"'...the First Empire fell, fifty thousand years ago.'"
-"The Chapter Ends," p. 202.
"...it was undoubtedly written in the early period of the First Empire..."
-Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, Rise of the Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 325-362 AT INTRODUCTION, p. 325.
"The Chapter Ends" refers to the first interstellar empire in Anderson's Psychotechnic History whereas "The Star Plunderer" refers to the Terran Empire in his Technic History. Thus, both histories have at least one more such empire about which we learn nothing.
We are told much about the Terran Empire and a little about the earlier First Empire. Here, "earlier" refers not to the temporal sequence within either history but to their publication history.
Both Empires, modelled on the Roman Empire, include slaves. However, the First Empire slaves remain foreign captives whereas Anderson later rationalized the Terran Empire slaves as convicted criminals coerced into a possibly finite period of public or personal service.
We can only speculate about the second or any later interstellar empires in either future history. They might encompass equivalents of Argos, Flandry, Josip, Molitor, Desai etc. Admiral Olaf Magnusson is a Merseian sleeper in the Terran Empire. Do any of these other empires have a rival imperium that would plant such a sleeper?
There is a ruined Sol City in both histories although the capital of the Terran Empire is called, appropriately, "Archopolis." "Sol" and "City" are evocative words so their combination is particularly powerful. "Archopolis" is a brilliant coinage.
44 comments:
As someone once said, human history doesn't repeat itself... but it certainly -rhymes-.
That is, it tends to follow recurring patterns because both problems and human responses to them come in limited varieties.
This doesn't mean you can predict the course of history in detail, or that history follows 'laws'; it's too contingent, too dependent on chance and individual decisions.
It does mean you can expect certain things to pop up.
Eg., it can be said with confidence that there will always be another war.
What you can't predict is where it will start, what it will be about (except that it will be about power) and you can't predict who'll win it.
This is why the Prussian/German General Staff, by the way, referred to war as "rolling the iron dice".
That was also the institution that noted that "no plan survives contact with the enemy" and laid down the maxim that "planning is everything, but the plan is nothing".
The Russians should have remembered these last year...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The Russians can't be more stupid than anybody else. Their own General Staff must have some who were aware of these dangers and of how inadequately prepared Russia was for war. Plainly, Putin, because of confirmation bias and wishful thinking, overruled any advice he got urging caution and restraint.
I have wondered if a desperate Putin might use nuclear weapons to break Ukrainian resistance. That might alarm even countries which doesn't care about the Ukraine war.
Ad astra! Sean
The world needs to move away from power structures where individuals like (Ras) Putin can make such destructive decisions.
Paul: well, no individual could make that sort of decision in the UK or the US.
We have -different- methods of making huge mistakes! 8-).
Sean:n I think you underestimate the degree to which information can be consistently slanted and/or suppressed in a system with bad incentives.
The Russian generals probably didn't believe their military was -as- good as their propaganda claimed.
But they probably didn't know how abysmal it was, because like them with Putin, their subordinates were systematically lying to them in a single direction.
(And all the parties named were also lying to cover up massive malfeasance and theft.)
Early in the war, a Russian officer was sent to mobilize tanks from a reserve storage depot.
He found 90% were inoperable because crucial parts (or entire engines) had been stolen and sold; he killed himself rather than have to 'own up' to the true state of affairs.
Also, Russian military culture has always been heavily centralized and top-down, which is one of the principle sources of their problems; Captains doing sergeants' work, colonels doing things that lieutenants do in our armed forces (or Ukraine's, these days), and so forth.
It's very, very hard to budge an entrenched institutional culture like that. It involves having to step back, and trusting subordinates even when it make -you- look bad if they screw up.
Insightful.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: No, you persist in thinking "power structures" are somehow unnatural or "alien" to human beings. Wrong, such "structures" naturally spring from human urges, drives, desires, etc. And as much as you would like them to, they are not going away. Which means we are going to continue to have power structures. The trick is to manage such drives, urges, etc., in ways that puts some control on the harm people can and will do.
Mr. Stirling: I sit corrected! I'm thinking too much like how an American and Briton used to militaries NOT as horrendously managed as the Russians.
