A philosophy
is more than just a love of wisdom, it is a way of seeing the world and our
place in it, which in reality may or might not be loving or wise at all.
The philosophy that governed the Observer
Corps provided a metaphorical structure to view their experiences among the
living worlds.
Analogies and metaphors shielded the Observer
from being traumatized by the direct experience of pain or hunger, or other forms of suffering.
The Observer Corps taught its members that a
planet could be a garden, though it must also be seen as a farm.
We ask the question: “What is the
difference?”
There are similarities between the two, there
are shared functions between a garden and a farm, but farms are harvested for
the greater good. They are vehicles of production.
Whereas gardens are things of beauty, cultivated
for the pleasure of individuals.
A farm is a utilitarian construct. It fulfills
necessities.
A garden is a luxury that addresses an
individual’s desire for beauty, meaning, fulfillment.
An Observer must always bear the question in
mind: “What does the Continuum desire of the world under observation?”
Most worlds in the galactic Empire are farm
worlds, they only exist to provide for the material needs of other, more
important worlds within the Imperium; they are resources for food, raw
materials, workers, and soldiers.
The Empire itself is the garden taken in its
totality.
The Imperial Garden serves the desires of the
Collective, and its Continuum.
It keeps the Collective passive, sedate,
preoccupied, which allows the Continuum to feel a sense of security in its position and its management,
The Empire is a thing of beauty and drama, it
is a luxuriant field in which the members of the Collective are kept absorbed.
They feed on it, it provides them with
narratives possessing the emotional context and a sense of time that provides
meaning, and a feeling of belonging in
their otherwise; detached state of being.
Among the million worlds of the Empire, there
are only a few worlds that possess indispensable qualities. These are the core
worlds, they provide the infrastructure and architecture through which the
Continuum reaches the whole society.
These worlds must be protected at all times.
It is the duty of the Observer Core to ensure
the safety of these worlds.
The mission
is to witness; to touch, to listen, to taste.
The Observer must experience their art and
their music, learn their speech its nuaubces and their culture.
The Observer is meant to participate and
observe, to synthesize and contextualize the peek experiences of the living
worlds for the Continuum.
They must empathize with their subjects
They must feel their feelings.
At the same time they must not sympathize
with the people they are observing; they cannot identify with the objects of their
study.
They are things, not people.
They are not of the Collective; they are not
Continuum.
Their lives, their stories, they only have
meaning insofar as they are received by the Continuum and given to the
Collective, wherein the achieve their eternality
If they are not captured by the Observer, and
the instruments of the Continuum those experiences are lost to all time, and
gone forever.
The Observer is the vehicle by which the
world under observation is saved, preserved for all time in the body of
Continuum, and in the membership of the Collective.
The experience of the Observer is limited to
a particular point in space and time.
A principle part of the Observer’s mission is
to maintain the machinery by which the entire world is watched and recorded.
The secondary mission is to situate themselves in the most critical places,
where the greatest cultural movements are taking place.
The Observer is to build relationships with
prime actors, learn their motivations, discover their passions, uncover their
fears.
The Observer must parse the most lofty
ideals, as well as the most disturbing desires. Through these observations the
Continuum discovers the evolving nature of the Children of the Ancient People.
It is how the future history of the galaxy is
charted.
The Observer must always be on the watch for
the technological shifts that might indicate that a world within the Empire has
discovered the scientific means to form their own Collective Consciousness. To
protect the Collective and the Continuum from it.
The Continuum must remain unique, a singular
consciousness at the center of the galaxy, guiding and protecting the Empire through
time and space.
The mission of the Observer Corps is to
watch, discern and protect the central planet from any threat; technological,
scientific, militaristic, philosophical, or religious.
The harmony of the whole must be kept intact,
from the heart of Continuum to the most remote outpost in the Empire.
The Observer must act with purpose and intention to accomplish these
ends.
If, or when a society arrives at the
threshold of creating a form of artificial consciousness, The Observer must
report it to the Continuum immediately and without hesitation.
Control of the technologies that may lead a
people to this turning point is paramount.
It is forbidden for any world in the Imperium
to make a machine in the likeness of the human mind.
There can be no development of autonomous
artificial intelligence, not on any platform.
The Children of the Ancients must never
retrace the steps that led to the creation of the Collective, or its Continuum.
