ABSTRACT
So much has been said to so little avail about rationality that to add to it would be pretty pointless. However a curious document has come my way which suggests that disquisitions on rationality reveal more about their authors than about what they claim to speak. I quote briefly.
‘Sometimes the Tsew really appear backward. Their utter conviction in their superiority can be very straining on an outsider; for they use every opportunity to compare others unflatteringly with themselves. While they display a shrewd mercantile flair, no small technical ingenuity and awesome military might, it is the manner by which they justify their prowess which mystifies one not born with their assumptions and mode of reasoning. Nretsew peoples are thought to excel in the finest human attribute, being laniotar, or Ar in common parlance. This quality above all they asseverate to be the cause of their success. According to the learned elders Ar is so important in Nretsew life that they define humanity by its possession and animality by its absence. I suspect my dilatory and uncertain grasp of this concept has given them ground to doubt whether I am indeed truly human. For unless one is Ar, it transpires one cannot understand what it is.
Today was most depressing. As the Tsew constantly invoke Ar to account for every institution from agricultural practice to moral injunctions, I returned to trying to understand it. The priests to whom I spoke quite failed to see how contradictory I found their ideas about Ar. For humans are defined by Ar, but some are more so than others. Not being Ar enough opens one to ridicule; and tens of thousands of Tsew have been incarcerated by their fellows, often until death, on the charge of lacking Ar. The quality of Ar is inferred from speech and action by the priests, but while these persons epitomize this highest of virtues, the same priests are widely treated with contempt by many. Traditionally the truth about Ar was revealed by the two great Culture Heroes, Otalp and Eltotsira, who it seems agreed on little else. Texts in esoteric language abound and sects proliferate, each professing the true interpretation and using it to refute the others. Foolishly I remarked that, as every sect’s criteria were different, they might argue at cross-purposes for ever, only to be told scornfully that this showed I did not understand Ar. Surely it is inconsistent for each priest to boast an idiolect and disagree with all others, but unite to insist there to be only one true Ar.
Squabbles break out constantly. For instance, in the Order of Srenildrah, a young apostate, Sekul, was caught coping with the ambiguities of Ar, by preaching that it was of two kinds, Arwan and Artu. The magnitude of the heresy was brought to light by the arch-priest Silloh who reaffirmed the doctrine that there could be only one true Ar, because this was the necessary condition of thought itself. This peroration was though promptly criticized by another, Htims Notwen, who opined that the necessity of Ar derived from it being the condition of effective action.
When challenged, however, Nretsew priests often resort to arguments of a quite different order. They affirm categorically that the world could not make sense without Ar; or point to the material superiority of the Tsew as proof of Ar; the very flexibility of their argumentation itself being further proof that…’
