Cultural Synthesis

The People Of The Wind, VI.

"'...the movement into the choths has begun snowballing.'" (p. 510)

Tabitha means the movement of Avalonian human beings into choths. But do the Ythrians not fear dilution of their ethos? They resist incorporation into the Terran Empire because that would involve unrestricted immigration. Of course, the two issues are not the same. Every human being on Avalon does not automatically join a choth. On the contrary, Imperial immigrants would probably strengthen the human institution, the Parliament of Man.

I began this post because I wanted to discuss Tabitha's observation that human choth members "'...have gotten pretty good at picking up face and body cues.'" (p. 510)

Human beings do this already, of course. The face evolved as a signalling device. A comic strip scripted by Garth Ennis had an authentic piece of Northern Irish dialogue with a woman asking her brother (of their younger sister), "D'ye see the face on her?" So maybe "birds" will develop a new language that is not just sounds but also face and body movements modeled on Planha with its twitching, rippling feathers? Human beings will become very alien after many generations on another planet shared with another intelligent species. Tabitha knows of the Ythrian Old Faith but had never heard of Homer although, of course, his epics are in Library Central and the scholar, Arinnian, is able to quote them. What will the eventual cultural synthesis be like, in the time of Dominic Flandry and Erannath and beyond?