The Monastery of the White Tiger

A proposed quasi-secular, leftist monastery. I named it White Tiger because of the oriental / Kung Fu allusions but also because of the movie White Tiger.

It took me a while to figure out how to communicate the monastery's values to a random person without sounding like a crazy person. I felt the easiest way was to couch it in religious terms. (I don't think that makes me seem less crazy though.)

The Divinity of Infrastructure - To participate in the consumption or utilization of something that was created by someone who is not part of The Organization is considered sin. If you consume or utilize something that was created by someone who is part of The Organization but they created it with resources from outside of The Organization, this is still partial sin. In order to evaluate your own sin, individuals of The Organization should engage in The Discipline in which they will go out of their way to keep track of the things they are in contact with that is sinful and avoid it if they can. By doing this, you help to mitigate the inherent sin of the world.

The Divinity of Labor - A person's work is holy and sacred. You give it to others out of love and kindness or obligation but to do so for money is lowly and sinful. To barter your labor is less sinful but still sinful.

The Divinity of Land - A Capitalist sees land as nothing more than a number on a sheet of paper, but land should never be sold. Land is the space we inhabit and the resources we have. The Divinity of Infrastructure and the sin related to that is inherent to the world we live in but selling land is never inevitable. It should be a last resort on par with sacrificing yourself.

The Organization is devoted to The Divinity of Infrastructure. People join The Organization by being sponsored by a member and can only be admitted or excommunicated by unanimous vote. When you join, there is a probationary period to see if you are compatible with The Organization and you are at that point only an initiate. Each member may sponsor one person and is responsible for that initiate when they join. Members and initiates are not allowed to touch unless it is an emergency, either medical or psychiatric.

If you are part of The Organization, you must endeavor to keep track of time through metric time. Instead of 86,400 seconds for a mean solar day, metric time assigns 100k seconds. There are two different versions of metric time: Earth-based and universal.

Earth-based metric time's day begins at that locale's solar noon. In Earth-based time, there are actually more or less than 100k metric seconds depending on the current day's length. Days are organized by lunar cycles and their phases. The year numbering system is different but it's just 10k added to the current amount.

Universal time is the simplest. A day is just 100k metric seconds. Because it's not based off of assumptions like years and months and stuff like that. That's mostly it. For the sake of organization, I have further divided days into cycles which are 1,000 day increments. So you keep track of how many cycles have occurred and what day of the cycle this is. Today is September 18, 2024, but in Universal Metric Time, it is day 654 of cycle 4,391 or 4391-654 or day 4,391,654.

For the sake of brevity, the shorthand for metric time of 53,254 would just be 53.2k. (or to whatever digit you feel comfortable) The k can be omitted in informal situations . To signify that it is universal or earth-based, you would simply type u53.2k or e53.2k, respectively. This too can be omitted within the proper context, informal or wahtever.

I just learned today (4391-668) that a previous group of people have used a simialr system. I thought it was way too obvious of a system to not use. Apparently, it was even going to be a part of the metric system. Here's why they didn't use it though. I thought for sure that I had googled metric time, but maybe I didn't.

The Discipline is when you live within the context of The Divinity of Infrastructure. I write down everything that I interact with that I did not personally create. (I have taken to calling this The Paper.) As of right now, I make exceptions for the fact that:

So right now, there's a five square grid where I keep track of those interactions with infrastructure, food, programs that I use, any media that I consume that are haram, and websites/services that are not purely informational.

None of these are enacted. I just think they might be good ideas. These all require a certain amount of buy in from other people and/or I'm not sure if I want to move forward with them:

vow of poverty: No member of The Organization should ever be wealthy and, ideally, they should take a vow of poverty.

exaltation of indigeneity: Indigineous people have been uprooted and eradicated throughout history. The Organization aims to correct this by speaking and writing within the local monastery in the indigineous language of that location. This is even more important if that language is endangered.

lojban: lojban should be considered a univeral language that every member of The Organization should learn. Basic fluency is required in order to become a member. This is so that all members, no matter where they are, can communicate regardless of mother tongue.

anathem: Anathem is the closest thing to a sacred text that the monastery has and it seems only appropriate that there should be cultural references to the organization presented within that work. As it stands right now, only Provener is a part of it. (What that actually means has yet to be determined.) I thought the whole sleeping in a different cell thing was very compelling but I don't really ahve the infrastructure to enact it. But I'm open to implementing more things.