Altitudinarian Fragment

The Altitudinarian Fragment was a fragment of the Calanthites primarily dedicated to increasing their closeness to the divine through physical elevation.

This obsession was philosophical: Altitudinarians did not believe that leaving Earth would bring them nearer a physical source of divinity, but rather that distance from Earth would bring about an unspecified mental change. They termed this change Enlightenment, following in the footsteps of many previous religious sects, notably the Tarko-Hinduism which proliferated up until several hundred years prior to the beginning of the Golden Millennium. Perhaps appropriately, the Altitudinarians draw most of their inspiration from portions of the Ytterbite Manual adapted for modern use by the New Sunni Techno-Saints. The central argument of the Altitudinarian Fragment can be summarized as such:


 * According to Pascal's Wager, it is safer to bet that God exists than that it does not.
 * If God exists, it is likely to be the product of an evolutionary pathway completely divergent to that of humans.
 * Therefore, to better understand the Divine, humans should endeavor to expose themselves to conditions alien to those of the ancestral environment.
 * It stands to reason that the farther one is from the ancestral environment, the more alien one's surroundings will be.

There is, of course, no scientific support for any of the views espoused by this sect.

Despite this, members of the Altitudinarian Fragment comprised an estimated thirty-eight per cent of the Eighth Caliphate Rationalists, more than any other individual fragment (which says something about the state of rationality during the Golden Millennium). The Eighth Caliphate, as one may recall, was responsible for the establishment of infrastructure that led directly into the First Diaspora. It is the opinion of some that the prevalence of the Altitudinarian Fragment among the ECR was the primary driving force behind the seemingly unnecessary urgency with which the Eighth Caliphate pursued spaceflight and related interests, though it is generally accepted among more reputable circles that an accomplishment of this importance should not be attributed to a single group. Regardless of the validity of this claim, the significant presence of the Altitudinarian Fragment among off-Earth colonies is undeniable, which effects can be seen in the traditions of some outer-rim colonies to this day.

The role of the Altitudinarians in the Fragmentation of the Calanthites was relatively minor, as they had long since declined in popularity over the thousand years between the Diaspora and the Fragmentation. Despite this, they were (as discussed above) likely responsible in broad terms for the spread of humanity across the Solar System, something without which it is somewhat doubtful mankind would have survived the Winnowing Wars. To this extent, they can be regarded as having done the right things for the wrong reasons, which while admirable is nevertheless inferior to doing the right things for the right reasons.

-Excerpt from Tabula Rasa: An Examination of the Calanthite Fragmentation, by Ánthos Daskydox