"To create is to choose."
— Hadrian Marlowe, Sun Eater by Christopher Ruocchio

The fictional character, Hadrian, speaks these words before sacrificing everything for a good he cannot prove. He cannot see the exact outcome. But across his centuries-long life, he has perceived a truth greater than himself, a highest good that has proven itself through experience and reasoning. And that truth demands sacrifice, not for itself, but for all of humanity. He doesn’t have a perfect solution. He chooses anyway, because standing still in the current of causality isn’t rest. It’s dissolution. Creation is the only alternative.

But Hadrian could only make that choice because someone once sacrificed everything to make him into the man he would become. The grand sacrifice requires a foundation, and that foundation is built through the quieter, more common sacrifice of mentoring. We create the people capable of choosing well by first choosing to invest in them.

So much of early childhood is about obedience. Don’t touch the stove. Hold my hand in the parking lot. Stay where I can see you. These aren’t arbitrary rules imposed for control; they’re survival constraints. A child who doesn’t obey may not get the chance to understand why the rules existed. But obedience isn’t the destination. It’s the minimum viable foundation. The parent who only demands compliance fails the child just as surely as the one who skips it entirely. At some point, the child needs to walk on their own. And that transition from obedience to understanding to independent action is where the real work of mentoring begins. This isn’t just about parenting. It’s about any relationship where one person helps another grow: teaching, coaching, mentoring. The pattern is the same, and getting it wrong carries the same consequences.

The perspective I’m sharing here didn’t come from a single place. It crystallized from five sources that arrived at similar structures through different paths: science fiction, Christian apologetics, literary fiction, moral philosophy, and clinical psychology. That convergence is part of why I trust it.

Truth isn't just something we search for. It's something that calls us to selfless action for the hope of future generations. What is true often reveals itself through what we're willing to sacrifice for others.

The Path

Growth follows a causal chain. Each stage depends on what came before, and each stage is necessary but insufficient on its own.

Obedience keeps you alive long enough to form habits and begin walking on your own. It is not understanding, but it creates the safety to eventually develop understanding.

Knowledge provides orientation. It reminds you of what has been proven true, false, more useful, or less useful. Knowledge shared is not the same as knowledge internalized, and neither is the same as understanding. Without orientation, you wander.

Understanding guides you toward better decisions. Knowing that something works is different from knowing why it works and when it applies. Understanding bridges that gap, though it cannot guarantee you’ll choose wisely.

Action externalizes your decisions and tests your internal certainty against reality. You can understand something perfectly in theory and still be wrong. Action is where truth meets consequence.

Reflection generates insight through honest examination. This is healthier when it includes perspective beyond your own, whether through collective dialogue or paired mentoring rather than solo rumination.

Insight approaches truth. But it only arrives when the individual commits to gathering perspective beyond their own experience and assumptions.

Skip a step and the structure weakens.

What is Truth

What Truth Is and Isn’t

Truth exists independent of our perception. Physics didn’t begin when Newton published the Principia; we just finally had language to describe what was always operative. The discovery didn’t create the reality; it revealed it.

And yet, truth’s independent existence isn’t the point; the search for it is.

Truth is a force, always present, given dimension through choice. Our discovery doesn’t create it; our action reveals and maintains it. The honest seeker doesn’t claim to possess absolute truth but remains oriented toward it. The humility isn’t “there is no truth” but “I cannot contain all of it, yet I must still act.”

What is more useful and more good emerges through the search, through ideas tested against each other and proven through time. Not all ideas are equal. The search is how we find out which ones hold.

Even honest religious people will tell you they do not know, and do not need to know, the full thoughts and will of God. The search produces what is more useful and more good. The destination, if there is one, remains beyond full comprehension. And that’s acceptable, because the search itself is what improves us.

The Fallacy of “Real” vs. “True”

It’s easy to fall into the trap where the group or individual defines what can be true by what is experienced in the moment. “This is the real world,” people say, as if current circumstance is the arbiter of what’s possible or valid.

This is backwards. What is true can be self-evident or can require rigorous proof through generations. But it is truth that must be made into habit, understood, taught, and most importantly, decided on through action. Again and again, without losing orientation and without forgetting what has been and what could be.

To say that what is “real” defines what is true is to fall into nihilism. It states that there can be no objective truth, and subsequently no objective purpose, given the fickleness of humans and the ever-changing substance through which we experience life. But truth doesn’t need our permission to exist. It doesn’t need to be perceived. It operates whether we acknowledge it or not.

The question isn't whether truth exists. The question is whether we're searching for it or assuming we've already found it.

