Tuesday 26 May 2015

Seladorianism

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

All existence is one;
the Ultimate realizes itself through life;
life, the meaning of existence, evolves toward identity with the Ultimate;
however, humanity has taken a wrong turn;
having technology is part of being intelligent but human beings have taken technology too far and in wrong directions;
they have adapted to technology instead of it to the Meaning and have cut themselves off from their living environment;
they must restore destroyed forests and prairies and stop using bioengineering to adapt individuals for specialized, e.g. military, purposes;
they have learned from space travel but must now withdraw to Earth;
if they continue in the wrong direction, then they will become extinct.

The Seladorians cultivate oases, are acquiring new land at the expense of the former occupants and want "...to abolish the machines on whose productivity depended the subsidies that kept poor folk alive." (p. 418) We might agree with some Seladorian tenets but not others. In this novel, there is a strong tendency among technological races for spacefaring to decline and Seladorianism is part of this tendency on Earth. That alone shows us that Anderson regards this religion as a mostly negative force.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Exactly! I too disagree with some of the tenets of Seladorianism, such as its pantheism and the hostile view it has of technology.

Sean