After breakfast, Flandry is taken through the garden where, yet again, natural beauty confronts social oppression:
coolness;
abundant "...green odors..." (p. 94);
large purple blossoms;
beds of scarlet and yellow flowers;
gravel walks;
water splashing from carved basins, flowing beneath decorative bridges;
willow groves;
darting gold birds;
buildings in styles that have changed over centuries;
black fused stone of the oldest section;
guarded doors;
battlements with robot guns;
a bowing attendant...
Antitoxin not shared but hoarded.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Just a matter of terminology, but conservatives like me tend to not bother with qualifiers like "social" before "oppression." Tyranny is oppressive, whether or not "social." I find such language to be empty verbiage.
Biocontrol was not so much hoarding the antitoxin as MONOPOLIZING it, to sell at exorbitant prices. Even given the obsolete technology being used, the real cost of manufacturing the antitoxin, per pill, was only a few coppers. In an honest set up, I think a pill should cost only somewhere between five and ten coppers. And even cheaper using Imperial tech.
Money is shorthand for labor or resources of all kinds. An end to Biocontrol's monopoly would have freed up enormous resources on Unan Besar for vastly more productive uses.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I meant to contrast NATURAL beauty with SOCIAL oppression, thus two opposed adjectives each qualifying an opposed noun. Otherwise, oppression would not have needed "social." Sometimes I contrast conscious sensation with unconscious sensitivity even though sensation is conscious and therefore does not usually need the adjective.
Biocontrol IS monopolizing rather than hoarding. In fact, they do not hoard antitoxin but deliberately limit its production. Their ideology justifies this.
Paul.
I think I see what the issue is, though. Some people think that instances of oppression are occasional aberrations involving only particular individuals or groups whereas an alternative and indeed quite widespread point of view is that oppression is permanently built into certain social relationships. However, all that I want to do here and now is to note the fact of the existence of that second point of view, not to initiate a debate as to whether the point of view is valid. That is too much to come out of single use of the adjective, "social"!
Kaor, Paul!
I was puzzled because "social oppression" didn't seem to make sense to me. If you had said "political oppression," then I would have understood you. That would have meant the rulers of the state using its coercive powers to bend all others to their will. Regardless of "social relationships," which I also find vague.
We do agree, I am glad to say, on what Biocontrol was doing with the antitoxin, limiting its production and monopolizing it to force all others to yield to it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Social relationships" are what we live in!
If there is widespread, deep-rooted prejudice against a particular minority, then members of that minority are oppressed by that prejudice (deprived of jobs, housing, opportunities etc) and that oppression is socially, not politically, based - although, no doubt, some politicians will see fit to reinforce it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That does clarify what you meant. A definition I agree with. Popular rather than political/legal oppression.
Ad astra! Sean
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