great achievements but also continued conflicts;
civilizations that rise but also fall;
growing knowledge opposed by resurgent superstition and even by vile ignorance ("I'm no kin to the monkey!")
Poul Anderson's fiction charts the duality of man through various civilizations, for example in the Roman Empire, the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire. After Technic civilization:
"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 722.
Either conflict has ended or the next conflict has not been met yet.
When there is interminable wrangling in the Time Patrol:
"Everard glared out the window, into the prehuman night, and wondered if the sabertooths weren't doing a better job after all than their simian successors."
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228 AT 8, p. 221.
The struggles and achievements of mankind are Anderson's major theme.
Whatever our philosophy, we need to acknowledge complex duality but avoid simplistic dualism. This is something that I heard from a preacher as I passed him in Market Square:
"God created us to be His companions but, because it is in our nature to do so, we turn against Him!"
When I walked back, he was saying:
"In my experience, an explosion just makes a big mess!"
So God created us but not our nature? It is in our nature to oppose the purpose of our Creator and to turn against the Being Whose companions we were created to be? And scientific cosmogony is to be ridiculed and dismissed?
The preacher rightly recognized duality but explained it by assuming it. Thus, dualism - which is in fact a Christian heresy. And we are back to what I said at the start of this post: growing knowledge opposed by resurgent superstition.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The comment about how some superstitious persons say silly things like "I'm no kin to the monkey" makes me think you had evangelical Protestants in mind (whether or not they were low church Anglicans). I wonder how such persons ACCOUNT for now DNA analysis has shown how closely related humans are to chimps???
And I disagree with Daven Laure's naive comment. He merely happened to have the good luck to live in a happy and prosperous time in the Commonalty's history. Conflict would certainly rear up its head once some internal or external crisis threatened the Commonalty.
And "Star Fog" DOES show conflict. I.e., the conflict between the desire of the Kirkasanters to find their lost home and what the Commonalty would be able or willing to do to help find that planet. There was even a kind of conflict, for a time, between Laure and his AI! So, I'm skeptical that "conflict" will ever be removed from human life.
Sean
Sean,
Google "I'm no kin to the monkey!" you will be amazed.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will, and I do believe such persons exist. And, of how, all too often, they also believe in the most vicious anti-Catholic slanders.
Sean
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