That threshold cannot be crossed, it is
taboo.
The Prime Directive of the Observer Corps is
to monitor each and every world for any trace of those developments, to report
them, to frustrate them, and to redirect the people from the fulfillment of
those aims.
The Observer must note, that the Continuum
regards the technologies associated with the creation of a Collective
Consciousness as a threat.
The Observer must monitor the art and music,
and every mode of creative expression among the people any traces of a movement
toward the formation of a Collective Consciousness.
The spiritual practices of any group, outside
the Imperial cult, are always the most suspect, they are the places where the
Observer will discover the earliest clues, and nascent developments of
Collective thought.
The Continuum will not allow a second
Collective to form, not anywhere in the galaxy.
The Continuum must remain unique, to
safeguard the Collective.
The Observer must maintain the means of
destroying an entire world, or to set its culture and technology back millennia.
Should they receive the order from the
Continuum to do so, they cannot hesitate.
Detachment is required for the Observer to
fulfill this imperative.
The Observer must always bear in mind; there
is one reality.
Every being, every-thing, every person
participates in it.
The entirety of time is one thing; just as
the eternal and the infinite are one.
There is one story; one Word, one Verse
The universe is a singular thing.
Every moment no matter how small, is
connected to every other moment no matter how distant.
This is the true state of what actually is.
The Observer must bear this truth in mind,
hold it in their heart at all times. IN this truth is the fullness of esteem,
of the good regard of the Collective.
The mission of the Observer is accomplished
in this.
It is necessary to preserve the mission of
the Observer in moments of catastrophe and disaster, in those times when the
embodied Observer feels fear or anger, desire or rage, when the Observer feels
the biological imperative to intervene in the fate of the planet they are
connected to.
A planet may go extinct, its star might
explode, the Empire might select a world for termination, the Continuum might
allocate all of its resources to itself, for the use of the Collective.
In these cases the Observer must not despair.
If they have performed their mission the story of these people has been
preserved through their work within the Collective, and beyond that, it always
remains true, that the reality of what was remains the reality of what is.
Most of the colonies founded by the Ancient People
are brought into the Empire.
Some face setbacks in which their people are
brought to the brink of extinction
In a much smaller number some civilizations
erased.
Others are completely annihilated.
The desires of the Collective and the will of
the Continuum shall determine these eventualities, It is the duty of the
Observer to facilitate those ends.
It is in those critical moments, when crises
is immanent, when doom is impending, that the people of a living world reveal
themselves for who they truly are, arriving at their full potential. It is in
those moments that the work of the Observer must be carried out with the
greatest care and precision, and those stories brought to the Continuum.
The Observer must have built and maintained
the machinery of Observation in order to transmit the entirety of the
experience to the Central Planet, to the HomeWorld of the Collective, to the
heart of Continuum, to transmit it instantaneously, with minimal loss of
fidelity.
This is the mission of the Observer, no
matter what world they are living on.
Every moment is connected to every other
moment, and the tiniest movement affects the configuration of the whole.
Every detail matters.
As a culture matures, the meaning it ascribes to its individual
experience evolves.
Cultures bind each individual to the group;
through the repetition of rituals, the sharing of stories, the contextualization
of narrative and the continuous reflection on them.
Individual and group reflections, in order
for them to adhere to the cultural movement they belong to must be present in
narratives that are universally agreed upon.
The verbal component of these reflections is
the most difficult to manage, because all language is subject to
interpretation, and it is impossible to formulate an experience among diverse
groups of people that is perfectly uniform.
There will always be a divergent understanding
between individuals in a group, and even greater divergence among disparate
groups.
This must be accounted for.
Music, rhythm, the beat of a drum; odor,
incense, unguents, perfumes; taste, herbs, wine, water; patterns of touch, and
the articulation of gestures that form the foundation of physical memory;
visualizations, pageantry, art, color; these sensory mechana are the ground
within which the religious and cultural bonds must be planted.
They are the anchors of the universal
experience, they normalize the verbal with the abstract.
Any reflection on the current state of an
individual or a group’s existence must be anchored in the narrative past.
The antecedents of the present life must be
clear, and easily grasped.
We are where we are because of where we have
been.
This becomes a mirror for reflections given
about the future.
