Wednesday, 13 June 2018

Carelo Keajimu II

In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), assembling their host through history fills more than ten years of Jack Havig's and Leonce's lifespans but how do they know this? Unless they keep a careful record of weeks, months etc spent in each era, the figure can only be an estimate. And they do not have the Time Patrol's advantage of antisenescence.

Summarizing Havig's report on the post-Maurai period, Carelo Keajimu, in XI, pp. 125, says that:

most of mankind will reject not only "scientism" but also science itself;

they will keep only whatever "...ossified technology..." is necessary for world maintenance;

becoming more contemplative and mystical, they will seek enlightenment from sages who will look within themselves;

yet, at the same time, spires will hum and shimmer with energy in the pastoral landscapes while enormous ships made of force, not of metal, glide through the otherwise empty sky;

there will be a strange dichotomy between two concepts that the Maurai had tried to balance - science, rationality, planning and control on the one hand and myth, liberation of the psyche and man as an organic part of nature on the other.

I have summarized the post-Maurai period in:

Reconnoitering The Future
The Best Of Humanity

These posts summarize Havig's further visit to the later period after he had spoken to Keajimu. I think that the summaries show not a dichotomy but a balance between contemplation and technology:

there is atomic-powered, robot-crewed commerce;
households have holographic communicators;
children learn from an electronic educational network.

This technology is not ossified but integrated into a contemplative lifestyle.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I think it would be necessary for Jack Havig to have careful records kept of the "timing" of where and when he and his associates went while preparing the assault on the Eyrie. Otherwise the whole thing would most likely fall into chaos and hence failure.

And I don't BUY the idea of most of mankind becoming mystical and contemplative. That has never been characteristic of more than a very small minority.

Sean