Nihilitics 100*
Ah, I see we have a packed house! Well, I-- Wait, they're telling people this course is a requisite again aren't they?
I guess so.For what? Advanced Nonexistence 201?
[scattered laughter]
Well it's good that you're here anyway. I'll save you the trouble taking any further time to arrive at the conclusion all freshmen eventually do when they take this--[cough] or any--course: my class is about nothing, really.
[laughter]
And I am nobody. [the lights go completely dark]
[whispers, sporadic noise from the students moving slightly in the dark]
Do you hear that?
[quiet]
I could have sworn I almost heard something there. [the lights begin to raise dimly]
Just at the very edge of consciousness when it was totally dark. [the lights raise further and the professor is no longer on stage]
From the back of the auditorium: Did you hear it? [it's the professor; the students turn in their seats to look back at him]
The human body has a remarkable aptitude for adaptation. When we take away one sense, in this case vision, the other senses automatically attune and compensate for the loss. In the dark we may suddenly hear and perceive things that were previously just background noise. Our ears build a model of the world based on pitch and volume to substitute for the visual one of depth and brightness.
Before the age of advanced cybernetic implantation, there were people who lived their entire lives completely bereft of one or more senses. [he continues, walking slowly through the auditorium down toward the stage] Such people, like the congenitally blind, were known to possess particularly accute yet unaided hearing, and their other senses were heighened as well. In the dark, touch means so much more, doesn't it? The cold firmness of a metal railing in a darkened stairwell, the welcoming pliancy of your bed as you fall asleep at night, the warm brush of a lover's body against your fingertips. These things are so much more detailed, so much more present, so much more real because your sensation is that much more focused.
This class is about learning how to do the same thing with your conscious mind. It is about focusing your thoughts to achieve heightened understanding.
You must first understand the world in order to transcend it, and the deeper your understanding the more complete and geniune will be your transformation. You will come to know a great deal. Some of you may be convinced that you will know everything. [polite laughter] But in the end what you must realize is that for all the wealth of your studies and the sophistication of your thoughts, you know nothing. What do I mean? With that discovery you will be truly prepared for the next stage in your studies and your lives.
Let's begin.
~
*
Intaki Philosophical AcademyFounded on the Intaki homeworld only a few years before the establishment of the Gallente Federation as the Raravindra Kaatara School, what was to become the Intaki Philosophical Academy began as a private institution for training religious scholars of the planet's Ida traditions. Like many modern university-level schools, it was initially created to fill an economic need and hopefully make money for its founders and investors. Like few, however, it soon found a calling and a mission that transcended mere financial utility.
In the aftermath of the Gallente-Caldari War, the failures of the Ultranationalist regime, and the exile of many ethnic Intaki citizens to deep space, the homeworld was searching again for its cultural and spiritual identity amid the pieces of a shattered universe. In this context the small religious school recast itself as an institute dedicated to studying, understanding, and preventing such immense failures of interstellar politics and diplomacy from ever occurring again. The cornerstone of this endeavor was the application of Ida thought, of spiritual tenets, to worldly problems.
Thus the school was reborn as the Intaki Philosophical Academy, expanded and eventually relaunched as a public university with funds from the Intaki Assembly. Today, the Intaki are known for their large representation in the ranks of bureaucrats, diplomats, and mediators in the Federation and beyond. No small part of that is owed to the homeworld's robust educational resources for students of interstellar relations and the humanities, at the heart of which lies the IPA.
Students attending university at one of the Academy's campuses received a unique education with practical social sciences interlaced at every level with metaphysical labs and programs designed to challenge the student's most basic assumptions and expand their worldview. The objective is to produce graduates who are capable of functioning effectively and impartially in nearly any social dynamic at any level of business or public service. IPA graduates are abundant in the Federation's judicial system and Supreme Court, and students of its rigorous Transhuman Studies specialized degree program have become coveted assets throughout the cluster for their insights into the capsuleer world.
The Academy's original campus remains in use today, located in the southern hemisphere of Intaki Prime on the Rhe-Thea peninsula not far from Mount Yasur. Satellite campuses have been opened in many major cities on the homeworld and the IPA offers some of its basic course catalog as correspondence education packages for students studying spaceside or abroad in other nations. In all things, dating from its days as a religious school, the Academy's more than 200-year old motto guides its decisions and curriculum: the journey's first step is to find the middle path.
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Topic: The ILF fiction contest (Read 2463 times)