Thursday, 8 October 2020

Instability, Ideology And Insight

(This afternoon, Aileen and Yossi photographed deer on the Dallam Tower Estate. See image.)

"Flight to Forever."

Remembering "...all the mighty dominions which had fallen to dust through the millennia...," (CHAPTER THREE, p. 243) Saunders suggests to aristocratic representatives of the Galactic Empire in AD 25,296 "...that this civilization too was not immortal..." but he is "...immediately snowed under with figures, facts, logic, the curious paramathematical symbolism of modern mass psychology. It could be shown rigorously that the present setup was inherently stable - and already ten thousand years of history had given no evidence to upset that science...." (ibid.)

This sounds like typical ideology. The powerful and comfortable want their society to be inherently stable so they prove that it is. At least, they convince themselves and Saunders lacks the resources to reply to them.

We are told that one of the mainstays of the Empire is the ancient and highly evolved race of the planet, Vro-Hi, and, in AD 50,000, a Vro-Hi philosopher tells Saunders:

"'I have proved rigorously that permanence is a self-contradictory concept.'" (CHAPTER FOUR, p. 262)

We have passed from human ideology to trans-human insight. This chapter is entitled: End of Empire.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Just because the Imperial representatives Saunders met were "powerful and comfortable" doesn't mean they were speaking from bad faith. Or that the arguments, facts, figures, etc., Saunders was inundated were false, AT that time. Esp. if the Empire was being well governed and most people in it were happy.

But I agree with Saunders' main point, it was not likely that the Empire would ALWAYS be as happy and fortunate as it was just then.

Ad astra! Sean