-John Buchan, John Macnab (Edinburgh, 2018), FOURTEEN, p. 224.
This passage is doubly relevant to Poul Anderson's works. First, Anderson, celebrating human social diversity, shows us societies that are very far from democratic. David Falkayn, an aristocrat, says that he prefers aristocracy.
Secondly, Anderson's heroes are usually superior in intelligence, initiative, intrepidness and many other admirable qualities. No society should stifle such abilities but different societies generate different expessions of human abilities.
I would not be able to compete with Nicholas van Rijn as an entrepreneur, with David Falkayn as a trade pioneer, with Dominic Flandry as an intelligence officer or with Gratillonius as the king of a city-state but I would match any of them as a philosopher.
Despite Buchan's remarks of nearly a hundred years ago, what do we now need for an optimal society? At least:
equality before the law;
equality of opportunity;
universal suffrage.
Voting requires literacy and access to news media. In Britain, people in residential care officially "need" not only food etc but also access to television. To be culturally informed, we need to be able to read Homer, Plato and the New Testament in translation and also, if we want to, to study the original Greek. Reading Buchan and Anderson is both enjoyable and instructive.
If I lived on Hermes in Falkayn's time, then I would campaign for some reforms - which Anderson shows us happening.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I share Buchan's (and by extension, Anderson's own skepticism) melancholy about democracy. I see far more tyrannies and despotisms of various kinds over vast parts of the Earth than I do true democracies.
"Equality" before the law has to be defined and used very carefully. It should mean only that no one, rich or poor, wise or foolish, will be unjustly favored over another. And, of course we will, like it or not, often fail to live up to such an ideal. Because of corruption, malice, partisan bias, etc.
And "equality" should NEVER be used for either denying human beings are all different from each other and have varying capabilities or trying to force everyone to live the same way, be no different in economic status from each other, or believe that everyone is the same as everyone else.
I'm a little puzzled by your insistence on the need for "reforms" on Hermes during the reign of Grand Duchess Sandra. WHAT reforms? As described by Anderson, Hermes compares very favorably to most existing, actual nations here and now. The flaws and imperfections I saw did not seem intolerable or impossible to ameliorate. There was no NEED for the tyranny of Benoni Strang!
Sean
Sean,
There was inequality in voting rights. Some changes were eventually conceded - without needing a tyranny, of course.
Paul.
Sean,
Surely it was not necessary to ask WHAT reforms? I am sure you remember that different classes had unequal numbers of votes and that there was already an open political campaign on this very issue quite apart from the dictatorship imposed, with alien military force, by a single fanatic?
Of course we can continue to discuss the rights or wrongs of the Hermetian system but on the basis of remembering its complexity and its diverse factions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, there were Hermetians who did not have the right to vote. But they were also the ones who did not pay taxes. It's correct to point out the complexities of Hermetian society--and there were trade offs and compensations for those who did not have the franchise. Such as the one I pointed out above.
Sean
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