Thursday 3 October 2019

Personal Interactions

Poul Anderson, The Devil's Game (New York, 1980), INTERVAL ONE.

Orestes Cruz speaks:

"'I do follow you in truth,' Orestes said. 'You get more out of the workers if they live in better kennels; your genetic research produces trees that wear out the soil faster than ever before - Oh, yes.'" (p. 28)

After varied responses from the rest of the company:

"Matt managed to say, 'I know your kind, Cruz -'" (ibid.)

Authentic interactions and highly relevant to the world in 2019. Because Cruz criticizes the current economic system, Matt categorizes him as a particular "kind" of person. But are Cruz's criticisms valid? Workers deserve not to live in "hovels." (p. 27) Here there is a convergence between their human rights and their employers' business interests. Are our production methods degrading our environment? A lot of current scientific data say yes.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I remember Orestes Cruz, and I consider his views on politics and economics to be mostly wrong and invalid. And because he seems to have been a genuinely decent person, he would probably have been purged and shot by harder "comrades" after a revolutionary regime seized power. Shades of Stalin cynically saying a single person's death was a tragedy but a million deaths was only a statistic!

Ad astra! Sean