Ivar: "'Your race doesn't have our idea of government.'"
Erannath: "'It's irrelevant to us. My fellow Avalonians who are of human stock have come to think likewise.'" (16, p. 196)
So, by this time, have all human Avalonians abandoned the Parliament of Man and joined choths to participate in Khruaths?
Erannanth asks:
"'What is freedom, except having one's particular cage reach further than one cares to fly?'" (ibid.)
This image of a cage whose sides are below our horizon, so to put it, appears somewhere else in Anderson's works. Where? It seems to have two possible interpretations. Elsewhere, it definitely means that we remain unfree even in an enlarged cage whereas here Erannath says:
"'You see no narrowing of your freedom in whatever the requirements may be for a politically independent Alpha Crucis region, any more than you see a narrowing of it in laws against murder or robbery. These imperatives accord with your desires. But others may feel otherwise.'" (ibid.)
This remains ambiguous. Freedom is not narrowed by laws against murder although it would be better to live in a society where no one ever had a motive for murder. Laws against robbery imply a property-owning society. Such societies have not always existed, need not always exist and certainly place restrictions on freedom. The earliest form of property comprised herds and slaves. Now, most of us are free to sell our labor power (ability to work) but are not guaranteed to find an employer. There is the capacity to produce enough food to feed everyone yet some people continue to starve.
That was the second time on this page of The Day Of Their Return that Erannath asked "What is freedom....?" The first time, he answered:
"'What is freedom? To do as you, an individual, choose? Then how can you be certain that a fragment of the Empire will not make still greater demands on you? I should think it would have to.'" (ibid.)
Freedom as "unmolested elbow room" was what the founders of Avalon wanted. Also, freedom in that sense is possible inside a sufficiently enlarged cage.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think the humans of Avalon have abandoned the Parliament of Man and its President. More likely, its powers and functions had been limited even more strictly than it had been at the time of THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND, in a very libertarian direction.
And I don't believe in IMPLAUSIBILITIES such as dreamy ideas of a society where there will be no motives for murder or robbery. Such crimes are not caused by merely external factors but by the INTERNAL desires of the perpetrator. And the actual history and behavior of humans gives me no confidence such a society will ever exist.
I don't believe in the idea that it's somehow an evil for property to be owned by human beings. Nor do I believer there were ever such societies. Even the most primitive hunter/gatherer societies had property, if only the tools, weapons, clothing, household gear, etc., a man or woman might have. And I believe even LESS in the fantasy of a future society not having property.
And btw, starvation is a lot less common now than it was even a century ago. And that was due precisely to free enterprise economics and the ideas and innovations it fosters. Where starvation exists now is mostly because of bad and blundering gov'ts.
As for the problem of underutilized labor, we may be starting to see the beginnings of what Poul Anderson speculated about in stories aw early as "Quixote And the Windmill," mass unemployment caused by rapid and far ranging technological advances. For the immediate future (say, 100 years), the best that might be hoped for is some form of the "citizen's credit" mentioned in "Quixote" enabling most to live in reasonable comfort. But that will do nothing to solve problems caused by ennui, boredom, a sense of uselessness, and the despair that will caused. Longer range, mankind NEEDS to get off this rock to settle other worlds--not only because that will be good in itself but also because it would provide an outlet, a FRONTIER for otherwise frustrated persons.
First we start with the Solar System and then onwards to the stars!
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
Yeah, forensic archaeology indicate that hunter-gatherer and pre-State neolithic societies have very high rates of interpersonal violence; much higher than ours, and considerably higher than in say medieval times (when it was about four to eight times higher than ours).
Note that by our standards these were societies where nobody had much in the way of material possessions and social hierarchies were rather rudimentary.
Power and wealth are always -relative-. It's what you have -relative to those you interact with- that's the important factor.
Being Big Man of a village of sixteen families and having three more goats than X can invoke passions just as savage as any we know; and hatred of Clan X ditto.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exaxctly! You elaborated and expanded on what I said. Compared to the most advanced societies of today, life was nasty, brutish, and short (Hobbesian allusion!) in hunter/gatherer and Neolithic times. It took the rise of the kind of societies so many of our more dreamy types lament about today to even begin improving on that!
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean: well, there were drawbacks along the way.
Civilization let people -do- much more than previous arrangements, for good and ill -- which enabled them to exaggerate tendencies our remote ancestors developed in another context.
An organized State can control and limit day-to-day violence. It can also fight battles like Cannae or Passchendaele, where my grandfather was gassed.
And while human males always competed for status and the associated mating/reproductive opportunities, nobody in a hunter-gatherer band was going to end up with 6000 offspring like Sultan Moulai Ismail of Morrocco, or with 10% of a continent descended from him, like Genghis Khan.
6000! I am proud of my one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And all three of US, you, myself, and Paul might be descended from Genghis Khan! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
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