Humanity is meant to live as part of creation, not as the owner of it or to make war against it. - Sheri S. Tepper

Where other gods might have advocated making life a garden, Voorstod’s God promised the garden only after death, preferably violent death. Then might the faithful lie about on the greensward sucking grapes and fucking virgins, so the prophets promised.

Bao is the acceptance that mankind is part of the fabric of the universe, not the purpose of it. Humanity is meant to live as part of creation, not as the owner of it or to make war against it.

The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.