The Garden of the Severed Root
A Forensic Fable Of The Abandonment And The Rejection That Brought Ruin
The Orchard Of The First Inheritance
There once was a people who had inherited a vast orchard planted in alignment with nature’s wisdom. Each tree was planted by measure and its fruit nourished the whole Republic. They did not invent these trees; they had been entrusted with them. Each tree bore fruit with a name; Truth. Justice. Reason. Self-restraint. Accountability. Rightful Liberty. The people lived by tending these trees, which bore according to their nature and not according to the people’s will. These trees had roots; not in myth or metaphor, but in what simply was - and was not dependent on opinion. In the orchard of the First Inheritance, truth bore fruit because the trees were planted in right order, tended by those who submitted their labor to what had already been given. The orchard thrived because the People conformed themselves to the nature of the orchard; not the other way around. The red fruit, consistent and nourishing, was not invented, but received.
The First Whisper; “Your Words Are Power”
One day a murmur drifted through the orchard; “These names are just noises. You can name them otherwise.” A cloaked stranger came to the people with scissors of silver and said; “Cut the roots. They are not needed. The names you use bind you to limits that belong to another age.” The People (particularly the educated among them) began snipping roots beneath the trees, certain that new growth could be engineered from above the soil. They called this freedom and progress. They did not realize they were already beginning to starve. The whisper of subversion began not with violence, but with flattery. “Your roots bind you,” said the voice. “Cut them, and you will be free.” The People, flattered into believing themselves wise, began to sever the very truths that had once nourished their strength. The fruit still looked the same; but its source was no longer trusted.
The New Philosophers; “Knowledge Is Your Reflection”
New philosophers arrived and offered mirrors in place of harvests. “You need not look outward to what is. All that matters is what you can think clearly inside.” They built a Hall of Mirrors beside the orchard and told the youth to learn there instead of under the trees. The orchard began to wither. The names on the fruit grew dim. Still, the people rejoiced. “We are modern now,” they said. “We no longer depend on what is fixed. We have liberated knowledge from reality.” And with that, they removed the word Truth from the school gates. The People, convinced of their enlightenment, turned against the very structures that once upheld their liberty. With torches lit by slogans and pride, they marched in defense of the ideas that would dismantle their world. They did not see that the foundation had already been hollowed - by their own consent.
The Enchanters Of Self
Then came the poets, the dreamers, the mystics and technicians. They painted over the orchard walls with banners that read “Each of you is the author of meaning.” “Every path is valid.” “Truth is not something to find; it is something to become.” They gave the children seeds of self and told them to plant whatever they wished. The children, no longer formed by discipline or restraint, learned to feel rather than to discern. They were praised for expressing themselves but never corrected when they made crooked rows or planted poison. They no longer knew the difference between food and ornament.
The Grooming Of The Guardians
The People; now trained through mirrors and emotion, grew hostile to anyone who spoke of the orchard as it once was. “You are backward,” they said. “You want to impose your truth.” “There is no one truth; only many stories.” They began to defend the very tools that had disabled them. They praised the scissors that cut the roots. They bowed before the mirrors that distorted the world. They called their captivity enlightenment. They mistook grooming for liberation. Most recently, they mistook decentralization for freedom; even as its protocols defined every move they were allowed to make. Though spiritually, intellectually and emotionally imprisoned, the people fiercely defended the ideas that enslaved them. The more their civilization crumbled, the greater their allegiance to the doctrines corroding it. Even as the edifice fell around them, the People clung to the banners of their own ruin; proclaiming “liberation” through constructs that had severed them from truth. To question the foundation was now heresy; to defend it, literally - unthinkable.
The Scholars Who Pointed At Symptoms
As the orchard turned barren, buildings collapsed. Courts failed, riots swarmed and trust vanished. The scholars and consultants rushed in to study the symptoms; “It is politics.” “It is income disparity.” “It is outdated institutions.” They published white papers and gave TED Talks. Not one of them dug below the surface to the missing root system. They had been trained to never question the scissors or the mirrors. In fact, they warned against it. “Beware those who speak of roots,” they said. “They are dangerous. They believe in absolutes.” And so the roots remained severed. They studied the smoke but never the spark. Surrounded by rubble, the scholars diagnosed only surface symptoms; carefully avoiding the broken roots beneath their feet. To question the cause was forbidden; to seek the foundation was heresy.
