"Saunders finally sat alone under a moon that glittered with the diamond points of domed cities, beside a softly lapping artificial lake, and watched the constellations wheel overhead - the far suns that man had conquered without mastering himself." (p. 236)
That is what we expect in sf: unchanged mankind traversing space. However, over twenty thousand years later:
"New techniques of mathematical psychology made it possible to unite the peoples of a billion worlds and rule them effectively." (CHAPTER THREE, p. 242)
- the aim of the psychohistorians in Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation and of the psychotechnicians in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic Institute.
However, this cannot just mean socioeconomic relationships as before, the only innovation being that politicians and their advisers now know how to manipulate the masses whatever the latter happen to suffer in terms of war, unemployment or poverty. A genuine advance in psychology has to mean an increase in individual and collective self-knowledge, self-understanding, self-organization and psycho-physical integration and, if effective mathematical psychology is combined with regular interstellar travel, then it must also be combined with technological advances that would make material causes of war and poverty obsolete.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
You beat me to mentioning Asimov's psychohistorians or Anderson's psychotechnicians! Frankly, I remain totally skeptical that any such "science" of history and mankind will ever become real.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is unlikely but, if it were to happen, then it would mean a change of every aspect of society, not just one.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I think such a system would, possibly, work only if all mankind was was unified within a single state and society. Absent that, no, it can't work because human affairs are so chaotic and unpredictable.
Even a single world gov't probably would collapse from sheer massiveness.
Ad astra! Sean
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