Truth gave the Abbot a hard look. Then another. The Abbot couldn’t see him, of course, but that didn’t stop the alarming chuckles coming from the giant deer head.

“I really thought I was the only one who imagined humanity as rats.” Truth grumbled.

“No chance of that. The metaphor has been around as long as humans.”

“I developed a whole system of understanding the world based on the concept of rats and slums. It has layers to it.”

“Well done!” The Abbot smiled. Truth felt just a smidgen patronized.

“Well?”

“Yes?” The Abbot asked.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“First, frame your problem. You have two basic angles to examine, I think.”

I do? Truth just nodded along.

“First is a question of identity- is a human someone who lives as a human, or is possessed of some biological traits of humanity, or… what, exactly?” The Abbot nodded towards a window. “The lay brothers and sisters, the pilgrims, they would consider themselves human. They believe they live as humans and are biologically human.”

“They are wrong?”

“About one of those things, yes. They are, I believe, biologically human. But do they live as humans? I believe not. So we can exclude that part of the identity question and focus on the issue of humans as a way of thinking and living.”

“Which leads us directly back to the rats. They are living like rats.”

“Actually, and I say this as someone who has observed hundreds of thousands of rats over tens or hundreds of millenia, no, they don’t. They live like rats forced into unnatural and stressful conditions.” The demon spoke slowly and firmly. “The rats you are thinking of, the urban rats, the… slum rats… they eat poison, are constantly in fear, constantly under stress. They therefore react in ways they would be unlikely to in the wild.”

“Really? There is that much of a difference?”

“Oh yes. Take cannibalism. A rat will eat another rat, certainly. There is no such thing as a pure herbivore, and rats are omnivores in the first place.” The deer head showed its teeth. Truth could vividly imagine the Abbot tearing strips of flesh off someone.

“But usually it will be a rat that already died. In the unlikely event that two rats fought over something, it would usually be limited to fairly minor injuries, before one or the other ran off. There would be no benefit to pushing it to the death. Generally plenty of food or mates to go around, and you can make a nest anywhere there is dirt. No pressure to fight with your fellows.”

“Ah. But put them in a situation of bad food, bad shelter, and intense competition for everything, including mates-”

“You have violence. You have rats eating each other.” The abbot nodded. “And do you know what happens to humans in the same conditions?”

Truth nodded. “I know. Very well.”

“So we can either define this behavior as ‘Human, under given circumstances,” or “Inhuman, as it only occurs under artificially created circumstances.’ And before you point out natural disasters or something that might trigger the same conditions, yes, that is true, but it is also transitory. The plague, the fire, the famine, passes eventually. The conditions we are looking at here are both human created and generational. This is a ‘disaster’ that has been engineered to persist.”

The Abbot’s big hand gestured gently. Strong hand, Truth noticed, and callused. He didn’t know demons could get calluses. Must be an aesthetic choice.

“So what is the solution? Level society, unmake every bit of hierarchy, destroy the cities, destroy the factories, send everyone back to farming their own land? Let ‘natural’ humanity reassert itself?” Truth asked.

The Abbot smiled. “It wouldn’t work. Agriculture was the origin of slavery. I know, I was there. There has never been a human born that wouldn’t rather see someone else do the plowing for them. And returning to simply hunting and gathering wouldn’t work either. There just isn’t enough food density in the wilds to support a tribe a million strong. There aren’t that many wilds left either. No, if you wanted to go that way, you would have to kill almost every human and demon on this planet.”

“Not a fan of that idea. I’d miss street food, if nothing else.”

“And toilet paper.” The demon snorted. “No, be honest with yourself. You just don’t want to watch the world burn. You don’t want to see your fellow ‘humans’ die in their billions. However much you may despise them, there is a limit to your misanthropy.”

Truth snorted back. “I have come to understand the enormous depths of my sadism. I wouldn’t assume much about my good will.”

“Oh no, the human has found out he enjoys having power over others, and hurts people to prove his own power. Oh my ears and whiskers. Oh no, not that. Heavens to Betsy this is just terrible.” A giant deer headed demon roasting you in a sarcastic monotone was a new experience, even for Truth.

“Off topic, but did you paint your room all black when you were a kid? Maybe asked your friends to call you ‘The Dark Lord’ or something?’” The demon asked.

“No. I would have been beaten bloody had I even tried. And I didn’t have any friends.” The old pain never really left. He just forgot it now and then. He thought he had some perspective on it, but it didn’t really stop hurting.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The Abbot sighed and hung his head. “I apologize. I deal with a lot of… well, I apologize. That was rude of me.”

Truth waved it away, then remembered that the demon couldn’t see him. “Don’t worry about it. We were on the question of what to do to find out what it means to live as a human.”

“Ah yes. Thank you. So the present is unendurable, the imagined past is not actually an improvement, and the future looks bleak. The rats are under enormous stress and are eating each other. So there is an obvious answer. Remove the stress.”

“That simple, eh?” Truth looked side eyed at the demon.

“Yes. Simple, but hard. The details are complicated. I’m not sure you would like what humanity looks like without the artificial stressors. But if you want humans to live as humans and not like stressed rats, remove the things that stop them from thinking and reduces them to beings of instinct.”

