"Abner Doon (n.)"

"In Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga
...Abner Doon is the person out of the past of The Worthing Saga universe
who put everything into motion.

It is due to him that things are the way they are,
and it is to him that everyone owes thanks for a better tomorrow.

What did he do to bring it about?

He destroyed everything.

The old universe was a decadent empire
where those with wealth and power
could extend their ability to keep things in stasis by thousands of years.

...The result was a predictably stagnant and hopeless society.

How Abner brings about the fall of the empire is never directly addressed,
but is alluded to in the way he plays a game...

In one of the worldwide tournaments
where players purchased the rights to play nations in a computer simulation
that began in 1914, one player had managed to build Italy into a powerful empire
on the verge of global domination.

It was a beautiful and seemingly immortal political creation
that inspired the world of entertainment and academics, if merely a hologram.

Abner buys the rights to play Italy, refuses to sell,
and destroys it by carefully orchestrating corruption, oppression,
and aggressiveness in a way that leads not to isolated rebellion,
but a total and simultaneous collapse into anarchy.

When Doon topples the real empire,
he does a thorough enough job to bring a halt to space travel
for thousands of years.

And out of the ashes rises are more diversified humanity
better equipped to plumb the depths of time and space.

Doon the destroyer. Doon the serpent. Doon the messiah.

...When does a life of comfort and stasis cease to be life?

How much adventure and uncertainty do we need to be human,
and when do we slip deep enough into routine that we cease to be?

How much destruction is justifiable in an act of creation?

Is playing the devil any worse than playing God?

How much does one individual have the right to force on all humanity?

Maybe Abner Doon was good and evil, just and wrong,
God and anti-God at the same time.

Maybe all those people are who enter and leave this world
leaving life unimaginable without them as much as with them."

Justin