Ceremonies, Rituals, Status And Pleasures

The NESFA Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Vol 2, should be en route from the States. Meanwhile, we have not exhausted Anderson's Genesis (New York, 2001). In Mikel Belov's period, the Worldguide, i.e., the central intelligence of the Solar System, intervening to prevent armed conflict, says:

"'You would have broken the Peace of the Covenant.'" (p. 82)

"Covenant" is another echo of Robert Heinlein's Future History. The Worldguide continues:

"'Your own laws, usages, and consciences preserved it thus far in this nation. Your own ceremonies, rituals, vyings for status, and pleasures took up your energies.'
"What else was left for us? cried the unborn rebel."  (pp. 82-83)

My answer to Mikel, the "unborn rebel," is: Your life was left to you. Not mere existence, human life and consciousness. Are human beings dangerous animals whose energy will become destructive if it is not "taken up" with ceremonies, rituals, status-seeking and pleasures? That was never true of all human beings. At least some would be able to take up the challenge of coexistence with superior AI's.

Some will continue to ask the Greek philosophical question: what is the good life and how can we live it? We formulate alternative answers: spiritual or secularist; different kinds of spirituality etc. Thus, we have subject matter for philosophical discussion. How to earn a living has been a major part of how to live for most, though not all, members of previous generations. When that question has been transcended, there will be more time for deeper questions: how to pray for theists; how to meditate for non-theists. We would have to find out whether any continued intellectual/creative partnership remained possible with AI's. If not, then the two kinds of beings would have to go their separate ways.

Those human beings able to adapt to the new situation would experiment with different approaches: some living with a simpler technology; others using AI-provided technology to explore the universe. A lot can be done on Earth and in the Solar System even if interstellar travel is regarded as unrealistic for organic intelligences.

The Worldguide continues:

"'But now that very tradition has led you to reignite the old violence. Unchecked, it would burn more fiercely from generation to generation, resentment, blind hate, feud, war, with unrest in many other societies. It must end at once.'" (p. 83)

But "...the old violence..." had ended. There had been "...three centuries of the Great Peace." (p. 76) We have not been shown any convincing reason why hate and feud should start again. Past conflicts had material causes. In Ireland, settlers from Britain dispossessed and oppressed the native population and the resulting conflict was misrepresented as being based in religious disagreements whereas people of different faiths have often lived amicably although not when one group was systematically disadvantaged as against another.

It is idle to argue that most people living now would be lost if suddenly transported into a future high tech society where they had no economic role to play. We are talking about people born into that situation and brought up in it. Human beings are the most plastic species on Earth, capable of inhabiting completely different social structures that are mutually incomprehensible.

Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis: "Times change and we change with them."