From the roof of the Security Police building:
a cool wind smelling of salt water, chemicals and ozone;
traffic murmur;
soaring gulls;
glinting aircraft;
streets;
bridgeways;
monorails;
green biospaces;
Elliott Bay shining argent;
Cascade snowpeaks against blue sky.
Ceremonial guards salute a VIP called Enrique Sayer as he alights on the roof:
"...ceremony was important. Xuan himself had admitted that humankind remained largely a creature of instinct and emotion. Taming the brain stem and limbic system to the service of the cerebrum would be the work of lifetimes.
"Sayre had progressed sufficiently in the disciplines to recognize, and not to care, that he was physically unimpressive..." (p. 41)
In Poul Anderson's first future history series, the Psychotechnic Institute tried to guide humanity towards self-knowledge whereas Xuan's Avantists aim to enforce uniformity and conformity.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But uniformity and conformity are precisely what all totalitarian regimes and leveling, flattening ideologies intolerant of human individuality wants. Which is why I advocate the limited state, in whatever forms it may take.
Ad astra! Sean
It would be more accurate to say they intend to enforce -their conception- of self-knowledge.
Right. A conception of self-knowledge, not real self-knowledge which cannot be forced. An important distinction.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I can see that, esp. when I recall the rote memorization of the Marxists scriptures in the USSR and the grotesque mass demonstrations and "struggle sessions" of Mao's China during the last decade of his life. Both regimes were brutally imposing their false view of self knowledge on the Russians and Chinese.
Ad astra! Sean
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