Ship: MwRB4.337
Location: Diametric Trans-solar Opposition
Ship-mode: 100% Transparency
Focus: Planet 3
Time on site: 6,492 FPY [Focal Planet Years]
Date: 3902rz121.449apx / July 2002 FPT [Focal Planet Time]

Topic: Are They Worth Saving?
Participants: The 12 seers present and accounted for.

Condensed Path of the Discussion

Seers 1 and 7:
Though we maintain the prescribed quarantine distance, we all continue to be infected by the virulent, incessant streams of violent, acquisitive thought and feeling pouring from the planet. We have copied in toto the small amount of worthwhile art and music these savages have produced. There is clearly nothing more to be done for them. The time has come to leave. Other worlds await our attention.

Seers 2, 3, and 9:
Nowhere have we found a race that squanders its potential, that despoils its nest, that violates the Basic Principles to the extent that this one does. As a unique example of selfish violence, the planet can serve as an example for us and for all others. The more extreme its unpleasantness, the more important it is for us to record it all. If we decide now to ignore it, let them go their way to their fiery end, then we will choose to forget and we will not meditate on the fact that such maggots and such a cesspool sprang from the mysterious Vastnesses that are also our home.

Seers 4, 8, 11, and 12:
There is no mystery here. No mystery, no evil, and, really, no cesspool. The creatures are merely stupid, farther down the scale of intelligence than the occasional burst of creativity caused us to think when we arrived: amoebas merely. Yes, the planet is lovely and, given time, will, we are confident, do much better after they’re gone. We’re wasting our time to stay longer.

Seers 4, 5, and 8:
As Night Watchers, we have to remind you of their dreams, which are far, far beyond the dreams of maggots and amoebas. Confused, misguided, the race in a sense has been spoiled by the wealth of its planet. So much came to them so easily. Their dreams, to us, indicate that now that a violent end is in sight they will finally open their eyes and see what they have done—and what better things they are capable of doing. We must stay and, when the moment arrives, again insert the subtlest of clues and hints as we did in the beginning of our observations. The proper question is not "Are they worth saving?" Let us remind you that no other world has ever prompted us to pose that extremely judgmental question. The proper question, from the Basic Principles, for us is "Are they worth our time?"

Final Vote on Topic: 6-6.

Prognosis:
The physical, emotional, psychic, and intellectual savagery continues to worsen, unabated. The intelligences who know better either choose silence or, having spoken, are dealt with harshly. The race, having emerged from the jungle, recreates the jungle in all its activities while pretending otherwise. A handful of piteous creatures treasure the clues we have left while most use and distort them to their own greedy and violent ends. So-called "religious" leaders garb themselves in finery and preach intolerance. So-called "scientific" leaders garb themselves in hubris and preach their myopic reductive thought as the only way. So-called political and business leaders act largely out of expedient greed. The planet will of course eventually heal itself, as we have seen others do. For all the terrible psychic storms that rage there now, the faint, distant potential of this misguided species requires our on-going, patient presence.