Roots, Branches and Offshoots

each other and shift their attention towards defending the turf in which they had made an emotional investment and away from victimizing you.

But this would be a hail Mary solution, and the proof you haven’t applied yourself enough to the study of cause and effect. What you should do is to know of the danger much farther back into the chain of events and make advance preparations. You should expect that at some point something will require a virgin sacrifice and make yourself ineligible as a candidate. Remember that the gods don’t appreciate the offering of silly, loudmouthed girls who flirt a lot, have no redeemable qualities and don questionable attire.

Human sacrifices must have a hint of the sublime. It would be to your advantage to appear unworthy.

Remember that at some point you will probably marry, in which case you won’t have to pull the silly goose act anymore.

Then it would be safe for you to look dignified since you have become ineligible for the honor of human sacrifice for a different reason.

[It is hard to tell whether the master was seriously analyzing a case scenario or whether he was using sarcasm to diffuse his displeasure with his pupil’s slacking attitude. The choice of human sacrifice as a subject for this lesson reveals a rather dark sense of humor, which is not in contradiction with what we have gathered from the rest of his writings. It is especially baffling as a choice of subject for what seems to be the last page of the manuscript. There is no sense in this final page that the master was wrapping up work he considered complete, which leads us to believe that the pages we found are only a portion of the work, and someone hid the rest elsewhere.]

What other causal factors should you have noticed in the story above?

You can see a lot if you pay attention: envy was probably a strong motivator, because it explains both why the subject was worthy and why the subject was chosen, a misunderstanding of one’s role and value to society, which led to an unwarranted sense of security, inability to analyze situations and draw information from one’s environment, built in bias against young beautiful maidens, because of the one who started the war, the absence of leverage, underestimating the power of an event chain, which, once set in motion, picks up speed and becomes harder and harder to divert or stop as things advance, dangerous and subversive political pressures, expressing themselves as religious fervor.