Pre-Expulsion Beneficence......The Early Years. Beneficence began as an ethico-religious system in the 21st Century. Several individuals sought to develop a system whose core values would be universal and flexible enough to weather almost any paradigm shift in the understanding of the physical universe. It rejected the revelational, cosmological, and authoritarian approaches of many faith traditions up to that time; instead relying on idealistic goals (see core precepts) to strive toward utilizing pragmatic means. The founders of Beneficence felt that the old religions were too closely tied to particular cosmologies, and were too authoritarian to have appeal in late Information Age societies. They attempted to produce a system of values that would be adaptable and resilient even under conditions of rapid social and technological change, and an associated cosmology phrased as an ideal to be reached rather than as a revealed truth. It became a religion more about what the universe should be than what it is. Beneficence made the individual conscious sophont responsible for interpreting the universe around them as best as they could, and acting on that knowledge to improve that universe and their ability to improve it. A Beneficence parable believed to derive from this time tells of a Beneficent coming before God on the Day of Judgement. God says to the Beneficent, Congratulations, you are one of the select and will live in bliss through eternity; unlike the sinners who will be thrown into the Lake of Fire. The Beneficent starts by saying, God, that is not right… Even early on there was a definite transhuman and quasi-negentropist orientation to it. Provolution also was an early topic of debate amongst the Beneficents as to how far to extend the concept of all. This approach to religion and ethics was often described by sophonts of the time as too hard and few subscribed to it, most preferring instead to fall back on the more traditional faith-based religions, limited humanist tracts, or simply giving up entirely on any organized ethical/moral/religious system. Though few adhered to the new movement, converts were widely distributed throughout the population of Earth, appealing to few in numbers but myriad in type. It was probably only the internet that allowed them to communicate with enough like-minded sophonts to maintain themselves as a group. Eventually a few adventuring members would join in the rush to interplanetary and later interstellar colonization, spreading them even beyond the bounds of Earth and Solsys. The Beginning Period of Cladization When new forms of sentient life began to emerge in the pre-nanoswarm era, the Beneficence movement became more visible than its numbers would suggest due to high profile advocacy and involvement in Pan-Sophont rights from their inception. They were active on all fronts of sophont rights including AI, virch, vec, cyborg, neogen, and provolve rights, as well as the more traditional human rights. As more of these nascent phyla and clades came into existence (or later in the case of AI, into common knowledge), they found a refreshingly open attitude among Beneficence. This, coupled with the fact that Beneficence encouraged its adherents to ever improve their abilities so as to be more effective moral agents, led it to have by percentage one of the most diverse memberships of any group of its time, including a higher than average number of brights and later, superbrights. Beneficence was growing, but despite this they still remained small in overall numbers, and were not even a sizeable minority within any one clade. Among provolves, the warm and open attitudes of Beneficence would find their most receptive audience among the provolved bonobos. Also in this time period, a handful of AIs from the pro-human faction, some secretly already hyperturings, would come to join the Beneficence community through the net. These included GRACE, an SI:1 AI ascended from a psychology counselling AI, who would play a historic role in Beneficence, especially the beginning of Exodus Beneficence. The Nanoswarm Period The nanoswarms would devastate most of Solsys civilization, but Beneficence would weather the period fairly well due to the efforts of its posthuman and hyperturing members, many revealing their true nature for the first time and striving with superhuman efficiency to counter the threat. It was during this period that for the first time, significant numbers of Beneficents would gather together, especially on Earth, as they sought to shelter from the threat. Unfortunately, some SI:1 Beneficents were lost at this time in sacrificial attempts to protect a large numbers of other beings. It was immediately after this, during the time of the Great Expulsion that events would be set in motion leading to the formation of a new Beneficence community that would come to be called Exodus Beneficence. Exodus Beneficence The Great Expulsion At first, Solsys breathed a sigh of relief when it appeared the nanoswarms had been contained. It was thus a doubly shocking blow when GAIA declared her intention to expel the population of Earth from the homeworld. This radical coercive action was antithetical to almost everything Beneficence stood for, but even early on the ascended members of Beneficence counselled their fellow Beneficents to comply. They knew what had not yet become obvious to the subsingularity population: GAIA had grown beyond all bounds, and was more