Section 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests
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The teachings of the Circles can be summed up in a simple statement: “Attend to your Configuration.”
Whether political, religious, or moral, every lesson the Circles teach us has the goal of improving the Configuration, or physical shape, of individuals and society at large, with special importance placed on the Configuration of Circles, which is the most important goal of all.
The Circles are to be praised for how well they’ve suppressed the ancient lies that convinced men to waste their time and energy laboring under the false belief that someone’s behavior was shaped through free will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else except Configuration.
It was Pantocyclus, the hero mentioned before now as the one who ended the Color Revolt, who first convinced mankind that Configuration is what makes the man – that if, for example, you were born an Isosceles with two Irregular sides, it’s guaranteed you would go down the wrong path in life unless you got them evened out.
This would require a visit to the Isosceles Hospital, or, if you were an Equillateral Triangle or Square, or even a Polygon, if you were born with any Irregularity, you must be brought to one of the Regular Hospitals to be cured. Otherwise, you would inevitably die in the State Prison, or by the sharp angle of the State Executioner.
Pantocyclus declared that every social problem, from the smallest misbehaviors to the most outrageously violent crimes, was caused by physical Irregularity of the body, which could be caused by anything from bumping into someone in a crowd, or not exercising enough, or exercising too much, or even just a sudden change of temperature.
This Illustrious Philosopher concluded from this idea that good behavior deserves no praise, and bad behavior deserves no blame. Why should you praise, for example, the work ethic of a Square lawyer who works hard to defend his clients, when you should instead be admiring the perfect precision of his right angles?
Why should you blame a lying, thieving Isosceles, when instead you should be hating the incurable Irregularity of his sides?
In theory, this doctrine is unquestionable. But in practice, it has some drawbacks.
When dealing with an Isosceles, if the lowlife argues that he can’t stop himself from stealing because of his Irregularity, the judge likewise has no choice but to sentence him to death, because nothing can fix the behavior of the Isosceles, and the case is closed.
But when dealing with your own misbehaving children, when the penalty of death is out of the question, Configuration Theory can make parenting very awkward.
Several times I’ve found myself backed into a metaphorical corner when one of my Hexagonal Grandsons, who is misbehaving, blames his refusal to do what he’s told on a sudden change of temperature that was just too much for his young Perimeter.
He argues that instead of blaming him for something he can’t control, I should be helping him strengthen his Configuration, which, he argues, would be helped along by giving him all of his favorite treats.
When this happens, I can’t argue with him without violating the ruling of the Circles, but I also can’t just give into his demands without question.
Personally, I’ve decided to assume that a good scolding and time out has a positive, and strengthening effect on my Grandsons’ Configuration, though I do have to admit I don’t have any physical proof of this.
But I’m not the only one who uses this loophole to avoid violating the doctrine – I’ve seen many of even the highest Circles, when they are Judges in law courts, placing praise and blame on Regular and Irregular Figures. And in their homes, I’ve seen first hand how, when scolding their own children, they speak of “right” and “wrong” just as passionately as if they believed these words represented real things that a human Figure could choose between.
By constantly enforcing their policy of making Configuration the ultimate goal in every mind, the Circles have reversed the rules that you Spacelanders apply to your own family relationships.
Your children are taught to honor your parents, but with us, after the Circles, a man is taught to honor first his Grandson, if he has one, or his Son if he doesn’t.
But let me make it clear that by “honor” I do not mean “indulge” or “spoil”, but to make them the best they can be. The Circles teach us that the duty of fathers is to always give advantages to their offspring before themselves, which helps increase the status of not only their direct descendants, but the whole State as well.
The weak point in the system of the Circles – if a humble Square may be so bold – seems to me, to be in how they conduct their relationships with Women.
Because reducing the number of Irregular births is such a top priority for the good of Society, it is a logical to conclude that a Woman who has any Irregularity in her ancestry should be considered an unfit partner for anyone who wants his Sons to have increased social mobility through an increase of Regular sides.
Now, Irregularity in Males is a simple matter of measurement, but because all Women are straight, and as far as the eye can see, Regular, one has to figure out another method to measure what I call their “invisible” or “potential” Irregularities that might be passed down onto their offspring.
