beginning. It is hard to believe that those that heard about your all-encompassing love believed that within that love lay the capacity to create some children solely for the purpose of burning them. No loving parent on your green earth would do such a thing, yet a quick study of your world and a short perusal of your Book reveals such acts in great detail.

Of course there are some within the House that believe that our lack of understanding comes from the less than perfect nature of our minds, but this, much like the assertions made with regards to the First Brother’s faculties, does not vindicate the state of your world. Ignoring our apparent lack of freedom this would mean that the salvation of a good chunk of your children is purely circumstantial. If our fundamental understanding of love and justice, the intuition with which we analyse the world, is not complete due to our failings, then there is nothing but chance to dictate who comes to you of his own volition. The very tools we have to understand what you do and why you do it are flawed. That anyone comes to you in the first place is a wonderful combination of luck and opportunity, and that people fail to understand your ways should be expected. In fact, if one looks upon the various Houses and tents and institutions the world over, all separate and distinct from the House of the Cross, this is exactly what we see: a vast majority of your children that simply does not get you. And yet true to form you have taken it upon yourself to condemn these people, and to cast them out of your sight. And this is good, Father, because you have said that it is.

And therein lies the problem with the belief in you as the Great Arbiter, dearest Father, for if your justice, an institution barely distinguishable from that of the lowest of your children, is in fact fair and good and loving, then those words have lost their meaning. And if our freedom, a state barely distinguishable from the pre-arranged motions of actors in a scripted play, is in fact freedom, then that word has lost its meaning as well. And if words can lose their meaning at your whim Father then what is the point of even trying to understand you? What has been the point of my journey, my quest for both you and the great Sophia? In a single moment this very page could mean something completely different simply because you willed it to be so!

I suppose in the end my journey truly is nothing but a pointless exercise. After all, Father, wasn’t my fate already decided before I was born?

With sadness,

Your Prodigal Son

On Knowledge and Arbitration

Dear Father,

As you recall, the past few letters I have written have dealt with the nature of truth and the state of mind oftentimes required for weak children like myself to even consider such lofty notions. My fixation on the topic of truth is multi-faceted, stemming from my trials with my friend, my desire to find Sophie, and my hopes of seeing you. Truth is tied to all these things in a way nothing else is, for one must know the properties of truth before one can know that he has found it. But even more important, and more fundamental, is the question of knowledge. One has to know what knowing is before one can know whether or not something is true. Of course knowing that you know, and more importantly knowing what you know, is a subject that has plagued many a lover of Sophie, and being of amateur status it seems all but impossible that one such as myself would ever be able, single-handedly, to arrive at satisfactory answers to this question. I already attempted to define truth, and while my definition at the time seemed very satisfactory, my views on things true and things arbitrary has yielded little fruit in my battle with Doubt. The reason for this, as I have now discovered, is that Doubt doesn’t care much for truth; he cares for knowledge.

The definition of knowledge, much like truth, has been heavily contested over the ages, with famous lovers of Sophie knowing that their opponents’ definitions were wrong even though they could not satisfactorily articulate how they knew, or what knowing meant. There is a whole path on the way to Sophia dedicated to the study of knowledge, and a little walk along this road has alerted me to a number of things. The first is that a vast majority of the lovers of Sophie that pitched their tents on this road, including Plato the Most Versatile, are of the opinion, dare I say the knowledge, that things known must be true. Of course for younglings like myself such a statement is very confusing; if one can only know truth when one knows what knowing is, and in order to really know, the thing one claims to know must in fact be true, our dear friend One would inevitably be left in an infinite loop of ignorance. This definition, I have been told, was made in order to distinguish knowledge from opinions or beliefs, things that may not be true but hold the convictions of a number of people. Of course this means that truth is tied to knowledge as tightly as arbitration is tied to opinion, and while this definition satisfies me because it validates my nice arbitration concerning truth and arbitration, it does nothing to advance my quest. This is because, as I have said, Doubt does not quite care for how true something really is. He cares for how convinced you are that it is true, how highly on your personal knowledge scale your little belief ranks.

