Imagining aliens makes us reflect on humanity. Hungarian Vadasz to his Aleriona captor:
"'Your problem is, sir, that Aleriona of any given class, except no doubt your own, are stereotypes,' Vadasz said. 'Every human is a law to himself.'" (p. 184)
This is Campbellian sf: show human beings as more complex and versatile than any other rational species. This happens in Poul Anderson's After Doomsday.
What Vadasz says is not strictly true, is it? - although it suits his purposes that the Aleriona should think that.
If every human being were a law unto himself, then there would be no laws or organized society. People have an extraordinary ability to internalize whatever is presented to them. They quote newspaper headlines yet insist that they do not believe everything that they read in the papers. I started to attend demonstrations because the mainstream press and the alternative press gave me such opposed accounts that I had to find out for myself. Someone says, "I think that human nature is unchangeable..." "I think..." implies that we are about to hear a conclusion arrived at by an individual rational process whereas the content of the thought is a "common sense" idea that has the strength, almost, of a material force like gravity. Our species has differentiated itself by changing its environment yet it convinces itself that its current, often socially conditioned, motivations have always existed and will always exist.
But Vadasz is also right! The education that I received was intended to make each of us conform to a particular set of beliefs and values. In fact, of course, we responded in different ways. There were inner conformists, who internalized (swallowed) everything, outer conformists, who knew how to play the game, and non-conformists who could not be bothered and just dropped out. But some non-conformists sought the truth elsewhere. I belong to this last group but, presumably, a different genetic mix would have made me a different person in one of the other categories. Fortuna rules.
4 comments:
The alien species in question has been genetically engineered to a fare-thee-well to fit into a caste society, though.
In this case, yes.
Note that if -humans- had been around and capable of interstellar travel as long as the aliens, everything in the galactic neighborhood would have been snapped up long ago.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the Alerion caste Cynbe belonged to was bred specifically for handling "wild" races like mankind. Also, to make sure this new caste of Intellect Masters of the Garden of War did not undermine the million years long stasis of Alerion, its members were bred to be sterile, unable to have offspring.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment