Duty among Kīkxo's People

Time for something different!  Well sort of.  It's still conworlding, just not conlanging as it may be. Having a robust culture is an important part of creating a language. It provides the background to make things happen.

As I think I've mentioned before, religion plays a very important role in the daily lives on the Úīkmo Kīkxot (Actually that's where I got the idea for this lang in the first place). They even call themselves "Kikxo's people"! Kīkxo, of course is their main God. This posting is not an exhaustive account of their religion. That needs to be explained over the course of many posts. Instead I'll focus on one aspect: duty.

Today in may world religions class we were discussing Confucianism and the idea of the Junzi. It got me thinking "what would be the ideal person in this society?" Well, it probably would be broader than Junzi. In fact, I think it would be a lot more like the Hindu idea of dharma, obedience towards one's individual place in life.

Within this culture, people have three main duties: 1) To improve themselves; 2) To serve God; and 3) To advance society. The perfect person (úīkmo ikkuxat; gōtāpzō ikkuxat; kikxī are all common names used to describe such a person with kixkī having a very similar connotation to buddha or saint and often used as an honorific) has found balance in all three aspects, and while s/he shouldn't be worshiped, should definitely be emulated. However, none of three things mean exactly what we might think as westerners, and all three are very interconnected.

People improve themselves by learning about Kīkxo. The culmination of this is by going through all the rites in the Lōbopāb Kīkxot (lit "House of God", more normally "temple") and becoming a: possessor of the true knowledge of the Shīyto; a defender against evil; and receiving the promise of Resurrection from Kīkxo. So self improvement in this context has to do with progress through the religion more than self-improvement in a secular sense.

People serve God by keeping his commandments, both generally and caste specific. Proper sacrifices, being the best of your role you can be, taking care of the priest caste and the like are all ways in which people serve Kīkxo.

Advancing society basically means spreading the religion of Kīkxo, engaging in war with evil, serving others, and treating others well. But mostly spreading the religion. Asceticism, or rather hermitism, is seen as contrary to advancing society. In fact, the more close society is, the more advanced it is seen.

Therefore a kikxī is not just very good at whatever s/he is supposed to do, but also active in their community. A kikxī is altruistic, helpful, humble and open. A kikxī is obedient in all things. A kikxī from one caste would be quite different than a kikxī from another caste. It's not exactly what we would think of as a holy man, and that's why I think it converges quite a bit with the concept of Junzi, as I understand it, at least

Also, this took me two and a half months to write (it's 6/30 now).  I'm terrible but will hopefully start updating this blog more again