life.

Teg boiled it down to an essence: If only one person followed such guiding principals, this was a better universe. It was never a question of justice. Justice required resort to law, and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administer the laws. No, it was a question of fairness, a concept which goes much deeper. The people upon whom judgement was passed must feel the fairness of it.

To Teg, statements such as “The letter of the law must be observed” were dangerous to his guiding principles. Being fair required agreement, predictable constancy and, above all else, loyalty upward and downward in the hierarchy. Leadership guided by such principles requires no outside controls. You did your duty because it is right. And you did not obey because it was predictably correct. You did it because the rightness was a thing of the moment. Prediction and prescience had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.