“But what does that even mean?”

“Food- why do you need to struggle to eat? There are infinite demons in Hell for you to summon and bind to your labor. Many of them even welcome it. Hell could, and would, feed the world. With a bit of care, angels can be bribed and bullied into laboring for you too. There is no reason any person should ever go hungry.”

Truth blinked at that. He had come to some of the same conclusions, of course, but hearing someone else say it just landed differently.

“Shelter- same story. They might not be the nicest or fanciest dwellings, but there is no reason you couldn’t plan communities around dense housing blocks. There is no shortage of materials. The labor costs are very low, if not zero. Every human being could have their own home, constructed and maintained for free, for as long as humans exist on this planet.”

“Wait, hang on, the cost-”

“The what?” The Abbot grinned.

“The cost! You can’t say all that is free.”

“I can’t? Who invented money? What do you use it for exactly? I existed for far longer than humanity has on this planet, and I first heard of money just a few thousand years ago. It’s a tool. Use it how you please. If someone has so many of the made up tokens that they are preventing others from living as humans, take the tokens away from them, or stop using them all together.”

“Theft, violence…”

“Simple, but not easy. Yes. There would certainly be widespread violence.” The Abbot nodded. “The changes in thinking required would be, if anything, even more brutal. People are very used to thinking in terms of money, and judge their wellbeing by how much better they are doing than their neighbors.”

“So to live as a human, I should remove unnatural stress from my life? Just… sidestepping the whole question of what natural stress is, by the way.”

“Have you never worried about asking someone out? Or failing to live up to your potential? Fear of illness, or of finding a toilet before public humiliation? There are endless natural stressors and challenges in life. Nothing unnatural about that, nor unhealthy. But, simply put, yes. So this is the identity question evolved into an ethics question- To be a human, not a rat, find a way for humans to live that removes the unnecessary and unnatural stresses. And this leads us to the second thing to consider. How do you determine what is the right or wrong way for you to live as a human in such a society.”

“Well, if the stresses have been removed-”

“Then will you still be a sadist?”

There was a pause. “Pardon?”

“Will you still be a sadist? I get the feeling that you have lived a very violent life. Will you continue to do so? If you live a peaceful life, will you still be cruel to others to make yourself feel good?”

Truth sat with that for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I would even want to change that part of myself. I know that I would kill someone who tried to do to me what I have done to others. In fact, I am in the process of doing exactly that now.”

“Ah. Then, how about this- would you remain a sadist, but not act on your sadism? Or perhaps only act on it in socially acceptable ways like victory in sports?”

Truth didn’t answer. He didn’t know. The demon continued.

“This is what is called ‘morals,’ and is distinct from ethics. Ethics is how people behave amongst each other, based on an external set of rules. Everyone agrees not to steal, to murder, to slander, that kind of thing. Morals is when you look into yourself and say ‘I should not steal, murder or slander.’”

“Related, but different.”

“Yes. So you ask how humans should live as humans? By creating a world where humans agree to remove the artificial stressors, and develop internal moralities consistent with the ethical code needed to create and maintain that world.”

Truth nodded. He would have to think on that. It was the first time he had ever heard someone lay it out like that. In fact, he had never heard a single person suggest such a world. He jolted.

He had never heard a single human suggest it. But those two seniors in the hot springs, those demons suggested it, didn't they?

“If you can prevent a harm without sacrificing something of morally equivalent value, you ought to do it.” Truth whispered. The demon’s head jerked around.

“Where did you hear that?”

“From two seniors in a hot spring attached to a fine old hotel in the mountains.”

The demon sucked a long breath through their blocky teeth. “Lucky. Ah, you are lucky! I only got to hear their lectures twice in my long life.”

“Abbot… is this knowledge forbidden for everyone on the planet, or just humans?”

The Abbot grinned. An unsettling sight on a giant deer head. “Why, is there something forbidden for you to know? How could that be? You didn’t sign something forbidding you to know it, did you? Or any of the other humans you have met?”

“You know perfectly well that there is.”

“Yes, I do. I’m shocked that you do too. But there is something worth considering. I don’t know that it’s the whole answer, but it’s part of it, I think.” The demon drummed his heavy fingers on his thigh.

“This is not my original form. I was once a stag. I took this form largely for public relations reasons.”

“Makes sense.” Truth nodded.

“But I am native to this world. All the animals are. All my fellow demons are. This is, quite literally, a world for demons. Then angels came, “adjusted” it, and a few short centuries later, humans turned up on your black ships. Upending things. Generally we demons didn’t mind. Some of us very much did mind. The consequences for our kind have been catastrophic in terms of population numbers, ranges, freedoms. Though only some of us care about those things.”

Truth nodded awkwardly. It was all true, but what was he supposed to say about it? Or do about it, for that matter.

“Every human on this planet is being driven to torture themselves, lead degraded lives, and die sickly and young, never reaching their full potential. Not one human born on this world has ever escaped the Initiate realm, as you term your cultivation arts. As though the whole planet wants you to suffer at every level. Strange, eh?”