The Rustum Constitutional Convention is held in Wolfe Hall where Dan Coffin remembers dancing with Mary Lochaber.
Theron Svoboda combines the first name of Theron Wolfe and the surname of the Svobodas. Wolfe and two Svobodas, father and son, featured prominently in earlier installments. Coffin's eldest granddaughter has married one Leo Svoboda.
Morris O'Malley, who addresses the Convention, is the grandson of Jack O'Malley who salvaged equipment with the teenage Dan Coffin. Morris quotes the Bible:
"'Lead us not into temptation.'" (p. 149)
Coffin argues:
"'...the introduction of foreign philosophies, minds strange to our own -...
"'God damn it, that's exactly what we need!'" (p. 155)
This is the familiar Andersonian positive evaluation of human diversity. Coffin convinces Constitutionalist colonials to coexist with Confucianists. We want to read about the advent of the Confucianists but Anderson was not able to continue his many series indefinitely.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And Morris O'Malley tells us what little is known about these neo-Confucianists at the speech he gave at the Constitutional convention: "Today's emigrants are not in search of freedom. That notion is extinct on Earth. They are apparently dissenters, but their dissent is not that of the individual demanding a steelclad bill of rights. What they seek, that puts them in conflict with their authorities, is not certain. It appears to be a kind of neo-Confucianism, though with paradoxical ecstatic elements."
I have to disagree with O'Malley, if these neo-Confucianists were at loggerheads with the World Federation then they did have some notion of freedom (albeit one not quite that of the Constitutionalism of Rustum), a freedom the Federation was somehow denying or infringing on. A conflict serious enough to make the Federation decide it was better to get rid of these troublemakers via emigration.
I have read some of the major Confucian works, such as the ANALECTS, the MENCIUS, and the HSUN-TZU. And I can see why O'Malley was puzzled by these "paradoxical ecstatic elements." The main line of Confucian thought put great stress on sobriety, moderation, self-restraint, etc. Did these "ecstatic elements" come from Taoism?
Sean
Sean,
From Taoism or from Evangelical Christianity? There was some global interaction even in the ancient world and much more now and presumably in the future.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course! There were Christians in China as long ago as the T'ang Dynasty, even if they were mostly heretical Nestorians. And during the Yuan Dynasty, when the Mongols had conquered and unified a vast part of Asia, there were Catholic efforts at evangelizing, including the setting up of a line of bishops in Peking. But it wasn't until the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties that a permanent Catholic presence took root. And we both probably know of how the Maoist regime has been trying to bring the Church in China under state control.
Protestant efforts at evangelizing began in the 19th century, with one of the most spectacular spin offs being the Tainping movement. A truly weird mishmash of standard Protestant beliefs mixed with the Taiping founder's own peculiar ideas (such as also claiming to be God's Son). It was the Taipings who touched off one of most devastating civil wars to afflict China.
Sean
Sean,
In India, I like the story of the St Thomas Christians. Jesuit missionaries arrive and find an episcopal church already there: "Oh, we were founded by St Thomas the Apostle!" (It probably just means in Apostolic succession from Thomas.)
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I recall how we have discussed the Mar Thoma Christians, who mostly use the Syro-Malabar rite. Yes, they were considered to have valid priestly orders and most of them reunited with Rome, becoming one of the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church.
Sean
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