Tales of Slud: Prologue, Part 3 - On the Lamentable Fate of Philosophers and Historians

Tales of Slud, Prologue, Part 3 - "On the lamentable fate of Philosophers and Historians"

The Philosophers are a group which developed as a subordinate class among the followers and colleagues of Grankh the Pompous, that is to say, the philosophers originated among the scientists of the human society which burgeoned out of the First Great Conversation at Mt. Conn-Fuuzhen.

The Philosophers, they who trace their lineage backwards (and of course also forwards) to such people as the first philosophers, Russel the Distracted and Socraplataristo the Demagogue, are thinkers by training and it is they who examine broad, sweeping questions about the nature of existence to their utmost peril. If there is any human in the world who has any idea of who they are, and what place they have in the universe, that idea is owing to the efforts of thousands of years worth of Philosophers who have paid the highest of prices for the answers to their questions.

Philosophers have a very dangerous job. Russell the Distracted, first known Philosopher on Slud (the Planet), shown here with a rather distracted and vaguely disinterested air of pompousness, because he was totally trying to think out some solutions to a problem you totally wouldn't understand...For you see, seemingly owing to the uncertainty physics which resulted from the First Great Mistake when The D.M. created Time in the wrong order, the humans who developed philosophy, quite unnaturally, framed their philosophical questions to match the Time that is, not the time that Should Be.  And for that reason, they have ended up more often than not asking questions that they should not ask at the time that they ask it. The physics of Time react to such anachronistic questions with brutal swiftness and complete obliteration.

It is therefore an unfortunate side-effect of the study of philosophy that a philosopher might be in the middle of reciting a great work, expounding  upon the empirical differences between “right” and “good”, when all of a sudden, for no conceivable reason, they spontaneously explode into a chunky, crimsoned goulash of blood, flesh, and bone, and utterly perish.

No one has been able to figure out why exactly this strange, tragically regular phenomenon happens, but nearly every Philosopher on Slud (the Planet) appears to ultimately meet with this strange fate at some point during their career, and while some are silenced before they are able to make an impact, others do not explode until they are well established as great philosophical minds, with all sorts of written works of philosophy completed in their names and a Publicity tour of book signings at small bookstores and college gymasiums set to begin nextlast January.

It is never really known when a Philosopher will explode, but common observation repeated times beyond count appears to indicate that he or she will explode. Many historians have, as already indicated, pondered if perhaps the exploding of Philosophers were an unfortunate side-effect of the fact that Time started in the middle instead of the beginning, but they generally tend not to delve too deeply into the question, so as not to face the possibility of, themselves, exploding like the Philosophers.           

The explosion of philosophers happens so frequently upon Slud (the Planet) that whole branches of study have arisen that are devoted to the strange phenomenon, but never to study it too closely, of course. The event happens so often that scientists of the world have even crafted a specific term for the occurrence. They call it Sophiasplosion, and it is seen as a serious problem among the philosopher and historian communities, although it has often been pointed out that the philosophers and the historians might be somewhat biased, considering that they are more likely to be injured or killed in such explosions than members of any other group are.           

Another group which also eventually developed within the scientific community was the Historians, as hasTinc the Revisionist, first known Historian on Slud (the Planet), shown here as a stone bust from the Prydean Classical Period. He was also known as "Tinc of the Badly-Drawn-Mustache and Monacle". He was one of the relative few Historians to escape being caught up in the sophiasplosion of philosopher friends, for the simple fact that he HAD no friends. At least, no non-imaginary friends. already been mentioned. These people had an admirable goal, to be certain. They wanted to find out what really happened during the course of a given event, and it was they who first invented for Humans the first alphabets, so that they could write it all down, that people who came along latearlier  would know what had happened beforafter they were born.

But the humans of Slud (the Planet) would hardly be the humans of Slud (the Planet) if they did not take what they were supposed to do and just sort of mess it up.

And the Historians have been, sadly, no exception to that general human incompetence. As it turned out, the members of the Historian class of scientists had for their ultimate inspiration the writings of Tinc the Revisionist, first of all historians, who most certainly did not write down the events of human history as they had actually happened, but instead had just completely made up different events and different reasons for those events and wrote that instead, thus starting the oft repeated practice among historians of doing the same to suit whatever narratives they're being paid to present.

Very unfortunately for many historians, they also tend to be very good friends with philosophers, with whom they get along with quite well since there are many common interests shared by our two groups. So it is that whenever philosophers happen to fall victim to their exploding fate, historians are oftentimes nearby, hanging out with them and talking shop with them, and are as a result of the explosive physics associated with philosophy, lamentably caught up in the sophiasplosions, to the loss of both philosopher and historian lives.           

It should be noted that the author of this document is himself both a philosopher and a historian, and he worries about that fact almost constantly throughout his waking life, and often considers abandoning his career as a chronicler to take up a far safer career, like firefighter, steelworker, or deep sea tuna fisherman.           

Of course, not all philosophers and historians get caught in the massively concussive blasts of sophiasplosion before they are able to publish their works of philosophy or history. Some are, indeed, able to pass on some of their knowledge to other generations ere they meet their destinies, and it is these documents of philosophy and history which have survived the explosive conflagration of their authors that constitute human philosophical and historical understanding of humans on Slud (the Planet).           

The author inserts this side-elaboration upon the subject of Philosophers and Historians because, as a philosopher and a historian himself, he understands that he very well might one day also explode as a consequence of his obsessive interest in philosophy, and has no wish to leave his audience hanging in an uncompleted work, so if this document happens to end abruptly and not at all in the manner that it should, it is probably to be assumed that the author has exploded, and is no longer able to write any furth-- 

KABOOM! 

(Sorry, that's just the author's idea of a joke. He hasn't really sophiasploded. Yet.)Poor, poor Socraplataristo! Here passes into history the life of one of the greatest philosophers in the history of Slud (the Planet)...right in the middle of his discourse on the ethics of the color "Blue", and why it should not be considered a color at all, but rather, a number...