You see Father, the reason I have not yet been able to shake Doubt’s terrible claws from my shoulder is because I cannot claim to know the answers to the questions he asks me. Now in hindsight I believe I can be forgiven for mistaking this problem with the problem of truth. As you must have surmised from this entire quest, I am obsessed with truth. In order for me to accept something I must confirm it is true, and it is by these means that Doubt has been able to attack time and time again. And while the lovers of Sophie that line the roads of Epistemology would say that placing truth as a fundamental criterion for knowledge is noble, on days such as this, when Doubt seems more powerful than ever, their endorsements do little for me. Unlike a good chunk of your children I not only care a great deal about truth, I also have a very high standard for what can be termed truth. And honestly I am really starting to envy this good chunk of your children.

Take for example people I have met called Abductees. These are children of yours that assert that beings from beyond the stars have seized them and used them as subjects in strange experiments. Now, based on my statements on truth and arbitration, I would conservatively term such statements arbitrations. Barring verification, one cannot really say that these things are true. That, however, matters not to those that have put them forth. They know these things, as much as any man on earth can claim to know anything. We could find out tomorrow that their statements are false, that extra-terrestrial beings have not in fact been collecting our siblings and doing strange things to them, and their knowledge would be rendered hollow. This, however, would not change how much they believed them. At the time before verification they knew that these statements were true. They would have died for such beliefs, confident that they were right. Plato and his ilk would adamantly state that this level of conviction does not change the fact that they do not know, but for one like me, facing the deep voice of Doubt, such adamance is useless. The fact remains that for such people, wrong they may be, Doubt is no problem. He does not hang over their heads and bring their affairs to a grinding halt; he does not colour their every action with the shadow of uncertainty. Whether or not they are wrong, one must admit that they do not have the problem that I have, and on some days I feel as though I would not wish this problem on my worst enemies.

In spite of making this discovery however, my ‘nobility’, or perhaps my lack of ability, did not let me seek an easy out from the ramblings of my once little friend. Unfortunately I have been wearing the Hat of Unverified-Arbitration-is-not-Truth for far too long, and honestly I do not think I am ever going to be able to completely take it off. This state of mind appears to now be a fundamental state of my mind, and I fear only desperation the likes of which I have never felt before would push me to divest myself of this mode of thinking. Even faced with such desperation I get the feeling (no doubt inspired by Doubt) that in time my high standards for truth would soon come sneaking back into my head and I would once again relegate any statement to the land of arbitration. In an odd twist it seems the very thing which caused me to smile in the face of Doubt but a few weeks ago now brings me lower than I have been in quite the while.

My continued foray along the path of Episteme did not do much to help me. I happened upon a book by a more recent lover of Sophie called Bertrand Russell, and reading it has perhaps caused me more pain than my discovery on Doubt’s real desires. Now I know I promised to only focus on the works of the ancients Father, but this book was called “The Problems of Philosophy”; I felt it wise to read it. If there are any problems with my love for Sophia and my quest to find her, would it not be smart to discover them before I go too far?

In this book Russell, in a manner most calm, showed that almost all the little things that one claimed to know were nothing but bald-faced arbitrations. By doing nothing but observing a single table the man laid waste to all that I thought I knew, even issues not yet questioned by my friend. The questions he used to destroy my preconceptions were very similar to those often put forth by Doubt himself, and his major achievement lay not in asking them, but in showing that they had no real answers. He, in effect, took my personal arbitrations and extended them, growing their reach till they covered almost everything, including the very nature of the paper on which I write this letter. So sensible was his rhetoric that even questions Doubt asked me long ago, questions that I found easy to ignore, such as whether or not the sky is blue, returned, suddenly pressing and very important. Allow me to pat myself on the back for reading on, dear Father; I honestly do not know how I continued to indulge Mr Russell even with the rising amplitude of my friend’s voice.

Russell’s brutal attack on knowledge, and by extension truth, was apparently inspired by another fairly contemporary lover of Sophie, a Frenchman by the name Rene Descartes. Reading the means by which he arrived at his conclusion of universal arbitrariness, I think I can say that the Frenchman was perhaps as plagued by Doubt as I am. As legend would have it he locked himself in a room and decided to put to question everything he thought he knew, and the result was what I read before me that day. Nothing is known and so nothing can be known to be true. Everything we speak, however evident, is arbitration. The implications of such a worldview are staggering, Father, but luckily before I could descend into a pit of confusion most supreme Russell revealed the one thing Descartes had discovered to be true. It is a very famous statement, one I’d heard even as a child parading the halls of the House. It read: “I think therefore I am”.

