The Confident Isle of Uncertainty
Insights into disorders within the Order
We’re still waiting for a monastery or convent to be founded on The Confident Isle of Uncertainty.
World maps consistently depict this island as being very small, almost non-existent. Yet early explorers of the Nothingness were astonished to discover an island that actually dominated the world’s oceans. All of them. In fact, they didn’t find a single other land mass. This was one of the first signs of something being amiss. That it wasn’t an island, it was a continent.
Oddly, no one, to this day, has ever claimed or admitted to living there. It’s strange, but what it comes down to is that they think they live in one place but actually live in another. What with all the mix up wth islands and such.
The Tour Guides of the Nothingness know all this, of course. It’s part of their job description to sift through all the noise about this and that. On the distorted maps, printed on presses located in The Confident Isle of Uncertainty, it is referred to as The Land of Normalcy, Beauty and Correct Opinions. A matter of opinion, as we shall discover.
Suffice it to say, the Tour Guides undertook a great deal of quiet study, after which it was suggested that people there are simply too confident to admit they are uncertain. This plays well in certain quarters. In this case, all four quarters.
The Four Quarters of the Island
The four quarters of the island (continent) are very basic: top and bottom, left and right. The best or most important or valuable (wealthy) people live in the top quarter. They are the Superior by Certain Standards class.
The people who are always right live in the right quarter: which is generally populated by the righteously religious, the hard-core atheists, the avid political enthusiasts and those who are otherwise Absolutely Certain. There is always a great deal of arguing over there - which, in the right quarter, is referred to as either healthy debate or yet another massive holy war.
The bottom quarter houses people who the top quarter and the right quarter consider to be beneath them. Obviously. And, of course, they are useful as targets in times of war. For the top quarter, the lower class barely exists, essentially to be used as stepping stones or for those days when they need to trample someone underfoot.
The left quarter includes the people who have been left out of everything else, and includes people like artists, musicians and visionaries. For reasons that are difficult to explain, the left quarter is much smaller than any of the other quarters. About 1% of the land. Since they have so little land, it seems very crowded there. So, when people from other quarters come and visit, they often feel like their own viewpoints are being ‘crowded out’ by far too many free thinkers. Because all the Best & Brightest Ideas have already been used up by the upper class and the I’m-Always-Right quarter. Inevitably, because those two groups can never leave things alone, another bidding war breaks out to buy up even more of the left quarter. This drives prices up, and left quarter citizens are in a constant state of being squeezed out. There’s barely anything left.
The Unpublished Plan to Own ‘The Everything’
Incidentally, there are hushed rumors circulating in the left quarter that the top quarter is making secret acquisition plans. It seems they already own over 90% of everything on the island. But these people are planners, so it would be inexcusable to find them without A Better Than Ever Plan of Even Greater Self Interest.
Allegedly they have been making plans to send some of their people to the mythological Other Side of the Sea. Some describe it as a lush land, full of natural resources. And opportunity. Money, riches and power.
The operating premise seems to be to send an advanced mission (mostly bankers and lawyers, because who really needs them, anyway) over to the Other Side and buy up all the, well… all of The Everything. Particularly before the masses catch on and storm in there, desperate to participate in some kind of land grab of The Everything. It’s also seen as some kind of possible tax haven.
Emissaries, stationed in The Embassy of the Everything, shake their heads in little chuckles over the banker’s plans. They have an unspoken agreement to allow the bankers access to The Everything, and then, upon their arrival, give them a long, shocked moment or two before asking, “So how’s all those long term plans working out for you Now? You’re dead, you know.”
The Emissaries are the Wal-Mart greeters of the Everything, and have time on their side. Which means they are adept at living in The Now.
It’s funny how disoriented you can get in The Now if you’re not visiting there — at least now and then.
