Picking Up 'Humanity'

Chapter 35: 1.35 Picking Up 'Humanity'

"Where am I going now?" After the war ended, discussions about "the connection between self-thought and social civilization development" became increasingly common within the Wei Keng Collective. The logical analysis of these individual thoughts was as important as any of Wei Keng's wartime considerations about "eliminating the external."

In the production and development process of the spring of 2433 AD, With twenty ships opening routes on the Pearl River, Wei Keng's settlement model was no longer a single cluster but a scattered network of single smokestack factory buildings, residences, and defensive bunker integrated strongholds across hundreds of kilometers and forty river channels.

During the near-ancient Information Industrial Revolution, the 21st Century, industrial supporting facilities could be achieved through convenient transportation lines.

A guy who, on a whim, wanted to build a car found he was missing some parts. He looked along the transportation lines: Wang Village East of the River made screws, Li Village West of the River made wrenches. After buying these two, he felt he needed electric welding. "Oh, go north two kilometers, find Boss Qian, his factory can make it." Then he discovered he needed bearings. "No problem, I can still find a manufacturer within the transportation network that can supply me." And this was the industrial supporting area.

Wei Keng's current industrial technology was not complicated; in fact, an entire industrial park could accommodate it! The industrial model of the late 19th century was a point-based system. After Western powers completed one or two industrial cities with industrial parks, they could open up numerous colonies overseas to supply raw materials to the center.

But Wei Keng didn't want this kind of civilization model where steam engine central boilers exerted pressure on the surroundings. Instead, he wanted a common development model where all points on the electricity system were connected in parallel and powered up together.

From the initial residences to the new gathering points, shiploads of red bricks were transported along the river network to suitable land, which was then occupied directly to build large courtyards and process raw materials from the region on-site.

Each stronghold had only twenty to thirty Wei Keng. Of course, with merchants tentatively sending over young adults who had committed crimes and were seeking refuge this year, the number of employees in some factories already exceeded the number of Wei Keng.

To some extent, this decentralized distribution of strongholds made it easier for the local people to get used to interacting with a small number of themselves, rather than being surrounded by a large number of themselves in one place, which could cause the Uncanny Valley Effect.

And Wei Keng's planning amplified his potential! With hundreds of strongholds along the river, each stronghold, while maintaining unified productivity through riverine ship communication, also possessed greater expansion power than a single industrial park.

At least, one building per stronghold, with open land on the periphery. As long as people arrived, expansion could happen at any time!

The entire Yue Region had at least twenty large human settlements and five hundred thousand survivors.

Now, Wei Keng had completed the exclusion of other Gene Colonies on the plains. The next step was to attract the humans of this era to the plains for integrated assimilation.

Currently, within each stronghold, Wei Keng organizing production were using textbooks to re-educate newly hired employees, instilling old-era production knowledge while helping them understand their relationship with the workings of society.

On the plains, Wei Keng was actively striving to communicate with humans and establish a social order. However, the Wei Keng exploring the outer perimeter were engaged in destruction, unrestrained, abandoning all bottom lines.

When spring arrived this year, after everything had been nourished by the rain.

The Wei Keng, having completed their gear change, once again ventured into the slightly drier jungle. Because the Wei Keng could now clearly sense the Life Radiation of the colonies and possessed weapons like Assault Rifles and light machine guns, the number of Wei Keng exploration teams had once again decreased to groups of thirty. According to the areas divided on the map, they destroyed and slaughtered every individual creature encountered along the way. After sweeping through, they began setting fires to burn the mountains.

The flames engulfed one mountain peak after another. After the fire, the Wei Keng standing at a high point reconstructed the map, investigated river hydrological data, and then submitted it to the system for modeling.

After a detailed assessment, Wei Keng drilled cannon holes into the mountainsides at dozens of locations and buried explosives. With a loud bang, amidst the smoke, some mountains collapsed, blocking gullies that were now small streams.

[Establishing order while simultaneously destroying order, therefore, a contradictory behavior, has led to a need for self-analysis within the Wei Keng Collective.--Humans are indeed complex. When actions exceed the scope that traditional desires can explain, the need for sustained action, rather than a child's fleeting interest, requires deeper core thinking to support it.]

The Wei Keng tracing their origins first began to define the influence of past society on themselves: when an individual grows up in a social state, they are instilled with various rigid concepts and are expected to adhere to them. If they don't, they will face punishment.