Yet again I'm reminded of how much better even Tsarist Russia was compared to its Marxist successor. Despite a multitude of problems the Tsarist armies had become truly formidable by 1916.
ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't say unnatural or alien. Power relationships had to arise at certain stages but there are also examples of human beings cooperating without needing to be coerced.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course! Such as in the jobs most people have making a living.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: but un-coerced cooperation requires coercion somewhere in the background.
Eg., the structure of law and order within a sovereign state is maintained by coercion -- and permits extensive cooperation.
In 160 CE, people cooperated in shipping garum sauce all the way around the Mediterranean and Black Seas and into northern Europe... because the Pax Romana allowed it, and the Pax was based on 'spare the subject, beat hell out of the proud'.
And the coercion of the Roman Empire was possible because of extensive cooperation -- a legion was a very cooperative enterprise.
Coercion and cooperation are not in opposition; they're aspects of the same process.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! Again, you filled out and made explicit what I had in the back of my mind. Cooperation is possible because of the cooperative use of force, or at least the threat of it.
Ad astra! Sean
Coercion can be enforcement of minority rule or majority constraint of a disruptive minority.
I hope a time will come when the only coercion is the latter.
Later today: maybe think about human languages in the Technic history. In the Psychotechnic History, they only have Basic.
Kaor, Paul!
A third form of coercion will be the force needed, or the threat thereof, to keep the peace. And I think all three will be permanent parts of human life.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think keeping the peace comes under either of the two kinds I mentioned.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I understood "disruptive minority" more widely to include persons and groups who were disruptive in ways that were not necessarily criminal. Like the agitation seen in Germany between the rival parties of the Nazis and Communists in the years before 1933.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Surely agitation that is disruptive but not criminal is by definition allowable?
However, if Nazis and Communists agitate and the police intervene then either the police are protecting the public and upholding democracy, thereby implementing majority constraint of disruptive minorities, OR (as some claim) the police are keeping the peace in order to preserve capitalist rule, i.e., the economic rule of a minority class. The police are doing one or other of these things or maybe a combination of both but there is no third alternative.
Paul.
Paul: that depends on how much disruption there is.
People will not tolerate enough that it causes substantial impingement on their daily routines.
As Poul notes in OPERATION CHAOS, in that event people -- the solid majority who are only peripherally concerned with politic in any systematic way -- will support authoritarianism if other means fail, and "you yourself will hand him [the dictator] his knout and his saber".
(Quote from memory.)
In general terms, there has to be a monopoly on political force/violence for coherent organized life to continue.
That was lost in Germany in the early 1930's, and the results are obvious, one would think.
Or to use a less drastic (fortunately) example, the aftermath of the "winter of discontent" in Britain in 1979.
There were rumblings of paramilitary organization and calls for a coup, some of them quasi-serious, when the government's ability assert control looked doubtfully.
In the event, the new government set out to reassert itself and break the organizations challenging its authority, and did so successfully.
Thankfully; because all the alternative were much, much worse.
Countries that have had a high degree of consensus and order for a long time tend to underestimate the savage consequences of such a breakdown - until those consequences start to come home to roost.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! And my fear is that the fanaticism of the "woke" left in the US might provoke a similarly dictatorial reaction if/when enough people get FED UP with the crazies.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Will "woke" provoke dictatorship? That sounds over the top.
At any time, some people are dissatisfied and want change. The number of people in that category rises and falls. It can become a majority. They are not a group of people distinct from the solid non-political majority. They can be some of the same people responding in different ways at different times. Out of all this conflict comes change which can be for good or bad but nothing remains static.
Paul.
Paul: in a democracy there are legitimate means of protest and political organization.
Trying to disrupt people's lives unpredictably (occupying a street without a permit, etc.) is not among them.
Generally if you try that in most of the US, the police will vigorously apply a nightstick to your face and haul you off to the slammer, and that's one of the better things that can happen, because 'armed self-help' responses would be much more drastic.
Kaor, Paul!
No, my comments were not "over the top." For example, That dotard, "Josip" and the woke leftists puppet mastering have ABANDONED all real attempts at policing and controlling the borders of the US. Results: as many as FIVE MILLION illegals have swarmed into the US. AND the drug cartels have poured tons of noxious drugs like fentanyl into the US. These woke policies are causing direct harm to the US and arousing FURY.
