What I enjoyed about this book is it helped me "get" Platonism. Somehow, Neal Stephenson made Platonism seem cool and interesting. People focusing on the mathe

What I enjoyed about this book is it helped me "get" Platonism. Somehow, Neal Stephenson made Platonism seem cool and interesting. People focusing on the mathematical monks are missing the point that Arbre is intended to exemplify a more Platonically idealized of our world. Not all in good ways, but also in bad ways. When technology goes bad in Arbre, it goes worse than in our world. When there are divisions in Arbre society, those divisions are sharper than in our world. Mathematics is more powerful, but it is also more separated from Praxis. The maths aren't just monasteries for mathematicians; they instead represent the Platonic form of "The Institution", and as such incorporate elements of monasteries, prisons, universities, asylums, and barracks. Arbre's version of Platonism is itself divided into two camps that in our world are dimly reflected as "religion" and "abstraction"; in Arbre the division between these is larger-than-life. The Monad ever devolving into a Dyad.