25

Lord Inen nods. “I’ll do what I can. Don’t expect a genius.”

“No, my lord. Merely a teacher. Thank you.” You bow, bubbles falling from your legs.

*

Two weeks later, Lord Inen introduces you to one Hylen al Tamelsen, a former professor of individualistic philosophy at the Imperial School. The human professor seems rather foppish and easily distracted; he is polite to you, but excuses himself immediately to browse the garden. It seems evident that he has come primarily for the perks of the lord’s estate, and only secondarily for your edification. The truth is, you hardly expected any better for a nobody like yourself.

“Master Tamelsen?” you ask later. “In all your studies, did you ever consider the notion of the ultimate goal—that which lies beyond all others?”

He considers this. “I have heard people speak of the ‘ultimate good’,” he replies. “That may be equivalent. To bring about a state of maximal goodness might be considered the ultimate goal, depending on your inclinations.”

“That seems reasonable,” you allow. “But presume it’s true. In what would this ‘maximal goodness’ lie?”

“Many say, in happiness. The more happiness, the more good, no matter whose happiness it may be. But do you accept that verdict?”

You discuss the matter further, and then Master Tamelsen excuses himself to admire the birdhouses. Meanwhile, you mull. Upon his return, you tell him, “I have my doubts. It may indeed be possible to make all living things happy. But living things don’t make up the entire world. What about non-living things? How can one even know what makes them happy?”

Master Tamelsen seems genuinely surprised. “That’s a new one on me,” he remarks. “How could a non-living thing possibly be happy? Don’t they lack minds? Isn’t a mind a pre-requisite for feelings like happiness?”

“A mind is an emergent phenomenon,” you reply, “and not a thing that you simply have or lack. A creature structured for thinking will have a highly developed mind. But might not the rudimentary patterns that give rise to metal activity exist randomly to some small extent in anything? In a corpse, for example, or a piece of rock?”

“That seems arguable,” your tutor replies. “But also well worth thinking through. It would be hard to disprove your theory, in any case. Others…have suggested that it’s difficult or impossible to really know the happiness state of another, no matter how well they communicate their feelings. A non-living entity’s happiness state might then be well-nigh unguessable.”

“I have to think about this,” you tell him. “Does it offend you that my mind is wandering in places those of your colleagues haven’t gone?”

“Oh, not at all. What I did for the School was to help individuals foster their own philosophical systems. I’d be glad to help you with yours.”

“So far, I have none,” you admit.

“Well, don’t worry. It looks like you’re off an excellent start.” He glimpses an interesting topiary, excuses himself, and wanders off.

*

Working with this Hylen is a little bit challenging, but you have to admit that he makes you think. You find yourself gazing at plants and wondering whether they feel emotion. Relief when the clouds expose the sun? Joy when it rains? Do they feel dismay when bent and wrecked, or does it all happen too quickly for that? And what if they should wilt?

You go and rest on a warm rock that’s a favorite of yours, but for the first time think of it as a fellow. You examine the cracks and specks, wondering whether there might be some glacial way of talking with the rock—some simple alphabet with nothing but smoothness, roughness, and gaps between, or something of the sort. You wonder whether a mind is more than a physical thing, and if so, what part of it goes beyond.

On this subject, at least, Hylen al Tamelsen is able to embellish your thoughts delightfully. After some days have passed, though, the biggest question on your mind is how desires differ between those who are different. Clearly, any given state of affairs will make some beings happy while others are made unhappy—the current war between your country and Acinthis is a case in point. Or is this fallacious? Is there some possible way to make everyone and everything happy at once? Could there be some easy counter-example, some handy disproof to this notion? Master Tamelsen has none.

This concept becomes the centerpiece of your thinking. You take to pacing in a large circuit, up and down the banks of your brook and across branches that serve as bridges, talking out loud while the various birds listen in. Some of them, enjoying rest stops along their migration paths, argue for the sake of argument or add their thoughts from a spirit of helpfulness. Moreover, Master Tamelsen has taken much more interest in you than he seemed to have at first. And you are beginning to like your thoughts.