A brief analysis reveals why this statement cannot be doubted. Regardless of how one views one’s existence, regardless of the countless questions and answers that Doubt can bring forth, the fact remains that because one is even thinking these questions, considering these answers, he must exist. One cannot doubt one’s existence. I think, therefore I am. This is the one thing Doubt cannot touch, the one thing Doubt cannot question. Apt, then, that the process by which the Frenchman arrived at this conclusion is often termed the “Method of Systematic Doubt”.

Now discovering that Doubt would never be able to question whether or not I exist is but a small victory. I still have to contend with the fact that everything else, if Russell and Descartes are to be believed, is open to question, that everything everyone says is nothing but arbitration no matter how hard one tries to verify it. Reading Russell’s book so far has not given me much confidence in the rest of my quest for Sophia, and honestly Father I am just about ready to give up. But Platocrates is getting really deep with his description of governments, and Augustine apparently smuggled some metaphysics into his Confessions, and I have been told by a stray lover that Russell has an optimistic message at the end of his book, and so I will continue. Fearing I will never find real truth, but knowing I can always be certain of my own existence, I will continue. Besides, soon I will take off whatever Hat(s) allowed me to reflect so deeply, and I would forget, albeit temporarily, about Russell’s words. I honestly cannot wait, dear Father, to look upon the world without the taint of universal arbitration.

With fatigue,

Your Prodigal Son

On Hearts, Hats and Minds

Dear Father,

In my last letter I attempted to define truth, to make the distinction between things that were true and things that were simply appealing. It was the latest in many attempts at permanently, or more effectively, silencing my companion, and while I may have declared victory as I finished the missive but a few weeks ago, I am sad to inform you that my triumph was rather short-lived.

You must not be surprised by this, dearest Father. As you know your children have very short memories. On a particularly busy day, attempting to recollect details of even routine and mundane tasks like breakfast can leave one pensive for minutes. While we are capable of displaying better skill with our memories when the situation demands it, we know that even the best of these memories is seldom a perfect record of events transpired. Our minds colour them with our personalities, focusing on the things that we deem important and pushing into irrelevancy things that we deem not. All but the very best of your children suffer from this, and oftentimes I am left wondering whether this flaw is by design, or whether it is a glitch in the otherwise perfect world you have made.

And so, not long after I had smugly agreed with Doubt as to the arbitrary nature of my rather long missive, my powerful convictions were all but wiped from my mind. I did not forget them entirely; my distinction between truth and arbitration remains an important one, if not to you or him, at least to me. I arrived at this distinction because of the pain and distrust Doubt has caused me since the day I met him; it is not one that would so easily go the way of my breakfast. Unfortunately, however, one of the side effects of the poor memories your children possess is that knowing in one’s mind that a thing is true does not always translate to knowing the same in one’s heart. Our short memories compel us to remember things by repetition; it is only by doing something over and over again that the strong (and still less than accurate) records we so desire may be formed and accumulated. And so while I may be able to reason wonderfully and come to great truths that would make gifted lovers of Sophie like Platocrates quite proud, the moment I turn from such musings to the mundane affectations of my life they are quickly forgotten, and Doubt is once again allowed to have his way with my mind.

It is at such moments I am reminded of how much I envy you, dearest Father. In much the same manner as Doubt is endemic to me and the rest of your children, he is foreign to you. Of course you must know of him, very well I dare say. But he does not possess you as he does me. This distinction, between knowing something and knowing of something, between knowing something in words but not in heart, is one that is very important, and unfortunately manifests itself in completely different ways in your children and yourself. After I had devised my new definitions for truth and arbitration, one can safely say that I knew of them, that I had the words in my mind. I could recall them with relative ease, and speak of them freely from memory. However, one cannot say that I knew them. I am far more intimate with Doubt, more comfortable with my old definitions of truth as that which makes sense or which feels right, than I am with the new and possibly more accurate distinctions between actual verified statements and simple arbitrations.