Some selfish Wei Keng began to criticize further: for a single Ordinary Person, some of these rigid concepts are beneficial in social cooperation. However, some rigid concepts are not very helpful to them, merely serving as etiquette to help the Rulers maintain their rule.

At this point, the Wei Keng, constantly reviewing historical data in their memories, attempted to summarize historical patterns. Due to two key points, the Wei Keng Collective split into two lines of thought.

Wei Keng in Prospect: As a society develops, the need for cooperation increases, leading to many new regulations. For example, ancient people did not need to build roads and bridges between mountains and rivers. A civilization that took a hundred years to build a palace could afford to lose some slaves during construction, as the entire human race could bear it. Therefore, ordinary people in ancient times had no safety production regulations.

Wei Keng in Reflection: Societal interests also increase the ruling class's need for control. For example, in the internet age, electronic software companies, facing rampant piracy in the face of unlimited information dissemination, will repeatedly file lawsuits and conduct offline enforcement with legal personnel to crack down on those "vigilantes who make pirated online games."

Then, after the two viewpoints of Wei Keng converged, they diverged into multiple categories!

Indignant Wei Keng: Therefore, regulations are instilled into "mediocre talents" through continuous information bombardment and grassroots education. But what about ordinary people? They rarely have the energy to think about whether their default right and wrong are rules that benefit social cooperation and thus convenience themselves, or doctrines that benefit the stability of rule!

Some things that are right may not actually be right. They are just emphasized by others a thousand times, silencing all dissenting voices and exhausting the voices of the common people who are busy with production and work – becoming the only "right"!

And some wrongs do not even rise to the level of a crime! They are just spread widely, accumulating enough negative sentiment online, and finally being emotionally convicted! Forcing a law!

[For example, collecting the negative sentiment caused by mischievous "bear children" causing trouble for others, and then condensing it in public opinion, completes the condemnation of the "bear children" as deserving death.

Another example: collecting the positive sentiment of small animals not being cared for, and through dissemination, continuously stirring people's emotions to brew supreme righteousness, which then begins to occupy resources as a matter of course.]

The Wei Keng Collective, with clear logic, further pursued their past confusion: Therefore, at that time, many "kindnesses, justices, and even laws" that were useless to "me" and "most of the common people" were forcibly imposed upon us.

The gradually enlightened Wei Keng group began to divide history according to this pattern: Therefore, when the majority of new rules born in a nation's social civilization benefit the majority of people in social cooperation! Then it should belong to the ascending period. Conversely! If social rules are mixed with a large number of doctrines that are irrelevant to the interests of the masses but require everyone to abide by them, then it is inevitable that stagnation will occur.

Wei Keng in Deep Thought: In the cycle of history, when stagnation occurs, among the large number of old rules, we cannot distinguish which are necessary and which are useless. So, we simply abandon them all completely and then choose anew!

Wei Keng, whose thoughts are gradually clearing, begins to openly defend himself: "So, I am not blackening now, right! Not blackening. Absolutely not blackening.

As an ordinary person, I simply cannot understand all the social rules.

And the social organization I belong to cannot provide me with patient grassroots education. Therefore, my! Giving up on many rules and regulations that I do not understand is very normal, right, there is nothing special about me."

Thus, Wei Keng straightened his chest somewhat. At this moment, he was like a passionate youth who had just emerged from youthful ignorance and found "rebellious reasons in the eyes of adults" during adolescence.

"Nature protection – screw that!"

"Respect life! Damn it."

"Animals have feelings and cannot be abused? Who is teaching me how to do things now?"

Wei Keng: "I only need to know what's good for me, not the immensity of the heavens and earth." Emerging from darkness is a rampant vitality!

The original blackening was self-harm and harm to others, destroying the world while also destroying what was considered right in one's own mind, thereby destroying one's own sense of good and evil, right and wrong.

But now! Many rules of right and wrong have been directly negated, starting from the most basic.

Wei Keng stubbornly began to affirm: Labor is right, communicating and cooperating with peers is right, self-reliance is right, fair exchange is right! But beyond that?

Starting anew, do I need to care about right and wrong that do not align with my interests? Do I need to feel guilty about things unrelated to my survival? Do I need to regret offending the solemnity of the past?

Dynastic Cycle Law!

