There has been combox discussion of social homogenization on future Earth. While examining the zoo ship, chief engineer Yamamura turns "...a patient brown face..." (p.578) toward van Rijn.
Van Rijn says:
"'Even to a union organizer, obvious this ship was never made by fishes or birds.'" (p. 579)
He negotiates with intelligent union organizers but feels obliged to denigrate them in conversation.
One of the kinds of alien animals has "...faceless heads..." (ibid.)
Which would be more intimidating? An ugly, frightening face or a faceless head?
That is all for this breakfast time. I will visit Ketlan for lunch and we will watch an episode of American Gods.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I suspect Yamamura was one of those crewmen who soon realized Old Nick just putting on an act!
Yes, my belief is that the fact Earth achieved some degree of unification with the rise of the Solar Commonwealth, the discovery of a FTL drive, and the beginning of mankind's first interstellar civilization led to a large degree of merging and homogenization of Earth's peoples. And one consequence would be that not everybody on Earth would think that was good. It would be a strong motivation for discontented people to leave Earth and found colonies on other worlds where they could live as they thought best. Anderson himself thought that would happen, given the right circumstances.
Sean
Like the mass extinction of species, I find the mass extinction of different human languages saddening. According to Ethnologue (https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/status) ~3,000 of ~7,000 human languages are in some stage of decline.
I do look forward to new languages, dialects, and cultures mixing and forming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnogenesis, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/10/changing-face-america/)
At the same time, we have a long way to go around the world- Brazil has a very heterogeneous society, but there seems to be a a value placed on "whiteness," as we see in India where Bollywood stars are very light-skinned as a rule., and of course there's here in the US (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/08/us/census-race-map.html).
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
And one big reason for why I desire to see the rise of new nations, cultures, societies, off Earth is because that would make it impossible for any fanatical ideology to corral all of mankind within one smothering, overwhelming, crushing, and oppressive system.
Sean
A noble desire. For the foreseeable future, living in space will be like being on a very tightly controlled, regimented oil drilling rig or Antarctic base, because without such restrictions- WE WILL DIE!
As Rick "Rocketpunk Manifest" Robinson said (http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2010/11/first-stage.html):
"I think that by far the most likely human space future, through the 22nd century and well beyond - in short, through the midfuture - is far more like Antarctica than Heinlein: a chain of scientific and technological outposts, gradually extending outward.
Space is remote, costly to reach, difficult to live and work in, implacably indifferent to human life, and filled with things that fascinate us."
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
But I've never denied that, at least at first, truly getting off this rock into space will be slow, difficult, costly, etc. I recommend, with only one or two caveats, Robert Zubrin and Richard Wagner's book THE CASE FOR MARS, as as serious, hard headed examination of how to get to Mars and then LIVE there.
Sean
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