Mountain Barber
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Theological Obsolescence
🕑 Added 2025-01-09 16:37:28 +0000 UTCTheological Obsolescence is set on the world of Ishveos, the setting of More Gods Than Stars. The Confederacy of Angshan is located in the eastern hemisphere of Ishveos, far from the East Pole, the Meridian, or anywhere of true importance.
Also, dang was the vote close on this one!
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There is always a balance legal systems must maintain in their narratives, between simple chains of cause and effects and complex patterns of behavior.
In life, of course, things are seldom simple narratives of cause and effect, as they might be in a storyteller’s yarns. Actions are oh-so-rarely simple reactions to causes— more often, they are mere motifs on patterns of behavior established through life and the course of relationships. A wife cheats on a husband not because he cheated first, but in truth because of a long-standing pattern of mutual neglect and contempt. Their child impulsively steals a toy not because they’re angry at their parents, but because their parents didn’t model the emotional regulation skills for the child to follow, nor pay enough attention to the child. An employee ignores petty theft not because they’re angry at their boss for blaming them for a coworker’s neglect of duties, but because of a pattern of disrespect and domineering behavior by said boss.
Legal systems are well aware of this, of course— and their choice of which direction to lean in this dichotomy is partially governed by legal philosophies, partially by legal precedents, and most of all by the pragmatics of victory. Triumph triumphs over all other concerns, after all.
The Angsha Confederacy, however, rarely leans on patterns of behavior, focuses almost entirely on chains of cause and effect. And they take it to a new level, a more extreme level than anywhere else on the moon:
They make guilt transferable, transmisable. They follow chains of cause and effect back to their putative sources, punish people who were nowhere near to the scene of the crime, but stand within its causal chain. They have complex philosophical, historical, and material reasons for this bizarre state of affairs, but we don’t need to consider them here.
Using the Angshan principle of transferable guilt to consider the above triptych of events— the theft, the mistreated employee, the affair.
Oh, the parents would have to pay for the stolen toy anywhere— but under Angsha law, it would be specifically the father who had to pay, and if the correct arguments had been made, the fine might be assigned instead to the woman the father had slept with years ago, if it could be proven she was the primary instigator in the seduction.
It should be easy to see the flaws in this method, how absurd and unworkable the Angshan system should be, how impossible to assign guilt and blame in any case it should be. The inevitable result of any case should be to assign blame to some centuries-dead party, or to some ancient god who had never bothered to learn modern languages.
The Angshans had a simple and brilliant solution to the inherent logical flaws of their system, one that solved every possible contradiction and absurd outcome:
Corruption.
The Angshans payed only cursory lip service to justice, for the most part. So long as an argument fit the formalities of their legal logic, so long as they created a reasonable narrative of cause and effect, the powerful can always achieve their desired outcome.
They were a nasty little backwater of civilization, a chain of allied city-states paid little to no attention by the rest of the moon. They desperately grabbed at the trappings of legitimacy, while paying little attention to true rule of law.
Angshans, simply speaking, don’t pay attention to long-term patterns of behavior because they are often an annoyance to the process of Angshan corruption. We don’t need to bother with the history of Angshan legal logics, because they are mere justifications for corruption.
Go back to the above triptych of events:
The owner of the store should have born a fragment of the blame for the child’s theft, for mistreating his employee, if the logics of Angshan justice were truly followed.
He was treated as blameless, of course, and the court offered no condemnation of him firing the worker and docking their pay, despite the father paying for the toy already.
After all, the owner’s brother was a barrister, his father an important landlord in the city, his mother-in-law one of the city’s most powerful Saints.
Not to mention, he got drinks with the judge several times a month.
Oh, there were more blatant forms of corruption in the Angshan Confederacy— outright bribery and such— but once corrupt power structures achieve a certain level of entrenchment, more subtle forms of corruption become more widely available.
So the above triptych, when considered honestly, doesn’t truly follow the philosophy of Angshan jurisprudence— but it certainly follows its precedents and pragmatics. And above all else, it follows Anshan corruption.
Consider these principles and mechanics of Angshan justice.
Then consider another triptych of events.
