Kronen, pronounced as though it were a contraction of “Chronos” and “Ben”
Magos, pronounced as though it were a contraction of “Magic” and “Boss”
- - - -
Floating in space, halfway between the earth and the sun, two superpowers debate. Neither may overcome, only resist and deter. So they converse, and we join them midcourse beyond social pleasantries to the crux of the disagreement, where Kronen responds to the emphatic certainty of Magos.
“Therein reveals the nature of my opposition to you. You implicitly accept as permissible mysteries that which cannot be known when you propel your certainty of feeling to the seat of highest authority. You genuinely believe that you are right, Magos. You bet your life on it as though wearing the very badge of divine authority.”
“Indeed, I do! I fight for the Highest! He has revealed His will and we must obey! Kronen, it is the only way!”
“So you admit! You would die for what you believe! Am I not permitted the same? How does perfection dictate that opposition is intolerable? Well… I suppose I see your point there, Magos.”
“Are you seriously asking why I should stop such destruction? How can you consider yourself anything but evil when you desire such absolutes?”
“How can you consider yourself righteous? Are you truly so worthy of eternal existence? Are you only good because you are right in your faith, or is your rightness of faith because of how good you are? Does the pleasure of your life justify all the suffering of the world which you manage to avoid? You would stop me from destroying the entire solar system simultaneously to preserve the good you see?”
“I would! It is not your decision to make! Are you God that you can declare such a judgement? Are you God Himself, Kronen?”
“Have you not already done the same of me, hypocrite? Can you not see, dear Magos, that your decision is elevated above mine but only in your own mind? You would permit perpetual pain and atrocities to continue if only to preserve the comfortable lives of those so important to you. Your goodness is justified by their goodness in this network of communal righteousness that supersedes all outside of your circle. You are so shockingly unaware of your own depravity despite your certainty in declaring your own righteousness and worthiness! How asinine can a creature be?”
“Well what would you do then, Kronen? Do you know better? Is your path justice?”
“So it is, Magos! So it is! What could be more just than complete conclusion? Is the suffering of the miserable justified by the ideally pursued potential of man? Why should I also embrace the unyielding lust for “more and better” that has consumed the world? Do you know the first mistake, Magos? Where man first went wrong?”
“I have my perspective but I expect you would object regardless.”
“Indeed I would, but only because you profess to know. You think you know the very origin of life whereas I accept the reality of the situation being utterly unknowable, as all things are. You are possessed of knowledge, as evidenced by your mortal certainty. You believe what you do as founded on it, you are compelled by nothing more than your own sureness of feeling.”
“So, Kronen, that first mistake you mentioned? Never mind that you seem to be expressing the same certainty you debase.”
“Ah, you object so fiercely in kind, so insulted by the very sort of magical thinking that in your mind permits my elimination. Your magical thinking is so superior to mine, as you see it, that you might go so far as to kill me. You are worthy of life and I of death, and perhaps only your own morality and righteousness may be thanked for my survival to present.”
“I am better than you, Kronen! I want goodness and life and you only want death and destruction! You are consumed!”
“Do you not hear yourself Magos? You so profoundly condemn my solution! Death and destruction of all would utterly cease suffering completely, with no one holding some advantage over another in such an absolute end to this life you so cherish.”
“I do cherish life! It is good to be alive! It is right and true! It is justified by the suffering. There is more and better beyond. This life is not all there is. You were made to be everlasting, and if you despise your gift, you will suffer for it. You must choose life, you must choose to be alive, Kronen, or you will pay for your offense to the Origin.”
“The Origin. Have we not so far departed? And thus we are led to the first mistake. The first departure from the Origin. The fall of man. In my humble yet equally certain opinion, it was in the development and proliferation of agriculture. Man’s first step toward amassing all worldly power, as though he SHOULD.”
“Are you mad? That was the start of all progress! Before that man was only an animal! A violent and meaningless beast of the very suffering you so despise! How are you not equally hypocritical in your own certainty that you should have access to override the highest will that all should persist to His satisfaction?”
“Because I have the power now. Agriculture was the first pursuit of man to override deity. Was man called from on high to this activity? Was man to subordinate that which the Origin initiated? And if man was called to override creation, why should I fail to do so to my greatest capacity? Again, how are you better for preserving the despicable for the just than I am for ending what is just for the despicable? What makes you right, Magos?! What beside your own declaration of representative authority and power?!”
“Although, mighty Kronen, you may ignite the sun and consume our solar system, you would end with it all. Why would you do that?”
“Magos, powerful Magos. You would delay me to your own demise at the risk of me surviving you? I would gladly perish for such great and true justice. Why do you resist?”
“For hope. I may yet have victory. Do you not want the same? You want the victory of seeing your own path pursued. You want the very power you seek to wrest from all others against their own wills. Do they not deserve the hope permitted them through their continued survival? Few share in the depths of your misery. I would sacrifice myself to preserve their opportunities of fulfillment. The living deserve to live.”
“Unless you declare otherwise by virtue of their thought crimes, of course. You deem yourself the judge to give life and take it as dictated by your own code. I seek a truly just outcome which gives the same to all at once, an outcome which ends all bad things at the cost of the good. You declare yourself god, Magos, you think you know best of all but you say so solely by your own evaluation of the certainty within you of the virtues as you define them by your association.”
“What is defined without association, Kronen? What can exist happily in isolation?”
“ALL MANKIND, MAGOS! Don’t you get it? The world is not full of who was right! It’s full of who was left after mortal combat won at all costs, regardless of the virtues of the combatants! It was the man who associated who amassed the power to accrue vast militaries and symbols of wealth! It was those who joined to him who survived! They were all wrong! Language is wrong! Communication is wrong! What is more and better than as it all began? How can we adamantly demand our own rise in a world shackled by the very law of entropy?”
