Monday 24 April 2017

The Price Of Individuality?

"...the simplicity and peace of the middle-period Fourth Era, when all of Earth had been swept clear of war and hate and also of personal individuality."
-John C. Wright, The Golden Age (New York, 2003), p. 203.

Must we choose between peace and individuality? I think that this is a false dichotomy in some sf. We often experience both. This experience can be generalized.

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The fact that this "simplicity and peace" only existed during the middle of the Fourth Era obviously means later people in later times changed their minds on the wisdom of eliminating human individuality and complexity. Even if that meant the risk of strife and conflict.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Yes but my point is that individuality and complexity are compatible with peace.
Paul.

S.M. Stirling said...

Individually, yes; collectively, no, because if non-peace is an option someone is going to chose it. And as the saying goes, it takes unanimity to have peace, but only one bellicose individual to have a fight.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

But as Mr. Stirling pointed out, it only needs one belligerent person to start strife. Also, I was thinking of what the people who lived after the middle of Wright's Fourth Era seems to have concluded, not of what you had said.

I'm sorry, Paul, I have to conclude that what you wrote here sprang more from what you WISHED, rather than what is actually LIKELY.

Sean