"'We've got to get rid of all that human leftover shit, tribes, countries. It's just not relevant to us.'"
-SM Stirling, A Taint In The Blood (New York, 2011), CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 297.
I know a lot of human beings who would agree with that! But my guys want human freedom, not Shadowspawn domination. The Shadowspawn really are like superpowered Draka. They can kill like vampires and mentally shield themselves from any police investigation. It would be good to have such abilities to do something good with them. I just want to see the Shadowspawn, like the Draka, killed. I expect that some of that will happen before the end of Volume I of the Trilogy. Should the Shadowspawn be killed in agony because they have killed others in agony? I believe not but this is the sort of moral question on which opinions differ.
4 comments:
Shadowspawn are genuinely genetically different from humans proper -- the ones in the book are partly human, of course; probably they'd be even worse at cooperative action if they weren't.
Humans, on the other hand, are -inherently- tribalistic; they need group identities, and cannot function well without them.
If you try to get away from tribalism, what you produce is an anti-tribal tribe which immediately feels an impulse to fight the BAD WRONG TRIBAL TRIBE!
It's like trying to outrun your own sweat on a hot day; utterly futile.
Since human tribalism is a condition to be managed rather than a problem which can be solved, what I usually recommend is to be tribal, but to be so knowingly and ironically.
Always remembering, as the poet said:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Or in terms less grand, don't take anything too seriously.
Heaven forbid!
Kaor, Paul!
While I agree with Mr. Stirling on the need not to take everything TOO seriously, I do disagree with both the Shadowspawn Tokairin Michiko and your "guys" disdain for the nation or tribe as such. Like it or not, humans need some kind group identity: which has often taken forms as clans, tribes, nations, etc.
I do not agree with your friends if they are saying that abolishing the nation will somehow enhance liberty. WHAT would they replace the nation with? And how would they satisfy the human need for some kind of group identity? Are they some kind of "world federalists" advocating a Terran Federation or Solar Commonwealth (never mind that this too would be a kind of "nation")? I don't in the least believe such a world state would ever come about peacefully and rationally. I can think of many nations and peoples who would never willingly give up their sovereignty to a Solar Commonwealth. And I can think of others, such as China, who nourish ambitions that would make this kind of world state an impossibility.
I like what Hloch wrote in his introduction to "The Problem of Pain," after trying to define what a nation is to Ythrians: "To curb these inordinate prerogatives of a few, whose quarrels and mismanagement threatened to lay waste their native planet, the Commonwealth was finally established, as a nation of nations. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN QUICKLY, EASILY OR RATIONALLY [my emphasis, SMB]. The story of it is long and terrible." So I don't expect any world state to arise quickly, peacefully, rationally. More likely, there will be several would be Napoleons who will try to conquer the world. One of them might even succeed.
Sean
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling,
I forgot to add that, assuming the exposure of the Shadowspawn, that all adults of that subspecies should be executed (quickly, btw). They would all be guilty of mass murder and of inflicting pain and torture on others. Nor could they be trusted not to either refrain from harming others or plotting to seize power.
I would spare Shadowspawn aged 13 or less, provided they were raised to live by some moral norms and not to use their powers to harm or unlawfully coerce others.
Sean
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