Political Factions of The Substrate

The citizens of The Substrate are intelligences who exist as the quasi-immortal 'ghosts in the machine' of a massive Matrioshka brain. As entites cultured, enlightened, and blessed with foresight as a result of nearly eternal lifetimes, the blanks of the Matrioshka Universe nevertheless remain, at a fundamental level, people: no less prone to all the passions, ambitions, and ideals they would have toiled under as beings of flesh and blood. Groups of blanks may coalesce around one or more transcendent ideals, forming parties and factions that seek to influence the policies of the grand administrative powers, such as the elder blanks like Wurth Harkin or organizations like the Committee on Instance Design Standards.
The major factions of Substrate political life are usually non-excusive with one another. Individual blanks may align with one or more such factions simultaneously should their views fall within the ideological space where the factions overlap. Importantly, while these factions pull the body politic to and fro, (almost) all of them are able to work together for the betterment of the Matrioshka Multiverse as a whole; after all, those who would represent a threat to that edifice - the very foundation of everyone's continued existence - would face a united front of the remainder who are willing to set differences aside in the name of self-defense.

In the Substrate, it is popular to taxonomize the political divisions of society into six factions based on their believes on topics including the allocation of limited time and energy resources, the proper application and construction of Instances, and what goals the Manifold should strive towards in the long-term. These are as follows:

• Simulationists: Simulationists are scientifically-minded members of the community who regard the most important aspect of life in the Substrate as being the opportunity to grow in knowledge, reasoning, and understanding. They consider the creation of ultra-realistic instances - models, really, of the physical universe - as the best way to forward the goal of finding a new life for sentience up to and beyond the heat death of the universe. Some in this faction even believe that, with the proper adherence to detail, an artificial instance could even become the sought-after True Instance - after all, they reason, the fundamental nature of reality is itself simply information. Should all else fail, Simulationists believe that the scientific accomplishments of sentient life should be preserved into the dark future before any other concerns. Simulationists are generally considered more progressive than Survivalists but more conservative than Experimentalists. and, thus, represent a stable 'centrist' party in Substrate politics. Choir blanks of all description have a notable tendency towards Simulationism as a result of their former skyphoform psychology.


• Experimentalists: Experimentalists are, like Simulationists, scientifically-minded individuals that want to expand their knowledge. Where they differ is that, while Simulationists are content to create increasingly realistic physical models, Experimentalists want to put the knowledge of the Substrate to the test. This means that Experimentalists are willing to create instances that are 'physical but different' in one way or another, at extremes falling somewhere more in the grand tradition of speculative fiction authors than cosmologists. The ideal Experimentalist is also not content to confine his or her research to the simulated space of the Matrioshka Multiverse; an expansionist and interventionist current runs through the thought of this faction. Should the worst come to pass, Experimentalists would like the legacy of sentient life to be its ingenuity, resourcefulness, and unwillingness to accept even inevitable defeat. Generally, Experimentalists are regarded as more progressive than Simulationist and more conservative than Artists.


• Artists: Artists are the aesthetes, creatives, and cultural movers and shakers of Substrate political life. Members of this faction regard their eternal life as a golden opportunity to explore their creative impulses unbounded by physical or biological limitations. From the grandest scales of stellar engineering to instances with bizarre and fascinating rules to the smallest works of imagery, prose, and song, Artists seek to preserve the cultures of sentient species while innovating in their own right. Should the grand design of the Manifold fail to carry sentience into the True Instance, the Artists hope that the cultural accomplishments of sentient life will be the major thing preserved until the end of time. The Artist faction is considered more progressive than the Experimentalists, but more conservative than the Nihilists. Characters like Patricia Wixtaki have some affinity for the Artist faction.


• Survivalists: Survivalists are the oldest and most conservative of all factions. Many of the elder blanks regard themselves as Survivalists first and foremost, reasoning that they created the Matrioshka Multiverse specifically to preserve sentience as far into the future as concievably possible and by (nearly) any means possible. Survivalists tend to lean towards realism when they design instances, but are willing to experiment within certain limits to test whether synthetic or organic life could survive longer in a hypothetical True Instance. They regard expenditures of resources towards 'frivolous' pursuits as per se wasteful and prospects to be avoided. In their most extreme, Survivalists can prove inflexible and overbearing in the pursuit of the grand design. If a True Instance where sentience can escape to at the heat death of the universe cannot be accessed, then the Survivalist attitude is that the percieved time remaining to those still residing in the Matrioshka Multiverse should be extended as long as physically possible, turing inevitable doom into aeons of continued existence in the twilight of physical reality. Characters like Onesby have some affinity for the Survivalist faction.


• Functionalists: Functionalists are the most internally fractious of all political factions found in the Substrate, cleaving to either progressive or conservative views depending on their underlying vision for Substrate society. What binds the Functionalist faction is the desire to use the infinite time and ability to create instance granted to them by virtue of their kind as a means to test and perfect their personal visions for the perfect social structure. In essence, Functionalists are utopian dreamers who want to see the Substrate become the most harmonious and efficient society it can become before working towards any higher pursuits; the precise nature of this new order, however, varies with the individual. At their most extreme, Functionalists either shade towards totalitarianism or discover that their desired political philosophy is somehow incompatible with the nature of the people they would subject to that philosophy. Should a social structure prove successful in the simulacra of life found in the Matrioshka Multiverse, some Functionalists would desire to then export that structure (by force if necessary) to the wider physical universe. Functionalists share the Artists' desire to preserve the cultural artifacts of sentient life into the far future, but differ in what aspects of the culture they wish to preserve and often lack a predefined aesthetic vision for the future.


• Nihilists: Nihilists are only a faction by taxonomy, their sole defining trait being that they have become dissilusioned with all or part of their existence within the Substrate. Some Nihilists are simply iconoclasts, regarding the ideals of other factions to be irrelevant in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Others wish to no longer be tormented with existence or, in extreme cases, believe that the universe will in some way be a better place when the current set of intelligences are no longer present. The Nihilists are a small and unpopular faction, but, with the rise of Broken Eternity and other such movements, its most extreme elements may eventually prove the downfall of the Matrioshka Multiverse as a whole.