To fill out what Stirling, fanatical woke supporters pub. the HOME addresses of where the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court lives, because of the "Dobbs" decision. And urged woke leftists to carry out hostile, noisy, and menacing in front of their homes, some of which had children. And woke Democrats refused to prosecute these "demonstrators," in violation of US laws forbidding the harassing or menacing of justices, judges, or jurors.
Another woke leftist was arrested for planning to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh. Even "Josip's" Attorney General, Garland, could not ignore that, despite ignoring violent attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers by still other woke leftists.
And woke leftists in the public schools of Loudoun, Va tried to cover up how a male boy claiming to be a girl raped a real girl there. In the woke "transgender" ideology it's wrongthink to deny males can somehow magically change sex or be rapists.
I could go on and on about the madness and insanity of the woke left, but these examples demonstrate my point. And Stirling's points.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I agree about keeping out dangerous drugs but not people. Those are different issues.
There are individual assassins across the political spectrum.
Sex transitions are a small minority and not magical. I do not know enough about the psychology of that issue.
I don't think anyone denies that men commit rape.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
First comment: they are not different issues. It's about the right of SOVEREIGN nations to control their borders and setting the terms and conditions under which foreigners are allowed in.
And woke leftists are desperately trying to ignore, minimize, or excuse leftist assassins.
Sex transition, kindly put, is bull twaddle. Sex is determined at conception, when the DNA patterns determining one's sex are fixed. ALL you get from a male who uses drugs and surgery to somewhat look like a woman is a MUTILATED male, a eunuch.
In the incident I cited leftists HAVE tried to deny or cover up that a rape occurred.
Ad astra! Sean
To clear up an unintended obscurity, I meant to say woke leftists in the Loudoun incident have tried to deny or cover up that a boy pretending to be a girl was a rapist. Because it's wrongthink to say "transgendered" males pretending to be women can be rapists.
Ad astra! Sean
Society is extremely polarized. I do not think that the problem is only the existence of the critics of the status quo. The status quo is such that it generates all those critics who, of course, are a motley crew. Our name is legion.
Society displays:
a lot of ingrained racism;
some divisive responses to racism;
some reactionary rejection of all and any anti-racism;
one big mess.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. The problem is not racism (whatever that is), or sexism, ageism, homophobia, or whatever might be the current leftist slogan. The problem is leftist fanatics, hating their owe country and all who dare to disagree with them, using any club they can grab in their drive to gain power and wreck the US to "transform" it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Racism whatever that is?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, WHATEVER. The wild and careless way so many leftists throw that word around has emptied "racism" of its meaning. If BLACK Police officers accused of using excessive force on a black criminal suspect are denounced as "racists" by hysterical leftists, then it no longer has any real meaning. So, yes, WHATEVER that is.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Black guys killing black guys doesn't mean there isn't racism. It looks like they too had been infected with the institutionalized attitude that black people on the bottom of the social ladder don't count.
It cannot be denied that there has been and still is a lot of racism, can it? The social legacy of slavery, then segregation. As I understand it, there was no prejudice about skin colour anywhere before the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
There is hysteria on both sides but not in everyone.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
You are overlooking my point: the all too ORWELLIAN abuse, corruption, and misuse of words and language by deranged woke leftists. Including such nonsense as "transphobic."
Also, I do not believe "systemic racism," what ever that is, as rampant as woke leftists claims it is. To elucidate my point I will quote a bit from an article written by Rachel Lu ("Rethinking a Ritual, NATIONAL REVIEW, March 6, 2023, page 14): "All of these fatal encounters [blacks killed by police officers, some of them also blacks] are different, but certain themes emerge if one scrutinizes many of them. Very occasionally, it does happen that an officer loses his temper and kills or attacks a person in rage. That appears to happen to Nichols. Laquan McDonald was another such victim, and the Chicago cop who killed him, James Van Dyke, was appropriately of homicide in the second degree. Though it's possible that some such instances are animated by racism, they are rare. Far more often, officers are assigned some 'blame' for a death--not because they fired a weapon unreasonably, for example, but because their sloppy tactics an unnecessarily dangerous situation."