When an era passes, the rulers holding the scepters of many rules can die. But ordinary people like me can completely discard what they didn't understand in the past and continue to move forward.

The palace turned into scorched earth in the great fire, but those digging in the ground will still be full of vitality.

Now Wei Keng has become cheerful, but in the consciousness of many life communities in Pandora World, the calamity has truly awakened!

Because in the past, Wei Keng acted recklessly in this world, destroying the "common sense of right and wrong" of both sides. The communities called Wei Keng a natural disaster, and Wei Keng couldn't find evidence to deny it for a while.

But now? Wei Keng can stare without flinching and retort: "This sense of right and wrong is yours. I don't think I need to be responsible for it. You call me the Fourth Calamity, and I will sue you for defamation. Your death is natural and inevitable, so why do you say I am a calamity."

Wei Keng's final stubborn mentality: You (the consciousness of the life communities) do not communicate, do not respect each other, unilaterally emphasize your own justice, and have no sense of morality when using cruel means against me! Then why should I abide by morality towards you?

With such a mentality, Wei Keng now deals with the entire northern ecosystem without any emotion.

This destruction reached its peak in April. Wei Keng confirmed the existence of three gene colonies in the northeastern region of the Yue Region, and immediately sealed them off in four directions, then set fire to the upwind. This fire, if in the Main World, would not be a matter of serving time in prison, but of being machine-gunned on a shooting range.

Because setting fires at that time was destroying collective property and threatening public safety, it had to be punished. But in this era! The natural environment does not belong to one's own collective, so it has no sacredness.

Burn!

An eight-meter-high wall of fire, driven by the strong wind, swept forward at a speed of thirty meters per second. On the mountaintop, Wei Keng watched the sky-obscuring curtain of thick smoke in front of the wall of fire he had ignited. Under the shadow of this curtain, strange creatures of all sizes fled north in panic.

Such a scene constitutes a "World Famous Painting!"

When Wei Keng began to treat this world as if he were dealing with mice, and no longer felt "resentment" towards his past casualties, he objectively reflected on his insufficient preparation and insufficient understanding of the essence of the targets: "non-human, uncommunicative, and uninfluenceable by emotion."

Thus, in this Pandora Field, something in Wei Keng's genes seemed to have been unlocked!

As a branch of the top evolutionary species on Earth for four billion years, humanity's characteristic is to possess Intelligent Thought. But what is intelligence?

Intelligent Thought is not kindness, nor evil, nor does it appear out of thin air relative to all life.

Intelligent Thought is a high-level life characteristic developed on the basis of Bestiality, capable of weighing the pros and cons of more long-term and complex matters.

In the Cambrian era, relying on the pros and cons development direction selected through generations of gene records, In the Jurassic era, the nascent neural systems of species might have participated in evolutionary selection, but selection was still determined by the effect of genes building proteins to enhance muscles.

By the Quaternary, the brain functions of a bunch of top mammals went further! Primates excelled in this regard. Bestiality also underwent a transformation here.

When the Cerebral Cortex specifically evolved the function to judge and understand one's own kind, and hypothesize about the thoughts of others, Labels like kindness and evil appeared among humans. Since then, complex Bestiality has been constantly packaged and interpreted by humans, these deceptive beings, explaining Humanity.

Humanity is essentially the weighing of Bestiality from a longer-term perspective.

This was a direction inherently possessed by Earth's life evolution. Now, this direction has become muddled with the Arrival of the Pandora Field. Humans have not even had time to figure it out, nor have they seized the part of themselves that is most advantageous as a life form.

As a life form, if one cannot go all out and do everything possible in a direction that aids survival, then one will be Eliminated.

Now Wei Keng is competing with all its might! As a hegemonic species, it's so thorough. This is not good news for other species.

Across the Entire East Asia Continent and the West Pacific, numerous life colonies have plundered genes capable of supporting higher thought from humans. Having been conscious for less than a hundred years, they suddenly felt it!

At 113 degrees East longitude and 22 degrees North latitude, the Life Radiation from the Wei Keng Collective in this region is becoming increasingly selfish and exclusionary.

In terms of total Life Radiation, Wei Keng has not significantly enhanced itself. Unlike other gene colonies that constantly fuse various new genes like the poor in Marvel to increase the scale of their covered area.

But! The Wei Keng Collective's influence on the genes of organisms in large areas is gradually closing in on the "Apostle Level" of this world.

Fire