The Danger of Assumption

Regression doesn’t usually announce itself. It creeps in when truth is assumed rather than searched for.

This often follows from lost historical context. When people forget why principles exist, what failures they emerged from, and what problems they solved, they start treating hard-won wisdom as arbitrary constraint. They discard it. Then they rediscover the failures their ancestors already paid for.

The assumption that current practice is sufficient, that the search is complete, is where regression begins.

The honest approach isn’t “we’ve arrived” but “we’re still searching.” Not because truth doesn’t exist, but because our grasp of it is always partial, always requiring maintenance.

Which Story Do You Prefer?

Not all ideas are equal. Some have been tested against alternatives and proven through time and collective strife. Others haven’t survived their first contact with reality. The search process itself acts as a filter.

But here’s the harder question: when the evidence doesn’t settle the matter, when you can’t prove which version is true, what then?

This isn’t relativism. Asking “which story do you prefer?” doesn’t mean truth doesn’t matter. It means that when evidence alone can’t settle the question, we must still choose. And that choice reveals something about us.

The version of the story we prefer, the one that accounts for both what has been proven and what we aspire toward, becomes our orientation. It shapes how we act, what we pursue, and what we pass on. The question isn’t which story is easiest or most comfortable. It’s which story we’re willing to live by.

Your experience is real, but it’s also limited. The collective search across centuries has been stress-tested across contexts, cultures, and circumstances that no individual could encounter in a single lifetime. That search doesn’t guarantee truth, but it narrows the field. And when you must still choose between remaining possibilities, the honest path forward isn’t paralysis. It’s committing to the story that best accounts for what we know and what we hope for, while remaining open to revision as understanding deepens.

What We Owe Each Other

The chain is fragile because halted progress doesn’t stay halted. It regresses. Standing still isn’t neutral. The current of causality keeps moving whether you paddle or not. Progress requires sustained effort against entropy. Regression requires nothing.

Millennia to build, a generation to forget.

You can learn all there is to learn, and the very next generation can find itself at the beginning with little effort. Creation is the only alternative to dissolution. The choice to keep moving, to keep searching, to keep creating is what keeps us alive, and that choice is what we owe each other.

This debt isn’t abstract. It’s the parent who shifts from “because I said so” to “let me show you what happens.” It’s the teacher who explains not just what to do but why it matters. It’s the mentor who recognizes when obedience has become habit and understanding can begin.

The Convergence of Sources

These ideas didn’t emerge from a single tradition. They arrived from multiple directions at once, which is part of why I trust them.

Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater gives this post its title. Hadrian Marlowe doesn’t act from certainty; he acts from conviction. He perceives a good worth pursuing even though he cannot prove it will matter. He chooses anyway, because choosing is the only alternative to dissolution.

C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters makes the fallacy of “real” versus “true” explicit. A senior demon advises: don’t attack truth directly. Keep the human focused on “real life,” the immediate, the mundane. Make truth feel abstract and impractical. The most effective corruption doesn’t announce itself; it quietly replaces orientation toward truth with absorption in circumstance.

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi poses the question directly. After surviving months at sea, Pi tells investigators two versions of his story: one with animals, one without. Neither can be proven. He asks: “Since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer?” When the investigator chooses the story with animals, Pi responds: “And so it goes with God.” The story we choose reveals who we are.

T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism, dramatized in The Good Place, reframes ethics from individual virtue to mutual obligation. The question isn’t “what is right?” in the abstract but “what do we owe each other?” The choice to create isn’t just about personal meaning; it’s about the debt we carry to those who come after. The mentor owes the mentee orientation. The parent owes the child a foundation to stand on.

Jordan Peterson argues that meaning comes from responsibility, not comfort. You find purpose by choosing to bear weight that matters. He also warns against ideological possession, where people stop searching and start assuming. The framework becomes a substitute for genuine inquiry, and regression begins even while the person believes they’ve arrived at truth.

To Create is to Choose

The cycle continues: obedience becomes habit, knowledge becomes orientation, understanding becomes better decisions, action tests certainty against reality, reflection generates insight, and honest insight approaches truth.

Then you pass it on. The next generation begins again, not from zero if you did your job, but from wherever you managed to carry them before setting them down to walk on their own.

What is true often reveals itself through what we’re willing to sacrifice for others. The selfless act, the choice made for future generations rather than for ourselves, is how truth becomes visible. It’s how we know what we actually believe.

That’s the debt. That’s the obligation. To create is to choose, and choosing to create for those who come after is how we provide hope to those yet to come as much as for ourselves now.