Chunderban Desai, High Commissioner of the Virgilian System:
"'...sedition, sabotage, and violence are growing so fast across the whole planet. We need [troops] to patrol the streets of, say, Nova Roma.'" (p. 190)
Then why not a referendum on secession from the Empire? A public debate and vote instead of troops on the streets?
James Blish's Mark Hazleton, acting Mayor of New York and of the Greater Magellanic Cloud:
"'I'll be mayor about two days longer, if my luck holds...
"...the whole planet is swarming with farm kids with fanatical expressions and dismounted spindillies. As soon as they get to me, I'm going to surrender out of hand - you know as well as I do what one of those machines can do, and the farmers are using them as side-arms. I'm not going to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives just to maintain my administration; if they want me out, they can have me out.'"
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER FIVE, p. 535.
(A "spindilly" is an anti-gravity device used as a weapon.)
Hazleton's situation sounds even more precarious than Desai's... But "...if they want me out, they can have me out..." is an excellent motto. Why does anyone want to use troops to control a population that does not want him in power?
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Sorry, I have to disagree. No major nation willing DISINTEGRATES, which is what the policy you advocate would result for the Empire. Nor do I agree that "discontent" of the kind here mentioned is always justified. To say nothing, of course, of how Aycharaych and Merseia were stirring up trouble on Aeneas as a means of weakening and splitting apart the Empire.
Ad astra! Sean
General Sherman had the right reply to secessionism...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! The US preferred to fight a long and bloody civil war rather than to let itself be split apart. And Gen. Sherman did his bit by BREAKING the Confederacy thru his March to the Sea and the Carolinas campaign in 1864-65.
Ad astra! Sean
I thought that "General Sherman" was a personification of the tank, then I remembered that the tank was named after someone!
Kaor, Paul!
Ha, that was amusing! And I've even read the MEMOIRS of both Sherman and Grant. And I really should look up one or two memoirs by Confederate generals as well.
Ad astra! Sean
When it comes to nations, generally speaking "bigger is better" -- simply because that reduces violence and increases the possibilities of fruitful interaction and cooperation, by having more people and territory under one law and government.
The problem is that "bigger causes problems", because while behaviorally flexible, human beings are designed by evolution to operate in smallish, intimate groups bound by very close bonds.
There's an analogous phenomenon with language.
Languages spread, which is good because more people can communicate; but under natural conditions, geographically widespread languages develop regional differentiations that make them less mutually comprehensible.
(Try talking to a Glaswegian, sometime.)
If you find a language that is both widespread and uniform, that's prima facie evidence of a recent spread.
For example, a 4th century CE observer from Gaul, from the modern city of Trier, noted that he could understand the language spoken in "Galatia" (what's now central Turkey).
We know from chronicles that a horde of migrating Celts in the 270's BCE came down from the Danube valley, bounced around, and mainly ended up in Asia Minor. Evidently 500 years later, their language was still similar to the Gallic vernacular in the Rhone Valley.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Another possibility is to make a widely used language and the preferred ways of speaking the standard form to be taught in schools. We used to have something called American standard English, which at one time might have culturally unified the US. Before this current nonsense about "diversity" and multilingualism came along!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: oh, it does anyway. 60% of Americans of Hispanic origin are unilingual in English, for example -- among the third generation, it's over 80%. This is the same three-generation trajectory that immigrants here have always undergone, except for a few enclaves like the Amish or Hassidics. And even they 'lose' a lot of their youngsters.
People generally don't learn (or keep up) languages that aren't useful to them; it's too much work.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good, I'm glad! The US (and the UK) needs SOME culturally unifying factors. And I hope the nonsense about encouraging "bilingualism" soon stops.
Ad astra! Sean
If members of a minority community can learn English (or French etc as appropriate) while retaining their original language for domestic use, cultural events etc, then surely this enriches the whole of society? I would love to be bi- or multilingual but am not motivated enough to put in the work to do it.
It is also an interesting experience to attend a meeting where the speaker has to communicate through an interpreter. This slows down the discussion, giving us more time to think and reflect, and makes us directly aware of the international context of everything that we do.
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