Fiction:Motive/Main

Motive [Lai'n -- movement/making/alteration -- no direct translation] is best understood not as a nation but as a business, and not as a business but as a cult of industry. Like many cults, Motive achieves power beyond its size through the indoctrination and manipulation of its citizens.

Central to its identity is the ideology of Progress [Fohr -- "to go forth"]. Fundamentally, Progress is the glorification of labor and productivity. More broadly, it emphasizes industrialism, technology, mass production, exploitation of nature, extreme collectivism, and the abnegation of the individual.

Progress espouses advancement -- in size, in science, in production. Anything that does not further this cause is stripped away. Leisure appears to be nonexistent; art only exists in the form of propaganda. All available energy is turned towards industry. By all reports, Motive crewmen are miserable, overworked past the point of exhaustion through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, yet remain stubbornly convinced of the righteousness of Progress.

Motive is believed to have long since surpassed the industrial capacity required to become a post-scarcity civilization; however, its curious insistence on manual labor rather than automation, along with its near-total suppression of basic sapient rights, both disqualify it for the status.