Like all the works of man, I saw, even these great structures were transient chimeras, destined to impermanence compared to the chthonian patience of… - Stephen Baxter

If this was the basis of the faith of the Friends, then no wonder the Friends were so remote, so intense—so careless of their everyday lives, of the pain and death of others. History as it existed was nothing more than a shabby prototype of the global optimization to come, when the Ultimate Observer discarded all inferior worldlines.
And no wonder then, he thought, the Friends were so leached of humanity. Their mystical vision had removed all significance from their own lives—the only lives they could experience, whatever the truth of their philosophy—and it had rendered them deeply flawed, less than human. He opened his eyes and studied Shira. He saw again the patient intensity which resided inside this fragile girl—and he saw now how damaged she was by her philosophy.
She was not fully alive, and perhaps never could be; he pitied her, he realized.

Almost all of history was a carefully constructed mythology for use as propaganda or nation building.

It was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography.