Cosmic events bring about the control of emotions by reason in HG Wells' In The Days Of The Comet and in Anderson's Brain Wave. I think that this transformation also occurs in Anderson's Time Patrol series where the course of time:
"'...does at last take us beyond what our animal selves could have imagined.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 435.
Wells and Anderson.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but that was simply one of the many times Anderson speculated with ideas or tropes he personally did not believe in. I am sure there are people who would love it if there were actually such things as Asimovian "Psychohistory" or Andersonian "Psychotechnics," because they could then pretend to "rationally plan" our societies.
I say that very idea of "planning" stinks! Human beings and their affairs are too chaotic, unpredictable, and complex for any narrow, rigid "plan" to control or make sense of. The mere effort to do so would lead inevitably to tyranny for that reason alone. Either that or mankind might end up as empty of selfhood as the Zolotoyans in "The High Ones."
I believe the most you can hope for are the analyses given by historians like John Hord, on how civilizations rise and fall, plus some rough estimates on how long the given stages of a civilization might last.
Stirling, however, is skeptical of the value of such analyses, calling them merely "Neo-Spenglerian."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There were two aspects to psychotechnics, the predictive social science and the changing of individuals to make them more sensitive, perceptive, self-controlled etc. It was the latter aspect that I was focusing on here. The Danellian talks about going beyond our animal selves.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't in the least believe human beings can be "changed" so easily like that. I do not believe most people can be so easily molded to be "...more sensitive, perceptive, self-controlled, etc. Any such effort will, IMO, fail.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And it can't happen by "molding." Surely each individual is responsible for him/herself? Do prayer and other spiritual practices have no effect?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul! But that is EXACTLY what is likely to be attempted, if you have some kind of psychotechnological "plan": coercive molding or remolding. Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
What I am talking about here is individual mental/psychological/spiritual practices/techniques which cannot be imposed on an entire population. We are talking about the two completely different aspects of psychotechnics.
Paul.
BTW, social change, if it is to come, can only be by a social movement involving an increase in democratic decision-making and accountability, not by a minority of experts or demagogues imposing THEIR plan and moulding the population accordingly. The latter project obviously makes everything worse and I think that we can agree on that much.
Kaor, Paul!
But I think I was talking about psychotechnics as Anderson himself mostly used that word.
And I simply don't believe in the kinds of social changes you want. I think human beings are too quarrelsome and chaotic for all mankind to become like a small town New England village meeting.
Good, we at least agree about the undesirability of "experts" and demagogues imposing their "plans" on us.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the point that I was trying to get at in four different works (3 by Anderson + 1 by Wells) was the idea of an internal individual psychological change as a result of which reason gains control of emotion. We got back into discussing society because of the collective/social/mass psychology aspect of "psychotechnics."
Paul.
Note that there's no -rational- reason to want to live at all. That's an emotion, deriving from an instinctual drive.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Granted, what you said. I could add the Avantists, from the HARVEST OF STARS books, as another of those would be pseudo scientific predictive "sciences of societies."
It needs to be stressed that Anderson did not believe in either Psychotechnology or Avantism, but he made them seem to be more plausible than Asimov's Psychohistory.
Mr. Stirling: There might be no rational reason for living, but I'm in no hurry to check out! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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