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Event the First:
If one were to list the actions taken in the pump station that workday, every wheel turned, every gauge measured, every prayer made by a drudge at a shrine of Revodna, the list wouldn’t look too different than any other day. Perhaps the time listed for each task would be a few seconds longer, and there were more constables on guard than usual, but the list wouldn’t stand out on casual perusal with other such lists. There were a few contract workers in on a special job as well, but that wasn’t wildly unusual.
But if you were actually there, the difference would feel like a brick to the face.
The air in the pump station that day was thick with anger, cut with anxiety, and oozing with depression. What conversation existed was muted and frustrated, frequent glares being sent at a new shrine being built in one corner of the building.
When the city bell tower rang the hour, its brassy tones were almost drowned out by the misery in the pump station.
Most of these men and women would be out of work over the next few days— as would the goddess Revodna.
For twenty years, Revodna had been essential to the pump station, to the economy of the city of Creose. Her godgifts powered the pumps, which in turn drained the low-lying fields around the city, on its rocky bluffs. It was the constant action of the pumps that turned the fields from near-impassible marsh to fertile rice-fields— because unlike other marshlands, the water around Creose came not from a river or lake, but from subterranean springs deep below the town.
Creose itself was built upon a massive rock jutting out from the wet lowlands around it. Its three-thousand or so inhabitants crowded into uncomfortably tall tenements, some looking down twenty or more stories onto the crowded streets below. It was a rough, harsh life in Creose— you either did backbreaking work in Creose’s pump station, you did mind-numbing work as a prayer drudge, or you hunched over in the rice fields.
But it was a living. The workers of Creose had a thriving community, and never worried about their children going hungry.
And now Revodna was being replaced.
A new god was being brought into town to replace her. Nocdan, a god that wouldn’t require a tenth so many workers for the pump station as Revodna. For all their hard work, and the dangerous machinery, the pump station jobs were unquestionably the best in town for most workers. Oh, the constable jobs were easier and paid better, but there were only so many of those— a city this small couldn’t maintain a particularly huge population of landlords and business owners, and the constabulary only really existed to serve the rich and powerful.
That last is likely an unnecessary detail, perhaps, because if a constabulary that serves the public instead exists, it remains one of the multiverse’s best kept secrets.
The workers did their jobs on what would be one of their last days, all while shooting glares at the new shrine and the constables.
You could cut the air with a knife.
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Event the Second:
Revodna’s High Priestess sat in the office of the pump station’s owner, halfway across the city.
The rich still lived in towers, but theirs were richly appointed, set on the edge of the city with a view of the rice fields and the drainage canal. They had mechanical lifts to carry them to the upper floors, instead of trudging up and down stairs.
The High Priestess was facing out the window and collecting her thoughts as the bells rang the hour, only replying to the owner as the last peal faded from the air.
“It’s not just the loss of good jobs,” she said. “It’s the pensions. Half the workers of the city have their pensions in Revodna’s debt portfolio— removing Revodna will impoverish all the elderly, force them back into work, and cut off retirement for all those currently working.”
“That’s regrettable, of course,” the owner said from behind her, “but it’s an important lesson in portfolio diversification for the public. It’s basic financial literacy, not putting all your eggs in one basket. And in most cities, workers don’t get to retire like this at all.”
The priestess let her eyes linger on the drainage canal, a waterfall that led from a pipe in the side of Creose’s rock foundation into a narrow artificial canal. The waters were too swift and powerful for even a grown man to survive being swept up in them— seldom was a year that went by without an unattended child or incautious drunk drowning in the raging waters.
It was a steep price to pay for the city’s economic survival, but too many Angshan cities languished in the economic downturn these days, too many had great masses of hungry people out of work.
“There’s nowhere for most folks to diversify their income to,” the High Priestess pointed out. “There are no other large gods in Creose, and neither of the banks in town offer small god prayer funds to workers.”
“There’s always a way, if you try hard enough,” the owner said. “I do sympathize with the workers’ plight, but there’s nothing I can do. This change is simply essential to the city’s future, to the growth of its theonomy.”
The High Priestess whirled to face the owner, glaring. “What do you mean, there’s nothing you can do? This is literally your doing, your decision. You’re the one bringing Nocdan to town!”
She was practically yelling by the end, but the pump station owner was completely unfazed.
