-copied from here.
This is a key passage both for its identification of the enemy and for its concluding question. How can we change ourselves? If you try to make your bed while lying on it, then you are in the way!
Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound:
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
copied from here.
(I think that that concluding phrase should read: "self-division's cause.")
A primitive revolting against the responsibilities and insecurities of freedom might welcome tyranny? But does this explain all the disparate groups that come together as the "enemy" in Anderson's story? See The Gang and The Old And Protean Enemy. And what of madness and sorrow? How much of that is in each of us and why? I hope that my daughter has had a saner and happier upbringing than I did but what do we make of the present state of the world? Who do populations vote for and why? Poul Anderson's first future history seems very relevant.
8 comments:
Paul:
As I take it, "Passion and reason, self-division cause" means "Passion and reason cause self-division" but was switched around in service of the rhyme -- and the comma was inserted more-or-less to clarify (whether or not it succeeds is debatable). A language such as Esperanto would've made it clear if "cause" is a verb as I suspect or a noun as you think.
David,
Aldous Huxley quotes this verse and I think he gives us "self-division's" although of course I would have to check.
Paul.
Googling reveals that what Huxley quoted was a "variant."
Gentlemen,
And of course the Psychotechnic Institute was begun during a time when Anderson was inspired by Heinlein's Future History and Asimov's psychohistorians. And PA eventually became DISSATISFIED with this series, as he explained in his "Author's Note" for THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE. After explaining how an early WW III did not happen "on time" and not allowing for how major scientific discoveries had invalidated the series, Anderson wrote: "People and institutions had also changed profoundly, as had my view of them. Once I was a flaming liberal [in the US sense of the word, SMB], a fact which is probably most obvious in "Un-Man." Nowadays I consider the United Nations a dangerous farce on which we ought to ring down the curtain. (In justice to it and myself, though, please remember that when I wrote this novella the U.N. had quite a different character from that it has since acquired, and looked improvable.)"
Sean
The thing to remember about reason is that it's a tool, a means. The ends we use it for spring from quite different causes.
Also, we mostly use reason not in the service of an inner scientist or philosopher, but as the tool of an inner lawyer -- someone making a brief, and doing so by both "suggestio falsi" and "suppressio veri". There's substantial evidence to suggest that well-informed and highly intelligent people are -less- likely to make objective assessments than ignorant, stupid ones. Simply because they're better at rationalizing.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Oh, I certainly agree that well informed and allegedly very intelligent persons can make even poorer decisions than stupid and ignorant ones!
Sean
Yes, but it's not because their minds aren't working properly; they're working exactly as designed.
The mind is mostly designed to make you a more effective member of your tribe, and making yourself unpopular is not effective.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I certainly agree with you there! About how many, many times people make themselves unnecessarily disliked and unpopular.
Sean
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