“So as you see it, man SHOULD be an animal. We should behave as primates, ignoring our own capacities to make the world a better place for all?”
“Where is your improvement? As an animal, were I not fit, I would have passed quickly so as to avoid the very notion of existential suffering. If I were fit, I would enjoy all the goodness of natures bounty, find mates, bear offspring, and move on. Or die a violent death by some other beast, but such would have been far more rapid than this dismal isolation in a world utterly defined by social connection. The fulfillment I was conditioned to pursue is unattainable in every regard. The intensity of pain and suffering I feel is not justified by all the good I can perceive, and my perceptions are limited by a silent and invisible limiter who seems to relish my agony.”
“Where is your compassion, Kronen? What do you know of empathy? Are you so numb?”
“Are you ignorant of injury? What organ can maintain sensitivity against violent abuse? Is nothing unbearable to you? Are you so strong that nothing can exceed your limits? Is your expectation that I should bear such capacity? Are you the standard, Magos? When faced with an unbearable pain, one could be driven to destroy the organ throbbing with trauma. If numbness is the result, that would be quite preferable. If your feelings are your highest authority, who are you to deny me the same and who is your authority that refuses to make itself known personally? How am I to be wrong, then, in declaring my own insufficiency and moving to conclude myself in the very same hope of better things? For me, numbness is better, even best, because I can’t see anything above it anymore.”
“How tragic, Kronen. How grievously tragic and lonely. I can’t help but pity you. You are willful in your rejection of living and so blinded by it, you have severed your hope by clinging to despair as though it would save or deliver you. Have you also lost your fear of punishment? Do you think you can behave as you do without judgement by a higher power you cannot contact?”
“Indeed I have and do. I sought and sought but only found dry wells. I am exhausted of living. I am ready to be done, but you insist. You insist, Magos, and reluctantly I continue breathing.”
“So long as I stall you, justice prevails. Hope and joy remain.”
“Justice prevails? And where is this justice you claim? Does it lie with the groans of the people, the majority knowing what is best in democracy? Or does in rest in the rule of law, what is right having long been written down in the books thereof? And are those the only options?”
“They are the only options! The people who outnumber their opposition must be right, as truth will always overcome.”
“So Magos is a democrat.”
“And you, Kronen, a republican?”
“Absolutely not. You couldn’t even call me a libertarian. What political affiliation could be credited to a nihilist? Do you really view man so unflappable as to possess a near universal draw to virtue and truth? Is the collective man immune to manipulation? If people are inherently good, why must they be ruled? And tell me, Magos, how should a mortal ruler of mortals be established?”
“By the will and approval of the people submitting to rule by a fair government with blind application of justice, in good faith and hope for a brighter future. Life has never been better, Kronen. The world has never seen such progress, and it appears only on course to continue. In time, our people may spread to the stars.”
“And what, continue their violence and hatred and bloodshed? Are the comforts, conveniences and luxuries some of them enjoy so wonderful as to justify the miserable pain and suffering of the rest? Do you truly believe a dog-eat-dog world can achieve a righteous balance so as to merit a universal spread? Despair is seeing reality and useless optimism for what they are! Despair is the absence of magical thinking! Don’t you see, Magos? If life as we know it ceased while yet so deserving of persistence, surely it would manifest a new birth of it’s own accord, being so pure and worthy as to defy conclusion. A cleansing fire could refresh the universe, make way for a new beginning.”
“Would the cries of objection from all life on earth not suffice? Would any of the living seek death while yet walking? No! Life wants to live! And the people who desire life do their best to make the most of what they are given. It is true that perfection is unattainable, but there is beauty in striving for it. There is value in the sustaining hope of survival. Life itself is glorious and worthy of preservation.”
“So say the living while knowing nothing of the death from which they flee. They are terrified of it, recoiling at the unknown and unknowable, grasping desperately for whatever fantasy stands in opposition to it.”
“Then why do you live, Kronen? Why not disappear silently into the night by yourself and leave the rest as they are?”
“I live because there is one I yet care enough about to respect their desire that I should. I live to prevent the pain of my absence in that one. I matter to no one else. Even you in your self-appointed holiness would have me destroyed to protect the rest, because my thoughts and feelings are so objectionable to the population you deem to have salvation.”
“And so they do. I operate as one of them. We matter because we are, while you stand bitterly alone, your curse passing with you, both best suited for absence from memory.”
“And yet I will not pass any more than you, Magos. My curse, as you call it, will no sooner pass than your ardent pursuit to overcome it. No more than water can overcome it’s dependence on oxygen or need for hydrogen will you have the ideal of my nonexistence that you seek. You cannot exist without me, but all things in our realm will eventually die. Your righteousness demands teaching and training, while death consumes all despite all.”
“So let there be training and teaching. Let the fight continue as long as need be. I will not submit to your despair. I will battle for the sake of life. I will stand up for what is good.”
“And you will declare your own judgement as true in so doing. You will combat those who disagree because you so despise their opinions. What you call ‘good’ stands against what is fair even as you would describe it, and you are blind to the injustice you perpetrate in perpetuity. Thus you say to be is better than not to be, and you reject any question.”
Magos closed his eyes with a heavy sigh, lowering his head as he paused. Opening his eyes to aggressive contact with and from those of Kronen, he sought a yielding resolution.
“Agree to disagree, Kronen?”
“But then you would win in that life would go on, Magos. Where is your fairness?”
“I could say that you’re right and it doesn’t exist.”
“If I’m right, nothing should.”
“Good should.”
“Should not.”
“Should so.”
“Should not.”
“Should so.”
And so the interaction continued until the sun erupted in total destruction of it’s own accord.
The End