The Other Side Of A Coin

Having said all that, in the previous post, we cannot understand an individual unless we understand his or her social context and we cannot understand a society without some kind of theoretical framework. (Are social relationships based on ideas or on economic relationships?) Without first a decadent Terran Empire and second an aggressive Merseian Roidhunate, there would not be an Olaf Magnusson. An Olaf Magnusson clone born and brought up in a completely different society would not grow up to become the Admiral Magnusson that we know and - well, know. If there had not been Galilean missionaries on Woden, then Axor would not have converted to Jerusalem Catholicism and would have had no reason to travel through the galaxy looking for the Universal Incarnation.

I think that we tend to regard individuals and their motivations as givens but, like everything else, they have to have come from somewhere. (And an omnipotent creator could simply not create the conditions that had led to an Admiral Magnusson.) A man told me that he had a right to buy pornography but this entire question could arise only in a society where pornography already existed. The "right," if it is a right, to buy pornography would not have come into existence in a (much healthier) society where no one had ever thought of producing pornography.

A coin has two sides. People make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.