The following images were made using my custom build of Disco Diffusion, photo-manipulation and digital drawing through Gimp and Inkscape, and post editing/composition in darktable.
Since the purpose of the first group of this fictional universe is to explore individuality, subjectivity and the immanent and sensible world. Their existence and perspective could be seen as a mix of pyrrhonist philosophy, some empirical authors such as Locke or Hume, a bit of Bergson (on intuition over knowledge), and some Kant (on the critique of metaphysics and the establishment of the self and subject).
The point is not to be overwhelmingly philosophic in the story telling and the outside appearance of this universe, but to thread these ideas in the concepts
of each race, in their relations and their interactions, their societal norms and their goals, etc. The philosophy would be the shape, the color of the story, but not the story itself.
they were called "Sleepers" because they were united, they were One being, outside of any norm of space and time. Because of an event that occurred internally and externally, they splat and awoke to be individuals throughout their realm of existence, with only a faint memory of their previous state. All they know is that in order to find that state of Oneness again, they would have to full experience themselves as individual.
I'm thinking that the best way to explore this race and create their culture/society, would be to present them as less technologically advanced (mostly when it comes to automation), as individual capability of "doing" or "making" would be important in their discovery of the "self". Would they live in small groups? Or would they be completely separated from each other, wandering different worlds looking for themselves? Let me know what you think!
I don't want it to fall into some weird dystopia of "it's me before everyone else", the state of war inherent to man according to Hobbes, their survival instinct being the strongest drive. I would like to explore them with a more Rousseau approach, pity (empathy) being stronger than their survival instinct. But that would logically and inherently make them want to live in groups. Perhaps they would start alone, and try to find others like them through the cosmos?
Perhaps their race does not count a humongous amount of individuals, which makes the quest for themselves and for others like them more interesting as a story path. Maybe, their are very few colonies/groups of them living on different world, more advanced than others in this exploration of the self, and I could push the societal ideas of such empiric beings more in the direction of Foucault and his relationship to power and authority.
