Rootkit 15
Rootkit 15 states that 'In the good world, you do no wrong if the only person who is hurt by your actions is yourself.' It is FALSE. It is the fifteenth statement of the Rootkit Test.
Explanation of answer to Rootkit 15
Quoted from Puzzle One.
Every crime starts with Person X hurting Person Y, but every criminal starts when Y takes over and hurts themselves without further impetus from X. We’re all quite familiar with how that works: in Slag School, we were taught to see ourselves as ugly and undesirable, so that if anyone tried to be beautifully and innocently happy we’d accuse them of pride and sluttishness and the like, while in Charm School the chicks were taught that their beauty and desirability were more fragile than a cobweb. The wrong breakfast drink can ruin a chick’s assets, they’re taught, so that every food they meet has to be scrutinised as if it might be poison, and any meal is followed by hours of private guilt in between being the public face of corporate oppression to the masses.
In hanyo town, hanyos and hanyobait are busy people. They don’t want to have to crank the handle of oppression all the time, so they teach us to whip ourselves and pay us for it by the hour. We all know what it feels like: it feels like hell. But since we’re doing it to ourselves, all is well, apparently. If you’ve ever cared for someone who’s hurting themselves in hanyo town, and have gently told them to mend their ways and been brushed off for it, because ‘mind your own business’, you know what I’m talking about. This is called individuality and independence, but it’s really the foundation of the whole victim-making machine that runs hanyo town. Hanyos destroy happiness again and again in their victims, and then they watch to see which of these people starts destroying their own happiness because their universe has been broken, and they recruit these people to be their servants and enforcers, in other words hanyobait.
In hanyo town, an unhappy person feels entitled to give pain, because ‘Why should they be spared when I’m suffering?’ or in hanyospeak, why should they win when I’m losing? After a while their unhappiness becomes normal and reassuring, and happiness becomes the threat. Then love is a weakness, kindness is appeasement, truth-telling is rebellion, intelligence is scheming bitchiness. These people are under the thumb of their demon. In the Antisense world, you pull karma for looking after yourself. When you make people happy, you too are included in the circle of happiness. In fact other people’s happiness is a byproduct of your own. If there is a cause of unhappiness that you can’t remove yourself, other people pull karma by removing it for you.
However, note that while you are still in the process of escaping from hanyo town, you are not yet safe in Antisense, and situations may arise where you may have to sacrifice yourself to save things or people you value. All of our rootkittens know that they might not make it back to the survivarium, and some have chosen to stay out because they feel they can do more good that way. We mourn for these people as if they have been murdered. We do not celebrate them as martyrs: we don’t see their sacrifice as intentional, as something they willed to happen. That’s not the good part of what they do. Their situation is more like they are being run over by a very large, very slow truck, and their bravery is that they ignore this and go about their business as if it weren’t happening. This is slag swag.
As for the rest of us Survivors, if the worst happens and we are in imminent danger of being overrun by the hanyos here at Zigsa’s Nest, we will destroy the survivarium and everyone in it rather than fall into their hands. We will not see ourselves as victims when we do this, whatever the hanyos may think. The only ‘win’ we want over the hanyos is never to have to see them again. All the adults in the Nest know and agree with this plan, and we also know that we will do everything in our power never to let it come to that. This is why we work hard at pulling the orange, in other words keeping us all safe. Each one of us personally benefits from our orange-tasking: it is no sacrifice.
The day we shut the blast doors, 1 August 2088, we remember every year as Safekeep Day. On that day we make cakes symbolising the things we fear and eat them. We also give each other keepsafes, little ornamental strings and ribbons to tie around the wrist. We look after our courage, because we will need it if the hanyos look like winning, but if we go down, we’ll go down singing and hugging our babies and petting our puppies till the end. We will feel no shame, because we will know it was the hanyos that did this to us. We did everything we could to prevent it, to nurture and protect ourselves, and to live by the Antisense Code. There is no greater bliss.
