I began to write my
book fourty years ago this month, after an encounter with a devout
Wayist colleague of mine. In response to his questions, I expressed
my opinion that the Winds should be treated as allegorical figures
rather than literal entities. To his credit, my colleague did not
become violent though I could see that he was restraining himself. I
do not know why he reacted so strongly to my opinion – to this day
I feel that I was the very picture of humility – but the strength
of his feeling was plain.
He accused me of base
disrespect, of madness, of blindness and of arrogance. When I asked
him why he called it arrogance, he explained that I was flying in the
face of the knowledge granted to our ancestors, and who was I to
argue with them?
I show all proper
respect to my ancestors of course. But to believe that the knowledge
of all things was gifted to them before they could even work iron
properly is not only deluded hubris, it is contradictory. If such
knowledge was given them, then why could they not work iron? Why
could they not vaccinate, or build a computer, or a starship? The
answer of course is that they could not do those things because they
had not yet learned how. The fact is that with every passing day we
expand the frontiers of our knowledge, and invent new technologies
using the secrets we unearth.
The pattern that we see
everywhere is that knowledge grows with time, as we build upon the
foundations laid by prior generations. If we allow the impulse to
sacredness, religiousness and spirituality to blinker us to the
reality of the trend of human progress, then we have accepted a
deluded state of mind, which is to be avoided.
However, the delusion
we must also separate ourselves from is that the spiritual impulse is
an inherently backwards one, or inherently corrupted. It is a human
impulse, and shares the same potential for both the climb and the
fall as any other human thing. The goal of the New Way was to turn
this impulse towards the same constructive ends that are conducive to
our faculties of reason and enlightenment. Religion is a tool that
got us through the bitter winters, and can serve that purpose again.
Do we throw away our old tools? No. Not if we are wise. We refine
them. Adapt them. Bring them up to speed with the modern paradigm.
Why should the tool of our spirituality be exempt from iteration?
If we do intend to dust
off the old tool and update it for the modern age, however, then
there are bugs that need to be patched. Quite serious ones. Glitches
in human reasoning that encourage otherwise sensibly sceptical
citizens to unthinkingly accept the patently absurd as truth simply
because it was told to them as a child by a trusted authority figure.
Due reverence and
respect for an ancestor is only appropriate of course, but any person
can be wrong, about any thing. We accept as a principle of
meritocracy that if a son or daughter is more competent for the role
than their own parent, then the parent should derive pride rather
than outrage from being surpassed. It is not meritocratic for the
young to have perfect confidence in the wisdom of the old, when the
elder's wisdom is not wise at all. Our knowledge has grown over the
ages as much through daring to question the established understanding
as through exploring hitherto unimaginable horizons.
Religion is an organ of
the human condition. For the Amarr, it is their beating heart. For
the Gallente it is an appendix, free to remain so long as it causes
no harm. But what is religon to the Caldari State? What role shall it
play in our civilisation? Shall we discard it? No! The very purpose
of the State is the preservation and perpetuation of the heritage
that makes us Caldari, and the Way is a fundamental and important
part of that heritage. We should no more abandon it than we should
abandon the desire to reclaim the Homeworld.
But all things must be
weighed and balanced, considered in terms of the greatest good. The
question is not whether or not we should retain the Way, but rather
whether we should retain the Way in its present form.
This is a more difficult question, and it is my sincere opinion that
the answer is that we should not. The Way of the Winds contains much
that is excellent. It also contains much that is glaringly false,
prone to misinterpretation, or vulnerable to dogmatic literalism.
What
was needed was a new version of the Way, one which retained those
elements that merit retention, and which re-tooled the rest. This
became my work for seven years, and here I am four decades on,
surrounded by thousands of people who agree with me. This has never
been my project alone, however. Everyone who contributes to the debate shares in the success
our philosophy has seen and it gives an old man the greatest hope to
know that the future of the Caldari people, and the legacy of our
past, are in such devoted, concerned and competent hands.
-Vakarin Uuskyoun,
Foreword to the third edition of his book "Improving the Sacred"