Rachel Lu goes on to state her belief is that poor information, poor selection and training of officers, not "systemic racism," explains why such encounters happen. And woke leftist demonizing of the police and attempts to improve recruiting and training will not help. More likely, police forces will get worse as good cops resign or don't enlist.
So, yes, WHATEVER "racism" means!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It means prejudice of white people against black people and I have seen a lot of it, starting with my own family. My mother said that she was brought up in the West of Ireland to believe that black people were inferior. A Polish man that I spoke to "knew" (so he thought) that all black people were bad. A fellow trade unionist in Merseyside did not like "coons." There are many examples.
Paul.
I have heard more than once the derogatory remark: "THEY have a chip on their shoulder!" Of course THEY (or rather many of them) do, having encountered all that prejudice.
Misuse of a word does not negate its proper meaning. If I stupidly called everyone that I disagreed with a fascist, that would not change the fact that fascism exists and is a threat.
When I was a careers advisor, two motor mechanics trainers told me that employers were still reluctant to accept Asian apprentices. When I replied that we could get employers into a lot of trouble for that, I was told, "But they won't come out and SAY it!" They just showed it by accepting less Asian trainees.
When I was a student in Dublin, a Catholic medical student (future doctor) told me, "Keep Ireland white, that's all I say! I don't like their faces!" (A future racist doctor.)
Also in Dublin, my aunt and a cousin rented out rooms in their house. A white man paid rent for a room for himself and his wife without first telling aunt or cousin that that his wife was black. The cousin thought that she should have been told... instead of just welcoming two people who needed a room. If told, would she have objected?
A teenager from another part of Lancaster expressed surprise that I had not been mugged because I was living on a street with a lot of Asian residents. A pensioner asked me if I was an "Islamist" because I lived on that street.
Sheila saw her young niece watching a boxing match between a white man and a black man on TV. The niece was saying, "Those black ones are bad..." in exactly the tone of voice of her own great-grandmother.
These attitudes have been widespread and have not disappeared recently. The word, "racism," applies to them even if some fanatical, hysterical leftists currently misuse that word.
At work, we received racial awareness training so that we would be able to adopt a uniform approach based on knowledge of the issues and of relevant legislation and Council policies. There were some who resisted any such training, assuming that their own existing and unexamined prejudices did not need to be questioned or challenged.
During training, one elderly mature student made a sweeping racial generalization, saying that, if a particular client had been "a Negro," then she would have advised him differently. Obviously, the Service could not let its employees go around saying things like that.
My mother never overcame those childhood prejudices, continuing to believe that Africans had lived in jungles only a generation ago and that "they" were different from "us" in various ways.
At the height of the Northern Irish Troubles, one work-mate said to me, "If those Irish want to be mad, pull our lads [the Army] out, let them kill each other, then we can send the Blacks over there and get rid of them!" This was a sentiment that others heard and did not immediately denounce.
Winston Churchill is reported to have suggested "Keep England White!" as an election slogan.
Maybe mentioning one politician by name was a red herring because it can focus what is meant to be very general issue just on him? On the one hand, he is reported to have said this. On the other hand, it is argued that maybe he did not mean it seriously? Well and good. However, if we discuss Churchill specifically, then he did make other statements about racial superiority. If we talk more generally, which is the main point, then we are not surprised to hear that such a slogan might have been suggested. We know that many Conservative and Labour voters would welcome such a slogan. We know that it has been used by minority groups. We know that racial prejudice exists. It is not just a delusion conjured up by anti-racists. My mother said, "Your anti-racism makes me go all the other way!" (Racism as a response to anti-racism, not vice versa?) She already was all the other way. If she and others were not already like that, then there would not have been a problem.
"Homophobia" is prejudice against homosexuals. That also exists. Years ago, in Lancaster, the Labour Parliamentary candidate was Jewish whereas the Conservative was homosexual. Some Labour campaigners went door to door with the slogan (only spoken): "Better a Jew than a queer!"
A former Labour Home Secretary stated on TV that the purpose of immigration controls is to keep out people with different colours of skin.
John Grisham's novels show the degree of anti-black prejudice in the Southern States.
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