The titles, There Will Be Time and Orion Shall Rise, are complete sentences, both in the future tense, and both novels are connected to the Maurai series of short stories.
"North America, Europe, parts of Asia and South America, fewer parts of Africa, hit bottom because they were overextended. Let the industrial-agricultural-medical complexes they had built be paralyzed for the shortest of whiles, and people would begin dying by the millions. The scramble of survivors for survival would bring everything else down in wreck." (p. 75)
If a short paralysis can kill millions, then society must urgently be reorganized on a more sustainable basis.
HG Wells's Time Traveler:
"...saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), EPILOGUE, p. 101.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And socialism is not the way for "...society must urgently be reorganized on a more sustainable basis." Because that inevitably means concentrating ever more power in the state, meaning yet more reliance on coercion and ab inefficient bureaucracy. With all the waste, corruption, despotism, inefficiencies, etc., that means.
Broadly speaking, only free enterprise economics and the limited state, in whatever form, will WORK. And has been shown to work when they have been allowed to. And for the future survival of such ideas and a high tech society, we need to get off Earth and start developing the resources of the Solar System.
And nonsense like "green" sources of "renewable" sources of energy will not work because windmills, solar panels on roofs, hydro, etc., can't possibly provide the vast amounts of energy a high tech society needs. So, UNLESS we finally get serious getting off Earth, we have no choice but to continue using coal and oil (natural gas being the cleanest form of the fossil fuels).
And we should also get serious about using nuclear power, instead of ignorantly and stupidly demonizing it. An up to date nuclear power plant is NOTHING like the dinosaur the Soviets were using at Chernobyl!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not going to be drawn yet again on what we might or might not mean by "socialism"! But here are two points:
it has been scientifically predicted that continued use of fossil fuels will cause an irreversible catastrophe soon;
if people realize that cooperation has become necessary for survival, then maybe they will need less coercion - as in a war effort?
I suppose that we can be coerced by a (preferably democratic and accountable) government or by the the laws of nature?
I hope that a high tech society can be preserved but there might be circumstances in which survival comes first, restoration of high tech later?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Your first point: accepting what you say as true, what is the right policy to follow? Since I don't agree left wing ideas are workable, good, or even likely to succeed, I would still argue for the kind policies advocated by Robert Zubrin in his book THE CASE FOR SPACE.
Your second point is also not likely to come true. You are asking for world unity or agreement in about ten years. Which is simply not going to happen! How are you going to persuade China and India, for example, to give up using brown coal (among the worse pollutants)?
Also, I simply don't see jealously independent or ambitious nations giving up any sovereignty in order to pursue a unified world wide policy. Unless forcibly unified by a single power.
Any worldwide, reasonably democratic World Federation faces the same hurdles of not going to happen anytime soon and overcoming resistance by many nations into surrendering at least part of their sovereignty.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
What is the right policy is a matter for governments that have taken scientific advice.
Surely all our criticism should not be just of other countries? China and India can argue that they are following the example of others. That goes on forever.
Paul.
It is true that a UN scientific advisory committee predicted a catastrophe.
4 years ago, the US elected as President a climate change denier who has subsequently closed down government agencies for monitoring the environment. The climate crisis is the responsibility of all governments of which the most powerful is the US - which could surely set an example and give a lead.
Kaor, Paul!
And I believe the kind of advice offered by Robert Zubrin (who really does KNOW science) is what will work best.
I mentioned China and India because, like it or not, they are notoriously among the worse pollutors. Also, I'm sick of the endless bashing of the US as being an esp. wicked pollutor when I KNOW it has been one of those countries which has made real strides over the past forty plus years in controlling pollution. And I think that is prob. true of the UK as well.
Ad astra! Sean
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