"More and more [Chee Lan] was discovering how conservative these Ikranankans were, how suspicious of everything new. That accounted for their being still prescientific, in spite of a fantastically long recorded history. She hadn't yet developed any explanation for the attitude itself." (p. 139)
See:
And, since we always like to find parallels between the Technic History and the Time Patrol series:
"'What you have rescued is that fruitful tension between Church and state out of which, despite every pettiness, blunder, corruption, farce, and tragedy - out of which grew the first real knowledge of the universe and the first strong ideal of liberty. For what you did, be neither arrogant nor guilt-laden; be glad.'
"The wind cried, the sea growled nearer."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART SIX, 1990 A. D., p. 434.
(The wind has its say.)
20 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We might have seen something similar on Earth if Pharaohnic Egypt had survived to our times more or less the same, culturally and politically, as it was at the time of its conquest by Alexander the Great. As time passed we see the Ptolemaic Dynasty becoming Egyptianized.
And I agree with what Anderson wrote about that fruitful tension between Church and State in THE SHIELD OF TIME.
Ad astra! Sean
If all the changes you can observe or have experienced or have been told about are bad, you're going to be hostile to the concept of change.
Note that optimism is not always a good thing.
Eg., in 1914, all the wars in Europe (and most of those by Europeans overseas) within living memory had been short, decisive, and had achieved lasting positive results for the winners.
This lead to a widespread optimism about using war in Europe to rearrange things. Particularly by Germans, where the Wars of Unification (including the Franco-Prussian war) in the 1864-71 period were perceived as triumphantly successful and more than worth the cost.
Also, some people see child poverty elsewhere in the world and conclude not that there should be no child poverty but that "If that has to happen to any child, then it must not happen to mine." Therefore, the status quo, with child poverty happening elsewhere, must be preserved.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I certainly don't agree all changes are bad! Some, like "legalized" abortion, I will never agree to be good. I put abortionists on the same level as child sex traffickers.
I do agree that optimism is not always wise or good. Otto von Bismarck did not share that optimism by Germans that their wars would be short, decisive, and victorious. Something Wilehlm II seemed to have agreed with in his shrewder or wiser moments.
Paul: I'm sorry, but I don't think your comment here really makes much sense. The FIRST responsibility of any man or woman with children is to care for THEM first. They cannot help every child in the world, after all. Their families and countries has to come first.
And my view remains that only free enterprise economics and the limited state, under whatever form, will improve the status quo in less fortunate parts of the world.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The free market maintains both prosperity and poverty like the apex and base of a pyramid.
Paul.
Paul: if that were so, then the free market would exacerbate poverty compared to other systems of organization.
But it's demonstrable that this is not the case -- other systems produce more poverty, not less.
Global poverty as a share of the total population has decreased radically since the end of WWII, and even faster since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Deng's conversion of China from a command economy to a quasi-capitalistic one.
Or as a businessman once said to me, "You can make money off poor people, but you make a lot more off ones with more money."
To illustrate: if the poorest 50% of the world's population were to disappear into another dimension tomorrow, what would be the economic effect?
Well, there would be initial disruption; but after a period of adjustment, it's virtually inevitable that there would be a major boom and vast increases in wealth among that (already wealthy) 4 billion or so.
OTOH, if the -richest- half of the world's population were to disappear tomorrow, the poorer half would suffer a catastrophic decline in their already low standard of living. Half of them would probably be dead within a year.
Kaor, Paul!
I missed this comment of yours. And it's simply NOT borne out by hard, actual facts. As Stirling explained.
Ad astra! Sean
No? There is increasing poverty in Britain right now.
I question the idea that, if the 50% richest disappeared, the rest would merely suffer. That is one possibility, obviously. Others are:
that some people would take charge and run society at least as well or as badly as it was before;
that a larger number would look for an alternative, would take control of their destinies and would run things significantly better than before.
Ahead of us lie alternative possibilities. Don't underestimate people.
Paul: globalization has increased the area of labor competition. In 1950 it didn't matter to people in Britain what wage rates were in China, and mattered very little what they were in India, because they weren't competing against them. For a whole bunch of reasons; tariffs, frictional trade costs, regulation of capital flows, etc.
Now they are competing.
Incomes at the lower end in -developed- countries have stagnated; but they've increased markedly in the -rest- of the world.
So the -global- level of poverty has decreased markedly.
Well, that is good but the world still manages to be in one hell of a bad state right now as we have discussed before.
Paul: if the richest 50% disappeared, far more than 50% of the skills, organization, markets and so forth necessary to keep things functioning would go with them. The efficiency of exchange and ROI would drop catastrophically.
We're talking of systems that are as complex as living organisms and which collapse if everything doesn't keep functioning continuously.
I can think of dozens of countries that would be immediately plunged into mass famine and whose quasi-failed states would collapse into vicious anarchy.
Eventually there would be a recovery, but it would take a long time and in the meantime half the remaining human race at least would just die of hunger and violence.
By contrast, the richer half would merely be -inconvenienced- in the short term if the poorer half vanished.
Coffee and tea would shoot up in price, for instance. But staples wouldn't; the wheat entering international trade is grown with advanced methods by big farmers.
Probably within a decade, the per-capita income of the remainder would double or more.
There wouldn't be a mass drag of illiterate, low-productivity people any more.
Incentive structures would change -- for example, there's machinery that can pick raspberries more cheaply than hand labor, but the high capital cost slows the rate of transition. Things like that would shoot up, and the medium-term result would be vastly increased productivity.
In essence, the poorest need the richest far more than the richest need the poorest.
That is a new perspective certainly. We need to move away from this fragility and vulnerability of the global system and also to unleash the potential talents of the entire population.
My idea of optimal human beings would be an entire world population enjoying the full benefits of advanced technology but ALSO equipped and able to cope and survive if the technology failed. That is asking a lot - but I do not think that we should put any limits on what human beings might be capable of in future.
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree with Stirling's analysis, not yours. Because your views simply don't fit the FACTS, of what actual human beings are. And of how they interact with each other, in both bad and good ways.
Broadly speaking, only free enterprise economics and the limited state works, not Utopian dreams of "optimal human beings."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We have progressed and can (not inevitably will) progress further.
Paul.
Paul: we've been making steady progress in the direction of universal "development" over the past couple of generations.
Eg., in 1980, China was an overwhelmingly peasant nation, and rather poor peasants at that, comparable with some African countries.
Right now, it's a middle-income, predominantly urbanized country, comparable to Mexico.
That's a transition involving 25% or so of the human race.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: But I do NOT expect that "progress" to end in any kind of "transformation" of the human race that you seem to hope for.
Mr. Stirling: Problem is, China also has a corrupt, tyrannical, and brutal gov't, a totalitarian one party regime which remains in power solely by fear and force. If such a HIGH STRESS regime collapses violently, then much of the economic progress China has made since the 1980's might be reversed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But our ancestors transformed themselves from animals into human beings.
Paul.
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