Commander Max Abrams thinks:
"In spite of what the brotherhood-of-beings sentimentalists kept bleating, Merseians did not really think in human style." (p. 18)
Of course not, any more than human beings think in Merseian style. But both species are indeed beings sharing a universe. Brotherhood of beings should involve valuing and learning about differences between species. Later, in CHAPTER FIVE, Abrams tells Flandry that all beings are not brothers and that not even all men are. Yet, later still, Dennitza demonstrates that human beings and Merseians can share a planet.
Poul Anderson projects familiar issues into a multi-species, interstellar future.
5 comments:
"My tribe good, your tribe stinks" is a common, in fact universal, human trait.
If you try to fight it -- treat it as a problem to be solved -- you just create an anti-tribalist tribe.
Which, feeling its own solidarity and righteousness, must FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! against the Bad-Wrong Tribalist Tribe... 8-).
It's like trying to outrun your own sweat.
Tribalism isn't a problem to be solved; it's a condition to be managed. Mistaking the one for the other is something that -always- leads to bad results.
Kaor, Paul!
And I still disagree with you. Stirling beat me to explaining why, more pithily and amusingly than I could have.
The example you cited, Dennitza, succeeded only because the humans and Merseians there were able to MANAGE their different forms of tribalism in mutually beneficial ways. And it would be foolish to expect all such attempts to succeed.
Ad astra! Sean
Also, Dennitza's culture was unusually close to Merseian norms, while the Merseians there were in 'reaction', I think, against the specific way Merseia's dominant culture had evolved.
Note that Merseia had many -different- political setups (including at least one "People's Republic") before unification, and there are cultural differences there even in Flandry's time.
Merseia is rather as if a somewhat conservative version of Meiji Japan had come to dominate the world.
Merseians do seem to be, on average, a bit more combative than human beings.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I never thought before, of thinking Dennitza that close to Merseian norms, but I can see your point. Also, I've suggested before that some of the Merseians who settled there came from the losers in the power struggles between rival Vachs, the Gethfennu, and differently organized Merseian nations preceding the unification of that planet.
And some might have been Star Believers, Merseians more inclined to be friendly to other races.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment