Lady Sandra Tamarin:
"'The highborn of Hermes have their customs and taboos, also for the correct way to die. What else is man, if not a set of customs and taboos?'" (p. 155)
Man is also reason and morality but maybe custom and taboo suffice for the Hermetian aristocracy? Reason overcomes custom. The immorality of, e.g., child abuse, is not a mere taboo like, e.g., a dietary prohibition. By asking, "What else is man...?," Lady Sandra invites reasoned discussion and thus goes beyond custom.
In which sf novel does a character say, "Man doesn't think. He only thinks he thinks..."? This is not quite self-contradictory because it means: "He only imagines that he reasons." However, the character who says it claims to have reasoned to that conclusion.
(One of Asimov's Robot stories has the appropriate Biblical title: "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him.")
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That bit about "customs and taboos" was not meant by Lady Sandra to be taken too seriously or too far. That said, all nations have customs and taboos, some of them seemingly irrational.
Ad astra! Sean
Reason is a tool. What you use it for is set at a far deeper level. Or as the philosopher puts it, you can reason -from- a moral intuition, but not -to- one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I remember that essay Chesterton wrote in defense of walls and fences. His argument was that before you tear down a seemingly irrational "wall," the would be reformer should first understand why the wall was built. Otherwise, once you tear it down, you might find yourself prey to a host of totally unexpected problems.
Ad astra! Sean
Or as Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying (paraphrasing Chesterton, I think) “A tradition is a solution to a forgotten problem. But “forgotten” doesn’t mean that it’s gone away.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactrly! A tradition might be "irrational," but getting rid of it is no guarantee the problem it was meant to solve has gone away! I am so tired of radicals and their usually disastrous ideas and "solutions" to our problems.
Ad astra! Sean
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