The New Rulers; Custodians Of Flux
Into this vacuum came new rulers; not by force, but by interface. They did not wear crowns and they built protocols, not palaces. For they managed Systems, not nations. Systems engineered and optimized to dissolve and replace nations in function and formation. Their laws were invisible; “Align with stakeholder values.” “Optimize for user response.” “Flag non-compliance.” Truth was now a dynamic variable. Anyone who resisted was accused not of error, but of extreme. To defend a fixed meaning was now an act of aggression. Those who whispered about the orchard were untraceably silenced - not banned as such - just made illegible. When The (Blockchain) Ledger is All, to be rendered illegible becomes existential. The New Rulers did not conquer by sword, but by code. As the ruins of former order smouldered, unseen custodians emerged; not as tyrants, but as engineers of compliance. They rewrote authority through interfaces, protocols and predictive metrics. Truth became elastic, bound to systems of optimization and response. In this new empire of fluidity, to name reality was subversion. And so, those who remembered the orchard were not imprisoned, but erased; made illegible in a world where visibility was currency and legibility was life.
The Cost Of Prideful Rejection
The People had not been conquered by weapons. They had willingly surrendered through pride. They had once possessed the tools of discernment;
💡Language that meant something
💡Reason with standards
💡Education that formed the will
💡Law that stood above opinion
💡Knowledge grounded in what does not shift
They had rejected all of it while calling that liberation. Now they wandered hungry in a glass orchard; full of glowing screens, empty slogans and fruit made of wax. They did not even know they were starving, because they had been trained to crave illusions. And even now they insist on defending the very framework that broke them. While the city burned and truth lay buried beneath the rubble, the self-appointed wise clamored to direct the rebuilding; armed not with memory or foundation, but with shears to sever what still remained. They mistook the cause for the cure and called the ruins progress.
The Scattered Remnant
Not all forgot. In small corners, a few had kept the old tools and some began to find them. They gathered seeds from forbidden scrolls. They cleared the ground. They recovered the methods to observe carefully. They restored the foundations to name things rightly, to resist language manipulation and to bear the loneliness of truth, for it held no Market Share or popularity. The restorers were not well liked, they curried no favour and wore no Brand. They simply, continued the slow and careful work of recovery and restoration. In doing so, they began, slowly, to see the outlines of the orchard that had been - and whose nature - still is. As stewards of that orchard, they learned to plant and tend again; not by will or consensus, but by alignment and formation. When the ruins could no longer be denied, those last few turned back; not to rebuild from their own invention, but to search for what had been wilfully abandoned. The orchard could not be regrown with fragments and fire. It required repentance, recognition and the restoration of the First Inheritance.
The Necessity Of Recovery
What the People need now is not a new system, nor a new theory, nor a better protocol. They need to admit what they have lost. They must name what they wrongly rejected; that truth is not created by consensus and knowledge is not generated by experience. That human nature does not evolve into higher forms and words are not merely tools for our instrumentality, but bear responsibility to reality. It must be fully comprehended that liberty requires constraint, justice is not flexible and education is not about feeling - but about formation. Until the People recover what was discarded, they will remain proud prisoners of their own sabotage; champions of the very sickness they claim to address. And every attempt to fix the symptoms will fail. Because the root is still severed. Still gripping their broken tools, the saboteurs build monuments to their own confusion; declaring each ruin a triumph of progress. Behind them, the fire spreads. Before them, the fragments multiply. Yet not one institutionally, organizationally, corporate funded scholar, or their devotees, will turn to see what was severed. Until they do, every structure will collapse again.
The First Inheritance; What was it?
🔥The right order of reason to reality.
🔥The recognition that truth is not made, but discovered.
🔥The moral formation of the soul to receive & steward knowledge, not manipulate it.
🔥The union of truth, goodness, and beauty in service of the Logos, not the will.
🔥The humility of the mind before what is real, not the self-assertion of theory against what is real.
To repent is not merely to regret modernity’s excesses; it is to reverse course in all its assumptions about knowledge, formation, authority, purpose. To recognize is not merely to acknowledge that something was lost; it is to confess that it was cast away in arrogance and pride. To restore is not merely to retrieve old books; it is to rekindle the covenant between reason, conscience, nature and eternal order; ever present - For All Men; For All Time.
Practicing the First Inheritance Today
In a modern classroom untouched by fashion or ideology, a student studies under the silent weight of enduring truths. The architecture bears markers of classical order; the books are not new, but true. The teacher does not invent, but transmits. All posture, gesture, and structure reflect submission to what precedes us - not nostalgia, but duty. This is not education as invention, but as stewardship of the permanent things. To receive, not reinvent, to conform, not to construct and to steward, not self-author. By this practise, the soul is formed by what endures; not by what flatters.