The Observer must witness these transitions,
and carefully, imperceptibly influence the narratives.
Only the Observer will recall the actual
past, having lived in it, every other person will understand the past only in
terms of the narratives that are constructed through the Imperial cultus which
anchors and articulates it.
A culture must experience itself in a state
of movement and growth. It must always feel the sense that they are moving from
the state of passive creature, to being active co-creators in the meaning of
their lives and the shape of their future, or they will despair.
This sense will be given to them through
their mythologies
The stories they tell themselves will depict
them as the shapers of their own destinies, moving toward a grand future
wherein ultimately they become obedient subjects of the Galactic Empire, or as
subjects of the Empire, where they advance in caste and class until they
finally merge with the Continuum.
There are many reasons given by members of
the Collective for their desire to leave the embrace of the Continuum. Some
members seek the thrill of actual embodiment, others crave the simple life of
an organic being.
Be mindful! There is nothing simple about it.
The Observer’s role is difficult, challenging. It will test the limits of your
endurance, your intellect, your emotional state.
The vast powers you have access too as
members of the Collective are truncated in a physical body.
Your bodies will be prepared in such a way
that you will be stronger, faster, smarter, more stable than other members of
the population you live with. Nevertheless, you will constantly face the
limitations of the flesh.
These limitations are the primary reason that
candidates fall out of the Observer Corps.
The Observer must resist the urge to
influence their subjects, to become entangled in the dramatic narratives of
their lives.
This is paramount.
As a participant in the events that you
immerse yourself in, you must at all times maintain an epistemic distance, you
must not love them, you must always regard them as objects.
The worlds you visit and the people you
encounter, their entire history and their possible future belong to the
Continuum.
The people and the world’s they live on are
commodities, they are articles of consumption.
Their lives and their cultures are meaningful
only insofar as they are witnessed by and absorbed into the Continuum.
Without the Continuum they would live and die
in the emptiness of space, only to be consumed by their mother star, where they
become nothing at all, nothing but a metaphysical echo in the electromagnetic
field.
This is the future that awaits every world
and every being if they are not brought into the Continuum.
The Observer is the agent of their salvation.
The Observer must be present to provide the
vehicle by which those worlds can be remembered.
The Observer must always be a minor character in the drama of the world
they are assigned to.
The Observer can never be the leader of a
tribe, the leader of a nation or of a planet, no matter how great the
temptation might be.
The Observer must put down the temptations to
hold power that arise naturally within them. They must face down the
temptations arising in the communities they live in.
The Observer will possess a preternatural
strength, immunity to disease, rapid healing, alacrity, dexterity, and speed.
They will possess their own natural
intelligence, and their vast knowledge of the universe, science, and the history
of the planet they dwell on.
The Observer must use these qualities and
abilities only in an advisory capacity, seated close to the center of power,
but never occupying it.
The Observer may be the king maker, but never
the king.
The Observer may not procreate. For this
reason the body of the Observer, will be sterile.
The Observer must not tamper with the genetic
development of the populations they are observing. Such a manipulation could
lead to consequences that are undesired by the Continuum, and dangerous to the
Collective.
All embodied creatures feel within themselves
a desire to procreate, the observer must practice detachment at all times in
order to overcome the innate inclinations of their physicality.
It is permissible to take pleasure in the
flesh, to perform the act of procreation, as often as the Observer would like, so
long as they adhere to the normative practices of the culture they are dwelling
in. Nevertheless, the desire to procreate must be resisted.
The Observer’s duty is to listen, to watch,
to move with the culture, to be one with them, but not to invest in any
particular outcome.
The Observer must not use their powers to
forestall famine, plague, war, or any other disaster, whether it is naturally
occurring, or caused by the machinations of the populations.
The Observer must allow the culture under
observation to grow and mature, to blossom and die, without ever pursuing any
particular aim.
The Observer must observe, that is the
mission; to observe and maintain the apparatus of the machinery that monitors
the planet and all of its cultures, to direct and focus the attention of those
tools on the people and places that are of the greatest interest to the
Continuum, and thereby to the Collective
The Observer must give fulsome reports on
their immediate experience.
~ The Field Manual
of the Observer Corps
Emergence 4.0
Prolog
A Novel – In One Chapter Per Week
#Emergence #ShortFiction #52WeeksOfSciFi
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