You can easily see why your children are really glaring statements of imperfection when placed alongside yourself. In order to know things, to remember them reflexively, we must learn them. We must train ourselves to see them in a certain way. And if these things are the wrong things, then we must spend time learning the right things and unlearning the wrong. Contrast this with yourself, Father, you that never has to learn anything. You know what you know. More importantly, the things you know are the right things and the things you know of are the “unright” ones. Because truth for you is a non-issue, your knowledge operates on a level far above ours. For example you know Sophia, very well in fact, in a way that no human ever will. But you must also know of not knowing Sophia, as the very act of knowing her is something that you made. You are always filled with certainty, but you know of Doubt, as once again Doubt’s very existence cannot be without your will. Very few of your children, both within the House and outside it, possess this skill, and when they do it is usually over a very small scope of trivial, lesser things. I cannot even count myself in their ranks, and so it should come as no surprise that Doubt is still fluttering about my head even after the bold discoveries listed in my last letter.

It seems to me that when I was uttering those statements, discovering those potential “truths”, I was of a certain mind. I, compelled by the pettiness of my companion, had temporarily discarded my normal way of thinking and had entered a new one, one that allowed me to view the world in a different manner and in so doing make different assumptions and arrive at different conclusions. There is a saying amongst your children that, to me, describes this perfectly: “Put your thinking cap on”. It is a statement that enjoins the listener to pause a moment and think deeply on an issue, to pull from his mind a rich vat of knowledge and reason and inspect it carefully so as to reach a desired conclusion. Perhaps then whenever your children think on things we would not normally consider, in ways that we would not normally use, we are putting our thinking hats on. (I personally consider hats to be much cooler than caps, hence the personalisation of the phrase). We are wearing these things over our heads that force us to consider the world from a certain perspective, to forget, temporarily, what we already know and consider more deeply the things we only know of. The thinking hat, in its various shapes and forms, changes the very nature of our minds. Unfortunately we do not – cannot – always wear these hats, and the moment we take them off the knowledge in our hearts, carefully cultivated and grown from years of reinforcement, takes hold of us once more.

It seems then that in order to unlearn wrong things and learn the right ones we must wear our thinking hats as often as possible, each hat suited for a different kind of inquiry. The Hat of Truth, for example, will allow me to consider what is true and what is not, as I did in my last letter, while the Hat of Reason may help me distil the pure nature of logic and reasoning from the all too common mixtures of fallacies…

Much as I felt at the end of my last letter, dearest Father, I very much like this conclusion. It is inevitable that whatever immediate victories I gain against Doubt would be short-lived, but by wearing my wonderful hats as often as possible it is not farfetched to believe that I may come to discern truths strong enough to dispel the pesky fellow. I may come to know in my heart, as much as in my mind, what is true and what is not, and by so doing make my triumphs more permanent.

Of course postulating on the nature of hats and truths implies that I must be wearing the Hat of Hats and the Hat of Truth at the same time, and while this imagery certainly calls the efficacy of this metaphor into question, I humbly request, dear Father, that you look the other way. I am but a little child in a strange forest, very far from home. Allow me, in this one case, to be a Small Arbiter, and to have my varied hats when I can.

With a thinking hat,

Your Prodigal Son

On Truth and Arbitration

Dearest Father,

As expected my quest continues, enriching my young mind in the process. I have met many on this path, both seasoned lovers of Sophia and young amateurs like myself, but it seems none wants to give me the time of day. I do not blame them; I myself am not a very talkative fellow. I am sure a single look at my scowling visage, as my winged companion rambles on on whatever topic he fancies, has served as a deterrent for many a prospective friend. I have been very busy with my regular duties as a human, and the next few weeks promise to be rather hectic. I am approaching a milestone in my training, a point at which I shall finally be awarded a document that states I am worthy to call myself a bachelor in my art, and the days leading up to such a ceremony are bound to be tasking. This perhaps explains why I’ve found myself scowling more often than not. It is certainly not as a result of my little friend’s ramblings; he knows better than to speak on issues surrounding my studies. With matters so pressing I cannot afford to entertain his musings for more than a few minutes.

I will not bore you, Father, with tales of my studies. I suspect you will not find such topics too interesting. On the issue of my quest, however, I must say that it is going rather swimmingly. Now I may not be able to travel very far in the coming weeks – the aforementioned issues have all but captivated my attention – but the progress I have made thus far has been very rewarding indeed.