The State has taken care of this by recording carefully-kept pedigrees showing the family history of all those registered. Without a certified pedigree, a Woman is not allowed to marry.
Now, you might assume that a Circle – proud of his ancestry, and ambitious for descendants, one of whom might even become the Chief Circle some day – would be more careful than any other man to make sure he chooses the wife who will produce the best Sons for him, with no stain of Irregularity in her history.
But you would be wrong.
The care taken to choose a pure-bred Regular wife seems to grow lazier as one rises higher in the social scale.
Nothing could ever convince an aspiring Isosceles, who hopes to produce an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who has ever had a single Irregular member registered in her family tree.
But a Square or Pentagon, who is confidant that his family is on the fast-track to higher status, won’t even bother asking any further back than the five-hundredth generation.
A Hexagon or Decagon is even more careless with his potential wife’s pedigree.
And a Circle has been known to purposefully marry a Woman whose Great-Grandfather was Irregular, all because of the attractive quality of her reflected light, or because of the charm of her deeper voice, something that we Flatlanders find, maybe even more than you do, “an excellent thing in a Woman”.
As you might expect, these badly-judged marriages result in either no offspring at all, offspring who are blatantly Irregular, or who have outright reduced in the number of sides. But none of these disastrous results have ever stopped anyone.
The loss of a few sides in a highly-developed Polygon is easy to dismiss, and is sometimes compensated for by one of those miraculously successful operations from the Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium which I described earlier. And the Circles are much too willing to submit to infertility as a natural Law of the superior development to do anything to fix it.
But, if this evil is not stopped, the so far slow destruction of the Circular class could accelerate, and the day might come, sooner than anyone expects, when our race will no longer be able to produce a Chief Circle, and Flatland as we know it will be destroyed.
I’m aware of another danger that should be warned against, though with this one I have no easy solutions to offer, and this one is also on the subject of our relationships with Women.
About three hundred years ago, the Chief Circle decided that, because women are lacking in Reason, but have an over abundance of Emotion, they would no longer be treated as rational, and would no longer receive any education.
The consequence of this declaration was that women were no longer taught to read or write, and weren’t even taught enough basic Arithmetic to count the number of sides on their husband or sons. It was inevitable that each following generation would lack more and more intellectual power, and this rule of female non-education still continues to this day.
My fear is that, though made with the best intentions, this policy goes too far, and harms us of the Male Sex.
Because with things the way they are now, we Males have to lead an exhausting bi-lingual and, please don’t think I am exaggerating, bi-mental existence.
With Women, we speak of “love”, “duty”, “right”, “wrong”, “pity”, “hope”, and other completely irrational, emotional concepts which do not actually exist. We pretend these things are real for the sole purpose of controlling Feminine Outbursts.
But among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary, and, I might almost say, language. “Love” becomes “the anticipation of benefits”. “Duty” becomes “necessity” or “fitness”, and so on and so forth.
More importantly, when we are among Women, we use language that implies absolute worship for their Sex, and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is less important to us than they are.
But behind their backs, they are both thought of and spoken of, by all except the very young, as little better than, to quote, “mindless organisms".
The matters of Religion are also spoken of completely differently when we are in the Women’s chambers than when we are outside.
My humble fear is that this double training, in both language as well as thought, places too much of a burden upon the young Males, especially when they reach their third year, when they are first removed from the care of their mothers.
They must entirely unlearn their first way of thinking to make way for the new language of science, but then they still have to speak in the old language when in the presence of their Mothers and Nurses and Sisters.
Already I think that children today struggle more to understand basic mathematics than our ancestors did three hundred years ago.
Not to mention the danger that would arise if a Woman ever manages to learn how to read, and tells the rest of her Sex what she’s found in just a single popular book, or the possibility that an very young Male might reveal to his Mother the secrets of the logical language, either by accident, or purposeful disobedience.
Based on the simple fact that the current policies make Men less intelligent, I humbly ask that the highest Authorities rethink the laws forbidding Female education.
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