![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
CODEX ENTRIES: ASIT TAL-EB.
This is a series on codex entries and what I can extrapolate from them. I'm only choosing sources that are 1) written by Qunari, and 2) are likely to have been read by other Qunari.
Source: Asit tal-eb.
You can read it there or skip right to the poetry breakdown, or just my bullshit thesis. If this isn't what you're looking for, return to the glossary.
Source: Asit tal-eb.
You can read it there or skip right to the poetry breakdown, or just my bullshit thesis. If this isn't what you're looking for, return to the glossary.
When the Ashkaari looked upon the destruction wrought by locusts,
He saw at last the order in the world.
A plague must cause suffering for as long as it endures,
Earthquakes must shatter the land.
They are bound by their being.
Asit tal-eb. It is to be.
For the world and the self are one.
Existence is a choice.
A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world.
It is a choice, and we can refuse it.
POETRY BREAKDOWN
Retelling the story given in prose in The Qun.
→Essentially, another central tenet of the Qun: You are what you are, and you are bound to that function and utility. It's inescapable. You must be what you are (are meant to be), or you're choosing not to exist, because the only you is fulfilling that utility.
tl;dr All things exist to serve their proper function.
→The watchword for this general concept, condensed into a phrase. It's stacked in with higher meaning, like how 'turn the other cheek' have biblical meaning beyond just the simple phrase.
→You are not separate from your place in the world, because you're a part of it. You function within it, just as much as plagues and earthquakes have their invariable function. Society should function in tandem with that idea, as a measured whole with balance and clarity.
→Hearkening back to The Qun again.
When the Ashkaari looked upon the destruction wrought by locusts,
→He saw at last the order in the world.
Retelling the story given in prose in The Qun.
A plague must cause suffering for as long as it endures,
Earthquakes must shatter the land.
They are bound by their being.
→Essentially, another central tenet of the Qun: You are what you are, and you are bound to that function and utility. It's inescapable. You must be what you are (are meant to be), or you're choosing not to exist, because the only you is fulfilling that utility.
tl;dr All things exist to serve their proper function.
Asit tal-eb. It is to be.
→The watchword for this general concept, condensed into a phrase. It's stacked in with higher meaning, like how 'turn the other cheek' have biblical meaning beyond just the simple phrase.
For the world and the self are one.
→You are not separate from your place in the world, because you're a part of it. You function within it, just as much as plagues and earthquakes have their invariable function. Society should function in tandem with that idea, as a measured whole with balance and clarity.
Existence is a choice.
A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world.
It is a choice, and we can refuse it.
→Hearkening back to The Qun again.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This is taking general ideas already expressed in previous codices and recontextualizing them into a hyper-collectivist mode. The Qun is economically socialist, but it's socially collectivist. One individual may have more authority than others, but all serve a great whole and that service is what defines them. Individualism is allowed to a certain extent in practice, but as you can see from this codex, it's not remotely the point of the Qun as a whole. Individual fulfillment should be found in the utility to, furnishing of, and cooperation with, the whole.