“These are just simple theonomic realities, High Priestess,” he said. “If we want the city to survive, we need growth, and for growth, we need efficiency. Besides, we’re not simply abandoning the workers— we’ve already established job retraining programs for them.”
“By job retraining programs, you mean you’re going to throw them out into the rice fields with everyone else, and then lower everyone’s pay due to the glut of labor out there.”
The owner shrugged. “We all have to make sacrifices for Creose’s future, Priestess.”
The High Priestess swept her gaze pointedly across the imported rugs and wall-hangings, the finely carved wooden furniture, the boon-lights that required no oil or flame. “And what sacrifices are you making, then?”
He opened his mouth to reply— with some self-satisfied horseshit he might actually believe— but the priestess rolled right over him. “This is pushing the people too far. They’re not going to take this lying down.”
“Is that a threat?” the owner asked, with a faint smile.
“A prediction,” the High Priestess said. “Not one I particularly want to see come true.”
“I rest my full faith in the competence and loyalty of the constabulary,” the owner said, getting up from his desk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go prepare for Nocdan’s arrival ceremony.”
Before she could respond, the owner had already left the room.
The High Priestess stormed out of the office, wrath written across her face. The constables guarding the owner’s office didn’t even try making polite conversation as she departed the tower— though her method of departure sent a very pointed message.
She took the stairs.
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Event the Third:
Mere minutes after Nocdan’s arrival in the city, his shrine was waylaid by an angry masked mob, who forcibly took the shrine from its guards and porters, marched it a quarter of the way around the city, and then threw it off the cliff into the raging drainage canal, to the ringing of the city’s bells.
The constabulary found themselves completely unable to respond in time. A cart had crashed in an important intersection, dumping a huge pile of rice. A fight poured out of a tavern into the street. Old ladies clustered and gossiped in alleys, children’s games ran right into moving patrols, and porters carried large furniture right out of buildings at the most inopportune moments.
None of the constables got even close in time, and all the disturbances had vanished minutes later.
And when questioned, no one in the city had seen anything. Hanging laundry lines between tenement towers had blocked the view, or alibis were found for being halfway across the city. Gods who dwelled on the route of the stolen shrine claimed to have been asleep, to have seen nothing.
It was all very mysterious.
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The narrative here seems straightforward enough, and the Angshan courts should have had an easy enough time assigning blame to this chain of events— save for one simple fact.
All three events happened at the exact same time, accompanied very distinctly by the ringing of the exact same hour by the exact same city bells.
As bought and paid for as Angshan justice was, it still required a bare minimum of evidence, or at least its appearance, and the corrupt tend to crave the appearance of legitimacy like a drug. Not to mention, there were no viable suspects in this case.
Or, rather, there were too many suspects.
Every worker in the city had a motive. Every retiree, every spouse, every merchant. No one except the pump station owner and his rich friends and cronies wanted Nocdan’s increased efficiency.
The powerful even turned their suspicion on the constabulary. Certainly, the constables enjoyed status and power serving the rich, but their parents, siblings, friends, and cousins would have been hurt by the change in pump gods. It seemed a little strange they hadn’t been able to force their way to the stolen shrine’s marching route, that they truly hadn’t been able to find anyone involved or willing to talk.
Of course, even the minimal evidential requirements of Anshan justice could be waived with enough bribes, with enough political pressure. In other situations, in other cities, the court would have gladly made examples of convenient targets, have scapegoated worker organizers and priests of Revodna.
But there was another interesting, unusual quirk of Angshan justice that came into play here.
Namely, that it wasn’t stupid.
No one talked, but a few known gossips and malcontents were found badly beaten over the next few days— and the constables had absolutely no luck finding the culprits. Every investigation went nowhere, and several out-of-town officers of the constabulary had mysterious accidents, tripping down steep staircases or having crockery accidentally dropped on them from a half-dozen stories up.
And Nocdan, when his badly damaged shrine was recovered from the canal a week later after specialist recovery crews were brought in from another city, refused to stay in Creose and take over its pump station.
So the Court of Creose, in its wisdom, decided that without a clear chain of events, and with no positive outcome for victory, that there was no possible verdict— that this case was philosophically and theoretically unsolvable, an acausal crime. That it couldn’t have actually happened.
Truly, a wise decision by the Angshan courts, proof of their superior system of justice.
