Celestial Trial

Knatz.com / Teaching / NoHier / Justice / Celestial /

Module initiated 2005 05 25

(Originally from my Legitimacy Scrapbook)

My favorite example of human justice attempting objectivity is the Indonesian Celestial Trial. Where secular justice fails to satisfy a disputant a celestial trail may be appealed for. Of two, both disputants must agree. The secular courts must also agree that they're out of their depth. The dispute relocates to a pair of towers. Each tower has a hut at its top. Each hut has a hole in its floor, pierced by a runged ladder from the ground. Each disputant climbs his separate tower, each in hailing distance of the other. Families may gather on the ground.

The huts are constructed so that an adult Indonesian has no room to stand erect or lie at length. The "floor" is too narrow to sit at one's ease. Any sitting position must be constantly shifted: to distribute the stresses elsewhere. One may stand erect only by standing on the ladder, one's trunk thrust up into the hut, the rungs biting the soles of one's feet. Via a rope one's support group may send up beverages of one's choosing. What foods may ascend are monitored.

Thus the towers are like crosses that one is not nailed to and that both disputants may survive.

Both disputants have the right to descend from his tower at any time: but descent means that you lose: heaven is declaring the other guy to be in the right.

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My description reflects my memory of Piers Anthony's presentation of the system in one of his Geodyssey novels (Shame of Man, I believe). (He's careful in his research; I'm trusting my memory, hoping you at least get the basic idea.)

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I emphasize:



pk issues a challenge to any and all social institutions. You say you serve this or that ideal? I say you don't. Ascend the towers with me, and we'll see who gives up first.That challenge is easily expandable to individuals:You say you own your property [Knatz.com link, searchitem] legitimately? Your inheritance is free and clear? You were fairly elected president? I say you don't. I say you weren't

Ascend the towers with me, and we'll see who gives up first.