Case files of the Lord Inquisitor, part 2

In a not so distant future, in examination room D-2931, within the bowels of the Inquisition for Community Errors, New Collective Union:

Prisoner T329: Returned for your daily dose of torture?

Inquisitor 3204: Your pain is instructive. We take no pleasure in corrective measures used against those in our care.

P: Ha! Care. As if you care about anything other than your delusional ideology.

I: And you? What is it that occupies your mental energy?

P: Our lost freedom. How we sold our humanity for a little bit of gas, food, electricity.

I: You still cling to the heresy of failed ideas.

P: Hmf! For a human, exercising freedom is like breathing the air.

I: Two billion souls of the New Collective Union disagree.

P: Souls? You’ve drained all vitality, meaning, humanity out of them! All I see are empty shells that were once human, drifting without purpose, like some zombies from one of your restricted arts archives. They are mere memories; no, remnants of a forgotten awareness that hints at what was before. They are nothing more than cowed sheep, perpetually hunted by you ICE operatives.

I: How unfortunate that your privileges were not proportionate to your level of enlightenment.

P: Ha! Enlightenment. You mean indoctrination, don’t you?

I: All education is indoctrination. The failed humanist societies of the past indoctrinated their citizens in what is clearly heresies of truth. Historical records attest to these indoctrinations producing naught but self-entitled, hedonistic consumerists who continued to consume in excess, constantly whining about “rights,” even as their societies fell apart around them. The God-Emperor only wishes His subjects attain enlightenment through education, training, and duty towards their greater race.

P: Semantics. Your god-emperor merely wishes for obedient slaves.

I: If your heresy of freedom is so necessary, then why are the historical records littered with testimony of failed humanist social matrices?

P: . . . death comes for us all. Empires that rise, will one day fall. Even your god-emperor’s perfect fiefdom will live out its time and die . . . arg!

I: Such blasphemy is not tolerated. Since you are being . . . edified, for the time being, I will inform you of the conclusions reached by the Academy for Public Enlightenment regarding the failed humanist societies. Your precious freedom is nothing more than license to indulge in appetites, desires, and perversions. In a “free” society, your “individuals” perceive nothing beyond their immediate physical comfort and their base compulsive appetites. A society built upon sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust will eventually cannibalise itself to its very marrow.

P: Arrrrgggg!

I: Still with us? Good. How have these “free” societies used their abundant resources? Exploring the far reaches of outer space? Studying the mysteries of the deep blue seas? Combing the depths of human consciousness and awareness? Pondering the metaphysics of reality? No. We have archives reaching several terabytes of pornography in every perversion imaginable. We have volumes of statistical manipulation that these “free” men deemed to be “science.” We have continents of petrol-derivative waste that continue to drift on the world’s oceans. We have video records of “religious” services, which are nothing more than elementary confidence scams to extract resources from gullible “free” men.

P: Uggghhh!

I: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Do you recall this drivel, penned by one of the humanist kings? What is “happiness?” The happy life is one of excellence. Excellence requires exertion, and does not consist in mere amusement. A horse in its natural, . . . “free,” state roams aimlessly, but through training and conditioning, a horse learns to finally run with a purpose. So too with men. Those gifted with athletic abilities, ought they live and train, eat and drink, according to the direction of a single master, his coach, or ought they abandon themselves in their base appetites, desires, and slothfulness? Hmm? Ah . . .

P: Ugh! (sigh)

I: Well?

P: . . . obey their coach . . .

I: What is the state of a man drowning in freedom? Is it not a being driven by his appetites, consumed by his desires, burdened by his apathy, compelled by his perversions? What among his actions and thoughts can be considered separate from his appetites? Is he not merely a meat-bag of chemicals reacting to stimuli for sensory gratification? A mere beast, or rather untrained beast, is what your heresy prescribes for humanity.

P: You cite the worst excesses of freedom, as if it is the means by which freedom ought to be evaluated. Humanist ideals are tools by which men understand the value of their natural state in freedom and learn to shape their lives according to their free-will. Your so-called refutation of freedom is akin to banning sex because its worst excesses result in pornography.

I: The God-Emperor does regulate intimate relations within the bound specified by His laws, as have all societies throughout human history.

P: Just because a tool is misused does not make the tool evil. It is not freedom or humanism that produce excesses, but fallible qualities of certain individuals.

I: Every tool is created with a specific purpose. What is the purpose of a firearm?

P: I assume this is a rhetorical query.

I: To kill. A sword? To kill. One can not separate the intended purpose of the creator in fashioning his tool from the tool itself. What is the purpose of your heresy?

I: To ensure the dignity and rights of man are . . . arg!

P: How disappointing to hear a well-trained Talent parroting humanist propaganda. Let us edify you further.

I: Uggghhh!

P: What was the historical context for these heresies, with which you’ve contaminated the information networks? Second-tier aristocrats, ambitious clerical bureaucrats, and discontented mercantile interests attempting to grasp more power away from the established, legitimate ruling elite. These so-called humanist doctrines are nothing more than disinformation aimed to rationalise their ambitions for power. The purpose for your humanism is to kill the established social matrix, in order that opportunists can rise to the top. “In civil strife, even villains rise to fame,” so observed the ancients. It is a tool for engendering chaos and civil strife.

I: Arrrrgggg! Sttttoopppp!

P: Did man create himself ex nihilo to claim “right” to his life? If he has not created himself, then what claims does man have on his life? Is he not but a product of his parents, his forebears, his community, his society, his state? Does not the state, rather than man, have more claim to his life? What of the so-called liberty, or freedom? One must be free from something; freedom exists as an antithesis to some other condition. Does not the malcontents writing this drivel, then acknowledge that man is born into an original condition, from which he must be freed? That man’s natural condition is not the so-called freedom? What of property, to which man has the “unalienable right” to pursue? What on this creation did individual man forge into being? Did he breathe life into the livestock? Did he place minerals into the earth? Did he set the boundary between seas and land? Did he set the sun and the stars in the heavens? How are the claims of your humanist king “self-evident” or “unalienable?”

I: . . .

P: Hmm? Well? (sigh). We will clean your quarters of the excess organic fluids. We will resume when you are more . . . receptive. Let us end our session here.

I: . . .