"'...a phantom, a might-have-been, which, conceivably, an alternate Time Patrol keeps suppressed.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART TWO, 1987 A. D., p. 76.
(However, it turns out that such success for Antiochus was very improbable.)
If the Exaltationists had made themselves overlords throughout the world, then:
"'There'd never have been a you or a me, a United States, a Danellian destiny, a Time Patrol...unless they organized one of their own to protect the misshapen history they brought into being.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 641-735 AT 23 May 1987, p. 718.
The Time Patrol series could be developed in different directions:
further episodes set in yet more historical periods;
wars between rival Patrols!
Here is a third possibility:
"'Time travel was old when [the Danellians] emerged, there had been uncountable opportunities for the foolish and the greedy and the mad to turn history inside out.'"
--Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol, pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 11.
Stories set in that long period of extratemporal interventions unregulated by a Patrol.
Is anyone who wants to change anything foolish, greedy or mad? No. In "Time Patrol," Stane is a well-intentioned time criminal.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But well intentioned persons can still have foolish, disastrous ideas which had only catastrophic results when tried out or implemented. So Stane comes under the foolish category in that list of the "foolish, greedy or mad."
I am so sick of "well meaning" persons whose ideas never work! Only the limited state, free enterprise economics, and a truly scientific outlook has been shown to WORK when tried. And I believe Judaism/Christianity played a huge role in those things coming to exist. NOTHING else has actually worked.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well-intentioned people can indeed be foolish. Some are not.
Is free enterprise economics working now? The British government has just had to intervene to prevent massive non-payment of rocketing energy bills.
Paul.
I think it's mentioned by the female clone of the Exaltationist leader that if they'd disposed of the Patrol, they'd have warred among themselves, making and remaking history "until the last God ruled alone".
Churchill once said that democracy was the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. Capitalist economics is similar. It wobbles naturally.
Raor does say that.
That sounds like Churchill.
Capitalism is the economic system that has succeeded so far. It has conquered the world, replacing all previous systems. It is dynamic and has released previously unrealized potentials. It creates its own problems and the question is what to do about them.
When dealing with problems in enormously complex systems, one should remember the maxim: "First, do no harm".
And also that it is -- and particularly with complex systems full of feedback loops -- impossible to really know what the consequences of your actions will be until they crash on your head or blow back at you.
You can know that they probably won't do what you hope they'll do.
And then consider how they interact with the way human beings operate.
For just one example of the latter, Keynes had a number of keen insights and sound pieces of advice.
The problem with one of the most basic of them -- increase government spending when demand is low, and cut it when demand is high, ditto with money supply -- is not that it doesn't work (it does, generally speaking) but that half of it (cutting spending, increasing interest rates) is enormously -difficult- to do, because of the human tendencies to short-term thinking and wishful thinking.
It requires, as a Federal Reserve system chairman said once, that you be the mean bastard who comes and takes away the punchbowl just when the party's really gathering steam.
No politician in a democracy likes to do that because it makes you unpopular; the inflation you're preventing is hypothetical and in the future, the pain you're inflicting is -right now-, tangible and real.
One of the solutions worked out is to have independent central banks guarded against popular pressures. It works... sort of, some of the time.
That Keynesian advice is like the doctor's advice to eat less (particularly of the sugary foods and fats we're genetically programed to crave) and to exercise more, which we're also genetically programmed to avoid if we can.
To our ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years, sweets and fats were rare, valuable treats which gave more energy and helped build up reserves for the (inevitable) periods of dearth. Likewise, their way of life -compelled- frequent, strenuous physical activity; it made sense to have a tendency to avoid it when it wasn't essential, to conserve food energy.
So sloth and greed were highly functional.
Then put people in a situation where sweet, fatty foods are easy to get and physical activity easy to avoid, and you get our problem with obesity.
It's not that we don't know the cure, we just don't want to do what's required.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! A wise statesman always keeps in mind mind that maxim: "First, do no harm." He considers whether a proposed solution to a problem will do more harm than good, tries to think of possible bad effects, etc.
On balance, the work of Keynes has done vastly more harm than good. It's too easy for gov'ts of any kind to hike taxes and keep on spending more than it should. And hard and unpopular to take the painful measures needed for controlling inflation and gov't spending/debt. Better to not go down the cheap money/high spending and taxing road at all.
Ha! I know too well how tempting fatty/salty/sweet foods can be! AND of how hard it can be to control one's diet and exercise.
Ad astra! Sean
I agree about do no harm, feedback loops, complexity and unpredictability. But the present system is doing real harm now. It is certainly not a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Society is well and truly "broke" as witnessed by continued wars and preparations for war, by environmental disaster and by yet another mass killing in a school. I think that either civilization will not survive or it will find new values, priorities, practices, ways of doing things etc. But the new society will be a collective effort transcending anyone's expectations. It will not conform to any blueprint that can be laid down now.
Paul: when have the things you mention -not- been going on?
Humans have been fighting wars and getting ready to do so since before they were -human- in our sense. It's not a problem, it's a condition of existence. The only lesson to be learned from that is "don't be on the losing side, it's bad for your health".
Our ancestors exterminated the megafauna at the end of the last glacial period by gluttonous overhunting, and I could go on and on about things like that.
And human beings kill each other all the time and always have and I would say they probably always will.
On a personal note, someone made a serious attempt to kill -me- when I was 14, and I still don't understand how they failed -- I thought I was dying when I lost consciousness with a foot holding my head underwater.
All that stuff isn't a crisis, that's just business as usual, human life proceeding as it always does.
None of those situations are especially dire right now; they just seem that way because we're experiencing them ourselves, and it's human nature to overvalue the moment of time we happen to exist in.
1914-1945, now, -that- was a crisis.
Or to quote S.M. Stirling, "Accursed are they with unrealistic expectations, for they shall be perpetually disappointed."
Saul: that's just not an option.
I find this very different point of view refreshing but remain concerned about the imminent irreversible ecological catastrophe predicted by the IPCC scientists - and about the fact that we still have no defence against an asteroid strike.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Again, I agree with Stirling, and not you. Hard headed realism is always better than impossible dreams.
As for things like carbon dioxide pollution, NOT MUCH CAN BE DONE when China and India contribute over half of that pollution. And stubbornly refuse to change their ways.
The only PRACTICAL alternative to fossil fuels remains demonized and slandered nuclear power. I am glad some of the people I contemptuously think of as Greenie Weenies, like the Finnish Greens, are waking up to that. That makes them no longer weenies, but serious people.
I absolutely agree about the need for ways and means of fending off asteroid strikes. We can't be lucky forever! And people like Elon Musk are working on developing some of those ways and means. If he can get us off this rock I hope he becomes a TRILLIONAIR!*
Mr. Stirling: I'm very glad that murderous attempt on your life failed! I hope your assailant was caught and did VERY hard time in prison.
Ad astra! Sean
*If so, even my tiny investment in Tesla might pay off handsomely for me!
Sean: nope. Never saw their face, have no idea what happened to them. Incidentally they didn't even take my wallet, and I knew nobody in the area where it happened -- I was just passing through. So I have no idea of their motive, either.
Fiction has to make sense. Real life isn't that constrained.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And civilized societies TRY to keep some control over such random violence. What happened to you bears out what you have more than once said: about how INNATELY prone to violence all human beings can be. And how unlikely that is ever NOT going to be excised from the species.
Ad astra! Sean
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