With regards to Platocrates and his Republic, it has finally become clear to me exactly why the book is called thus. Initially it boggled the mind as to why a treatise concerning justice would bother with the description of a state, but it seems that in order to show his listeners and readers what the true meaning of justice is, Platocrates has elected to construct the perfect city – he reasons that in such a city the most perfect rendition of justice would be all too easily discovered. This is an act I find both admirable and slightly annoying. Admirable, for it shows the immense dedication of the lover with whom I have cast my lot; annoying, because it makes this one segment of my journey stretch even longer. I would much rather he got to the point in short order, but I suspect that his long-windedness will eventually pay off. I have already learned quite a bit from his words so far, not in the least of which is the fact that he eventually bests whomever questions his postulations. I suspect this is because we are passively experiencing his account on the matter, an account that attempts to drive home a point. As the points are being made by Platocrates himself, it would certainly be odd if each and every one was struck down and he was shown to be the fool. There is also the fact that we are reading a one-sided account of the dialogues. For all we know Platocrates did miss a few points that fateful afternoon in the house of Polemarchus, and pride kept him from writing about it.

As I settle in to follow him on this journey into the perfect city, I suspect it will not be long before you start seeing missives from me addressing both these issues: justice and perfection. While Platocrates may seek to join them in order to make a point, this young lover still considers them to be very separate things indeed.

On the Numidian’s Confessions, an almost similar theme is discovered. When I left him, Augustine was lamenting his sinful nature, comparing some of the ways of your children with those of their almighty Father, and of course finding them lacking. He spoke about the deplorable nature of his youth, with his wayward father and his good, but at times misguided, mother. All of this was delivered, of course, with the requisite tone of exultation, as the Numidian never misses an opportunity to praise you and your ways, even the manner in which you mete out punishment.

Perhaps it is because I am also walking the path of justice with Platocrates, but his mention and acceptance of your punishments made me think once more of justice and what it means to be just, especially for one such as yourself. I doubt Platocrates will address divine justice in his dialogue, and so I expect that this is another issue on which you will soon be hearing from me. If I am finally to find and understand you, understanding the purpose and impetus behind the laws with which you rule the universe is essential, no?

Aside from the lessons I am learning from my wonderful teachers, I still have my once little friend to contend with. As I mentioned, I have found it very easy to ignore his mutterings these past few days; my human duties leave no space in my head to entertain him. As you know his questions, per his name, always play on my perceived ignorance. He finds anything that I may have ever questioned before, even in my earliest days, and he brings the full force of his evil voice to bear upon it. It has occurred to me in the weeks past that if I am to rid myself of him completely, I must be certain of the answers I give him; I must be as convicted as the greatest elders in the House, as wise as Sophie’s most prolific lovers. Unfortunately, for one as conscientious as myself, in order to be certain of my answers I must be convinced that they are true, and if there is one thing I have discovered thus far Father, it is that finding the truth is very hard indeed.

The subject of truth is one that I know many lovers of Sophie have battled with across centuries and millennia. One cannot know Sophia if one does not know truth, but how does one know when one has found truth? Of course the very question of how one knows anything is an even more fundamental problem for lovers of Sophie, one that ties directly to my conundrum with Doubt. Once again I find myself envious of you, dearest Father. Such petty questions as how to know what you know have never bothered you; would that I could be like you in that regard.

Now I am sure that countless men before me have tackled the issue of truth in an attempt to settle it once and for all. As an amateur on this path, I cannot even hope to come to conclusions as rich and as complex as theirs. For this I ask your forgiveness, dear Father; whatever you read in this letter today will be but the simple musings of a child plagued by a wily foe…

As a younger man, the question of truth was a non-issue for me. I believed everything I was told by parents and elders, and in my mind those things were true. I did not know any better, you see, and, as you must have observed in your children, in the absence of actual, concrete knowledge, anything goes. If we are not told what to believe we create our own beliefs, extrapolating from whatever foundations we have previously established until we arrive at a worldview. The problem arises when something challenges this worldview. At such a moment we have two choices: change our views, or prove to ourselves that our views are true while the other view, the challenger, is false. Of course I have found my challenger in my companion.