“We continue to conjecture that the greater the overall level of happiness, the more congruent the desires of all the world’s beings,” you orate. “But this not only suggests an ambiguous theoretical moral calculus; it suggests a way that we might postulate the desires of non-living objects, or of those that are alive but primitive. The extent to which joy is felt can be measured and used, in controlled experiments, to pinpoint which changes increase or decrease the happiness of ambient beings.”

Hylen al Tamelsen cautions you as you make sweeping generalizations based on your theory, but overall he is very impressed, as are the children and other vassals who stop by to listen. Eventually, you are lecturing to mature audiences; soon after that, you’re writing up a grant for funds to actually conduct these experiments.

“It isn’t the first time my pupils’ philosophical systems have diverged into natural science,” Tamelsen says, “but yours is the first such theory I feel may actually work.” A high compliment indeed.

Your lord hears of your endeavors and pulls some strings. Your grant is approved! Money and eager young scientists pour into the manor grounds. Lord Inen puts them up in vacant cottages and makes room where necessary.

You spend all your time devising and perfecting the parameters of your experiment, and at last you are ready to perform it in earnest. The level of happiness within a controlled area is meted by a piercing tone whose volume rises and sinks, and measured accurately by the vibrations of a trio of trained humans in a meditative state. The desires of the air, grass and earth are determined at this point to be negligible; the only foreign object in the region is a tallweed, allowed to flourish.

Assuming that your Theory of Congruent Desires is valid, the tallweed is found to be happiest when the tone is at a low volume, barely audible, and at a pitch too high for you to hear, although the lord’s dogs and some of the humans claim to be able. Further experiments determine what comes as no surprise to anyone—the plant enjoys sunshine, ample water and fertile ground. You write this result up and publish it, and the correspondence you receive suggests that your work is beginning to bring you fame.

Your research team, flush with new funds, then turns to the rocks about which you originally wondered. They replace the tallweed with a smooth boulder and, increasing the precision of their measurements, proceed to determine what the rock desires, according to your increasingly compelling theory.

At first, the results confuse your team. Unlike the tallweed, this boulder seems to have no consistent desire—its projected happiness level vacillates greatly under a variety of controlled variables. Other boulders and smaller stones behave similarly. However, at Tamelsen’s suggestion, you begin altering the inputs to match patterns in the outputs as closely as possible, so as to try and simulate what makes the boulders happiest. In the tonal experiments this produces a bizarre kind of music lacking structure or satisfaction. This music, using new, state of the art technology, is recorded and sold to people who are curious whether they can find joy in the same thing that makes rocks happy; some even claim they do.

But when you alter the experiments to reflect the aggregate emotional state of the people within a controlled region—as opposed to their strict level of happiness—you find something rather amazing. The more diversity of emotion is found in those people, the happier the rocks are found to be. You check your mathematics repeatedly and find the results are sound. Rocks enjoy diversity of emotion!

This gets published in all the high-profile journals. It does bring you fame. Journalists come to the courtyard to interview you and sculptors cast your likeness in intelligent clay. The money pours in, and you grow quite well off.

Eventually, you purchase a title and a plot of land downstream from the brook beside which you used to live. You hire an architect specializing in reptilian clients to build you a broad, domed residence that catches and softens the sun’s light and heat. It sits on the edge of a small cliff overlooking an extension of the artificial brook. You spend three days each week in a nearby field doing experiments with your colleagues, a day or two in the court of your former lord, and the rest of your time at home. You receive few guests and are largely happy.

Still, you aren’t sure your research will open quite all the doors you need to reach the answer to your ordained question: what is the ultimate goal? You now have strong evidence that the goal exists and that it is the same for everyone and everything, and you have some landmark states that must occur along the way—diversity of emotion to please the planet, for example. But that can’t logically be the final goal—if everyone is purely happy, how can there be diversity of emotion? This quandary has become publically known as Modi’s Paradox. Logically, the final goal must occur further along the happiness continuum, and you have little idea how to determine what it might be.

“Perhaps I’ve spent enough time with rocks and plants. Perhaps it’s finally time to start researching what makes people happy.” Section 50.

“As illuminating as it is to study the causes of happiness, I feel the time has come to actually begin spreading happiness! Is my whole life to be research, and none of it genuine action?” Section 125.

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