All rise for the unbruised and unbeaten judges of Creose.
Comments
John Bierce
It literally is Luddite fan fic lol, the Luddites were awesome. Rather than being superstitious peasants terrified of machinery, they were highly sophisticated labor rights activists protesting child labor, drastic reductions in pay and increase in working conditions, dangerous workplaces, and the dissolution of communities. The machines they smashed were smashed with hammers made by the exact same companies, and the Luddites would only target very specific machines in factories. They were genuinely awesome. And then the British crown murdered the hell out of them, and the capitalists of the time started a century long smear campaign portraying them as superstitious peasants afraid of machines. If you're interested in reading more, Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine rocks. As for the writing style... yeah, fair enough. This sort of style definitely isn't for everyone, it's very much an experiment- but then, that's a big part of why I write short stories in the first place, to try and push my boundaries as a writer. (The genuine failures never get shown, hah.) Writing weird stuff like this makes me genuinely better at writing more normal stories.
james apfel
I finally read this after reading TCTWETW and while I hate being a hater, this just reads like Luddite fan fiction and barely a story tbh. I am sure this comment won’t be received well, but I hope the writing goes back towards telling really good stories and away from being a Randian level of political heavy handendess.
JasonD
Seems a ripe opportunity for a force majeure clause to be applied--it must have been an "act of God" and therefore not a crime at all: just a thing that happened as an historical event. Perhaps more of an act of small gods, in this instance, though.
John Bierce
So many tears
John Bierce
Not at all, lol
John Bierce
That line was a bit of a late addition, I'll give that some thought.
John Bierce
One key conviction I have about technology, one that leads to a lot of arguments with techbros (and generally more positive reception from other tech folks) is that the social structures around a technology are, themselves, a part of the technology itself, that you cannot stop considering a gadget at its physical borders. It's irresponsible to say "this technology is better" without asking "better for who?" In a better world, a more efficient system might have resulted in better conditions for everyone, except perhaps Revodna- though ideally, even Revodna would still be cared for, would still find a useful role in society.
John Bierce
Yes, but deliberately so- that simultaneously wordy but pared-down prose, where I leave out words that I can imply instead, is a style I find increasingly attractive these days- but it can be hard to make it look intentional, unfortunately. Punctuating it different might have helped? An em dash or a semicolon instead of the final comma there? Hmm.
FoolRegnant
I think this sentence is missing a word or two: "The Angsha Confederacy, however, rarely leans on patterns of behavior, focuses almost entirely on chains of cause and effect."
Yaboku
I always hate cases like these. More effective solutions are sometimes opposed just because "jobs are going to be lost" or similar. Often that's also just an excuse. But if we actually lived in a a good system then having tondonless labor for the same result would always be better. For example the workers could have all donr less hours for the same pay and the god replacement would have only been positive. Except for Revodna, I guess, which is another layer in this universe. Similar to how automation is sometimes depicted, and rightfully so since we do not in a system that would favour the working class.
HappyTrails
I love the writing style and content here, as usual. Thanks for sharing! The “it could not have actually happened” line felt forced. Something without a cause can still happen, I’m not sure how one leads to another?
Conrad Wong
Another great parable that in no way resembles anything happening in the modern world. ^.^;;
Merlin King
What a deeply normal system, with no downsides at all. Such a shame the god didn’t want to enter the city any longer, I’m sure the workers are weeping for them
John Bierce
Oh lol it has switched And yeah, I absolutely love playing around with different formulations, paradigms, and understanding of religion- we tend to have a really rigid default understanding of what religion is today, and even ignoring having materially extant supernatural beings, there's such a wild variety of religious paradigms on our own world! It's a topic of deep fascination for me. (And one I try to approach respectfully- for all that I'm not a man of faith, I have no interest in following in the annoying footsteps of the angry atheists.)
Bronkeykong
The voting was so close that it’s switched to the other story now lol. I find it interesting that the gods have had such a bureaucratic effect on Ishveos. A lot of the stories have a flavour of grounded social mores rather than more religious, esoteric ones. Partly, I suppose, because gods are as common as ants and many of them are so niche and borderlines useless. I imagine it doesn’t inspire a lot of religious fervour for a god of a pump. Just practicality. Very interesting.
Angela Roberts
Oh the commentary!
