(i) Plunder - goods can be produced without risk at home but more can be won quickly in battle.
(ii) Territorial aggrandizement - some suitable planets unable to resist could be found in the wilderness but Terra has already found and developed many more.
(iii) The great seek glory.
(iv) Their social inferiors seek self-advancement denied to them at home.
(v) Glory and adventure combine with "...that darker longing for submergence of self..." (p. 254) to generate a racial crusade.
The lamentable longing to submerge self is the obverse of the commendable longing to transcend self, formerly practiced by monks and ascetics but now open to all.
5 comments:
Like many historical examples, Scotha is a timocracy -- the ruling classes are essentially warriors in their self-image. They exist to fight, with administration sort of a by-product.
Kaor, Paul!
And the kind of self transcendence you approve of will not be sought by most people, except by those who become monks or nuns. Also, my belief remains that true self transcendence can be attained only by seeking God.
Ad astra and Happy New Year! Sean
Mr Stirling,
I always have to google "timocracy"! I have found 2 meanings: rule by property-owners; rule motivated by ambition or honor.
Paul.
Paul: I had the latter in mind. Feudal Europe was a timocracy. So was Japan, after the Heinan era. The essential focus of their ruling classes was competition for "honor" in a certain specialized sense, rather like Achilles in the Iliad. This gave a special flavor even to run-of-the-mill
China is a contrast: mostly it was ruled by bureaucrats. There were periods (usually after foreign conquests) when it developed timocratic features, usually after a foreign conquest, but the scholar-gentry pattern tended to reassert itself.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that pattern in China of rule by scholar gentry bureaucrats explains why a true aristocracy in the European/Japanese sense faded away in the Middle Kingdom after the rise of the Han Dynasty. Noble titles like Prince, Duke, Marquis, Earl, etc., tended to be merely honorific.
Ad astra and Happy New Year! Sean
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