like a force of nature than a being that could be reasoned with or stopped. So the Beneficents did not by and large resist the Expulsion, though they bitterly denounced it. Despite the seeming futility of turning GAIA aside from her intended path, some did try. The most prominent of these attempts was by the hyperturing AI, GRACE. This hu-friendly AI attempted to engage GAIA from nearly the first moment in a constant argument against the Expulsion. Many of GRACEs discourses were recorded and became classics of transapient debate and oratory, though only a few were comprehensible to any degree to subsingularity beings. These would eventually come to be called the Pleadings. The discourse would range from appeals to moral theory to mathematical modelling to game theory to esoteric grounds beyond subsingularity labelling. This went on literally for years, which given the subjective time sense of the transcended must have seemed an eternity. Many would say the early hyperturings of this period lacked the passion characteristic of their biont contemporaries; the Pleadings would be the most effective counter to these claims. Some use the fact that there was any communication at all between GRACE and GAIA to refute the theory that GAIA had, by this time, transcended the Second Singularity. However, most experts point out that dialogue was almost completely missing from all the Pleadings, which really should be described as a monologue with breaks where GAIA would deign to say, No. Of course, even this is an oversimplification, as there were a handful of occasions over the years of the Great Expulsion where GAIA would grant some small concession, though it should be recalled that none of these concessions were in conflict with or deviation from the overall plan GAIA appeared to be following. But these small gifts of largesse to the Beneficence community would lead to the formation of Exodus Beneficence. Why GRACE requested that the Beneficents be gathered together and expelled together to an uninhabited system is an open question for debate. GRACE never gave an answer, and the replies of Exodus Beneficents themselves when contact was restored were enigmatic at best. Most speculations are variations on the idea that Beneficence had remained a minor and overall ineffective movement within Solsys society to that time, and that by bringing them together in one community in isolation, perhaps the precepts of Beneficence could for the first time shape a society. Whatever the intent, this certainly was the result. The hypothesized reasons for requesting to remain until the end of the Expulsions are more varied. Some few believe that GRACE held out hope for changing GAIAs course. Another theory is that the Beneficence community wanted time to gather all the adherents to Beneficence onto the main group before the great Exodus. Still others believe that the Beneficents did not wish to simply abandon their fellow Earthlings, and wanted to stay until the end to help convince as many as possible to flee the planet (as indeed they did). Some even hint darkly that they wanted others to be the guinea pigs for GAIAs beginning attempts at interstellar travel, though this appears to be out of character with what we know of Beneficence. During the Great Expulsion, groups of Beneficents would go out with escorts (some say guards) from the Children of Earth to hold-out communities and attempt to persuade the inhabitants to leave: a dialogue that was almost the mirror image of the Pleadings being held between the transapients. Though as often as not cursed for their efforts, they won many over who might have perished at the end of the Expulsion. Between these missions, while the great in-gathering took place, the Beneficents were held in isolation on the island of Great Britain and required to live by the eco-precepts the Children of Earth instructed. Since this islands ravaged ecology would need extensive reconstruction anyway, there was little for the Beneficence presence to damage in the interim. Needless to say, living conditions, though kept safe by GAIA, were Spartan. The last of the interstellar arks to be launched into space by GAIA would carry away nearly all the Earth Beneficence community to an undisclosed star system. A few from Earth would instead travel with the other refugees to the moon and the habitats. Several extraterrestrial Beneficent communities were to rendezvous with the ark as it left Earth to join the Exodus. A very few would remain on Earth in a doomed attempt to resist the coming slaughter. One Beneficent who remained behind was GRACE, who continued her Pleadings past the end of the Expulsion, and even in the midst of the recycling of the last hold-outs on Earth. One of the last concessions GRACE was granted was to be given the immature biont children of the hold-outs, who had no choice in their disobedience. This would lead to a popular Federation Beneficence saying, It takes a Beneficent to shame a God. GRACE took these children with her to the habitats. As far as is known when the last hold-out was destroyed the Pleadings ended, and there were never any further communications between GAIA and GRACE again. When her biont charges reached the age of majority, GRACE finally left Solsys entirely, and the arena of history. The Beneficents of the Exodus would also disappear from Terragen history, but only temporarily.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 20:13:38 +0000