(Cascadian National University, Odeon, Special Saturday Lecture.)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT1_fsOy_r0]

Good morning on this bleak and windy day, where the rain pours incessantly and each and every one of us fears to look up and check that that is indeed rain pouring on our heads.

Considering it's a bright and sunny day, you may be wondering why I said that. It bears no relation whatsoever to the reality of the day. There is no possible way that anyone could believe it, for all that is needed to verify the falseness of my statement is to open ones eyes.

I said that because it is how the Americans viewed their Slave Camps. According to their written laws, the slave camps of the Americans were to be houses of rehabilitation and understanding. Slaves placed within were to be given the greatest of consideration, and their mental and physical health was to be given the greatest of consideration. Any evidence to the contrary was of course the actions of disgruntled higher caste slaves, who would be routinely punished.

Of course, since nowadays the phrase "American Prison" is a pejorative I think it's also important that we do not resign them to the mythic realms of hell. They were the work of humans, and how they came to be must be understood and confronted rather than hidden away. That is after all, how the institution came into place.

Americans absolutely did not want to confront the fact that their fellow man can have sickness within them. In fact, they often treated a specific mental illness as the highest of virtue, and elevated those afflicted with nonempathy to the highest levels of power. The ability to ignore human suffering in pursuit of cult goals was to be lauded, and the cults often promoted the most ill to positions where they could indulge in their impulses without consequence.

When these cult members were faced with opposition, they did not confront the problem directly. Doing such a thing would have required the American in question to engage in work. Instead they simply pawned the task of removing the offending element to where it could not be seen to the soldiers. Those that supplied the equipment of soldiers saw profit in this, and happily swore that they would enforce the demands of the cults. Slaves who did not properly obey were thus not to be killed if possible, for such an act often would call the injustice of the highest caste into question, but rather disappeared.

If a group of slaves protested en mass, for example, they were to be first removed via social pressure laws to a designated area. Then the soldiers would individually remove the slaves, placing them apart from their fellows. Each would be charged with crimes against the state and cults, and the way the laws were written ensured that if the slave protested that the full power of the inverted pyramid would descend upon the slave. The slave was sometimes given another higher caste slave to serve as an advisor, but that was primarily to explain why the slave must submit, or else suffer the full wrath of the Cult.

When a slave submitted, of course, they were officially supposed to be treated with respect and a debt to the state entered into the rolls. That debt was supposed to be paid via time in a Slave Camp if the slave had no money to pay their way out. And of course the slave camps were owned by high cult members who wanted to maintain their profit for as long as possible.

As a result, the natural corporate order took over the Slave Camps. Every human contribution was limited to the minimum possible, while human errors were to be punished to the maximum amount. Often slaves were forbidden from doing meaningful work, instead relegated to drudgery merely to maintain the camp. Meaningful work was to be reserved for only after the drudgery had been completed.

What was most interesting is that this mentality began to expand. The soldier caste began to be treated more and more as if they were within a slave camp, and those that did not leave the camps during their overseas career (Which were many, I must state. In many ways the Soldier caste was divided into smaller groups) began to see this as the natural order of society. So much so that when they were assigned to return home, they saw the world in much the same way, with their local camp as the sole island of peace within a lawless and scum filled world.

And so the camps gradually became greater and greater. Each one represented a great investment from the Cults, and the guaranteed position of trust for overseeing one was a hard lure for many of the sick to avoid. The law was so labyrinthine and convoluted that nearly any action could be a pretext for a soldier to place a slave within one or a cult member to call for such an removal. Even speaking forbidden words was deemed a punishable offense.

The slaves that successfully navigated the camps, of course, were well versed in dealing with the society, and rather than return to their supposedly voluntary drudgery, many chose instead to emulate those that had placed them within the camps in the first place. This created a new enemy that the cults were eager to fight, and so they rapidly escalated their enforcer's tools and authority.

Of course that money had to be justified, so more slaves were needed for the camps.

While it's obvious that this matter of affairs was not sustainable, the cults believed that the next revelation from the cults would grant them immortality, and so felt no need to think of the future. Why bother when history has ended? Why bother when they would soon live forever as gods among the stars?

I hasten to add that most Americans had never heard of the word Hubris.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwvlbJ0h35A]