Wednesday 20 June 2018

A Simplistic Dichotomy And An Irreconcilable Antithesis

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 34.

Storm's take on the Wardens versus Rangers conflict:

Life as imagined against life as it is;
plan against organic development;
control against freedom;
overriding rationalism against animal wholeness;
the machine against the living flesh.

People on the wrong side:

Draco
Diocletian
Torquemada
Calvin
Locke
Voltaire
Napoleon
Marx
Lenin
Nietzsche
Arguellas
the author(s) of the Jovian Manifesto

Also wrong: the burning of the Confucian Willow Books (?).

Storm sure knows how to present a one-sided argument. When I was reading The Corridors Of Time for the very first time and before I had reached the description of a Ranger city, I thought that the Rangers were right and the Wardens wrong but, of course, the point is that both sides are one-sided.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I recall how the distant successors of the Wardens and Rangers told Malcolm that both sides were wrong/right at the same time. That is, they both stressed something that was good so far that it became bad.

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Martin Luther remarked that human beings are like a drunken peasant trying to ride a horse -- gets on, falls off on one side, gets back on, falls off on the other side.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

A good analogy, despite my dislike for Martin Luther.

Sean