Questioner I was melted down in the cataclysm known as the Flagian Miscalculation, somewhere out near the Bonfires of Hell. The Flagians’ attempt to … - Sheri S. Tepper

"He is a Seer," Mavin said sullenly, aware of her lack of logic.
"Poof. Seers. Sometimes they know everything about something no one cares about. Often they know nothing about something important."

Oh, I know what you Enforcers think about the council, Ertigon. We’d have to be complete fools not to know. You take us for pompous idiots, mostly, layabouts who spend our days eating and drinking and engaging in our effete little rituals, none of which mean anything, accomplish anything. You’re perfectly right, that’s what we are. But then, that’s what we were assigned to do. That’s what we’re here for. It’s what all public servants have always been: roadblocks, resistors, interceptors of change, valves designed to shut down the flow of events, inhibitors of revolution, delayers of evolution, servants of the status quo.

History upon Terra tells us what horrors follow upon religious mandates of unlimited reproduction.