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11 New World Order

“The Reformation, the transitional period that followed the Dark Ages, slowly and inexorably gave way to the Golden Age, and birthed a significant shift in Terran socio-political philosophy. The rigid adherence to absolute principles, a mentality that evolved ostensibly from a social and religious foundation to one focused on the sovereignty and primacy of the individual, was ultimately found to be wholly insufficient to address and overcome the trappings exposed by the discovery and manipulation of neuronal energy.”

“Economic systems that depended on a balance of supply and demand ceased to function correctly when demand could be created artificially and when the mere perception of supply was of scarcity. And these systems were that much more pernicious when the goods and services involved were those most intimately related to the necessities of life. Such systems allowed some individuals to prey on and manipulate others, only to find themselves in the very same predicament. It was, in every way except in the most extreme, a war of all against all, even while nearly every participant asserted by word or deed that this was the best of all possible worlds.”

“Slowly, over time, as Terrans confronted the experiences of all of those involved, they realized that the fluidity of life cannot be restricted by the ideas about it. Life is always more than the sum of its parts, and the only way to ensure that it can be lived meaningfully is to allow that there are almost always exceptions to rules, precisely because changes in the context or the details of living can hardly ever be reduced to a list of fixed and eternal proscriptions or prohibitions. Everything within society is as relative as the universe within which society exists.”

“Herein lay the Great Paradox, that a successful society must exist to serve the interests of every individual while every individual must exist to serve the interests of society. The Terran civilization that evolved to encompass this perspective was first intimated in the previously intractable and seemingly insurmountable (if not incomprehensible) problems it successfully solved or eliminated.”

“The worst of these problems, an existential threat to all life on Terra more advanced than the hardiest extremophiles, they finally came to realize, was self-imposed.”

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