Now a long time ago I believed that logic, or to my young mind sense, was a good metric for determining what was true and what was not. Things that made sense were true, and things that did not were not. Of course this is a very flimsy method of determining the truth, and when Doubt finally came along it was not long before I was made aware of this. On this journey alone I have discovered numerous positions taken by various lovers of Sophie, all addressing the same issues, and yet all diametrically opposed to each other. The presence of multiple Families within the House is another immediate strike-down for this line of reasoning. To a certain extent, as much as my inexperienced mind can discern, the positions held by the chief dissenter at the time of the Great Rebellion made quite a bit of sense. I have often told myself that had I been alive with the German at the time, I may have joined his cause. Many positions put forth by members of the Family of Rebels make sense; in many ways they are logically consistent. The same can be said of the core beliefs of my Universal Family. And while I do not know much about them, I am fairly certain that the Orthodox Family, which broke off long before the Rebels even came into view, also has teachings that are sensible and logically consistent. And yet all these Families vehemently disagree on fine points, and all of them teach that each is the true way to your heart and the Great Upstairs. From this alone it is rather evident that sense, or logic, is not enough to ascertain what is true; after all, even Doubt’s words make sense. Evidently in order to find truth, its essence must be separated from that of logic and sensibility.

After some thought it occurred to me that at its core, a truth is something that is accurate, a fact. A statement such as “John is male” is true in so far as the concept described by male can accurately be attached to the person known as John. Now there is a danger for me to devolve into definitions of “concept” and “knowledge”, and Doubt is whispering dangerous nothings into my ear, trying to compel me to verify exactly what these are. But I am tired, and my mind is not yet formed, so I beg that you use basic intuition to understand what it is that I mean. (Even the word “intuition” causes the creature to smile.) I do not think this should be a problem for you, Father. While mere humans may quibble over the true meanings of these words, you see into my heart; you must know exactly what I am trying to describe.

From the aforementioned definition it becomes clear that every statement that asserts something has the potential for truth, including this one. In fact I can say that most of the sentences I have written to you thus far possess truth-potential; all that is required is the fulfilment of such potential, their verification if you will. In this way the question of logic becomes a secondary one, one that I must admit is difficult to push aside. Whether by nature or by nurture, I look with disdain upon statements that make no logical sense; I am far more likely to consider an inconsistent statement to be false than to consider it true. But if we are to go by our new definition of truth then its logical consistency is irrelevant. “John is not John”, while apparently nonsensical could in fact be true. One just needs to ascertain this fact and harvest, so to speak, its truth-potential.

In the absence of verification, it seems then that a statement simply remains a statement, neither true nor false as far as the observer is concerned. Of course it is one or the other, (or perhaps – senselessly – both) but not neither… or is it? Doubt is toying with me once again. For now we will state that it must be one or the other. The fact remains that it is impossible to tell which until verified. Such a statement, hanging in the nebula of truth-limbo, could then be termed an “arbitration”, a simple string of words whose actual value is yet to be discovered. And as long as this arbitration is logically consistent, newer, assumed truths can be spun from it and entire paths can be forged in its name.

It seems to me that this is exactly what has happened in reference to the countless things that we your children, both within the House and without it, find ourselves at loggerheads over. Regardless of the truth value of the statements made, it seems some great men have made many arbitrations and, assuming them to be true, have dedicated their lives to the logical implications that follow. By so doing their viewpoints appear very attractive to those of us that hold logical consistency in high esteem, or at the very least agree with, for whatever reason, the underlying arbitration. This of course is most applicable to the differences between the Family of Rebels and the Universals, where with the Rebels I believe there are five fundamental arbitrations, listed and championed by the dissenting German elder, Luther. I am neither disposed, nor do I believe I know enough, to tackle these arbitrations and unearth their real truth value, but it is an exercise I am sure I would undertake at some point.

I like this conclusion, Father, because even Doubt is silent and pensive as I write this. To summarise, I believe there are statements whose truth values may or may not be known. When they are known we can safely term them truths, and as long as they are not we must view them as arbitrations and tread carefully in our consideration of them. Of course such a worldview makes you the Great Arbiter, for whatever you speak becomes the truth, immediately shaping the universe to your desires. The world, then, is nothing more than one very long statement spoken from your lips, in an instant both arbitration and truth. Such a realisation, dear Father, is very humbling indeed.

With much thought,

Your Prodigal Son

P.S. Not to be outdone my companion has pointed out that all of this is nothing but verbose arbitration, and I agree with him. I cannot describe my glee at the horrified look on his face.