It is necessary to hold a planetary Khruath in order to decide whether to continue to resist Terran aggression. There is no time to assemble physically so two million enfranchised adults are involved electronically, including those elected at regional meetings and those individuals who wish to speak. The High Wyvans stand before David Falkayn's house on First Island in the Hesperian Sea. Inside the house, staff with computers filter questions and comments. No Ythrian will speak at unnecessary length or repeat the obvious.
Liaw of the Tarns states the issues. Other speakers present brief factual reports. One is about North Coronan food production and storage of preserved meat in radiation-proof bunkers. Arinnian reports as chief of the North Coronan guard. North Corona is now cooperating with all of Oronesia and aims to incorporate other islands. The uninhabited Equatorian continent needs to be guarded against Terran invasion.
After six hours, 83% vote for continued resistance.
"Humans couldn't have done it." (p. 564)
I think that we can move toward it on the basis of common interests and of improved communication technology. As yet, common interests are a matter of lip service, not of material cooperation.
11 comments:
If you've had any experience of actual politics, Poul's observation rings very, very true.
Oh, the endless droning speeches by blowhards in love with the sound of their own voices, the short-sighted cunning, the maneuvering clandestine and overt, the factions at knives' edge, the generational feuds, the fanatics with particular obsessive bees in their bonnets and damn everything else(*)...
Take a look at the Polish sjem, for starters.
(*) a Jesuit missionary once observed that the problem with discussing theology in China was that from any point of biblical exegesis, the discussion could be brought back to the Great Rice Question...
There's an old Israeli joke about a frog and a scorpion.
The scorpion asks the frog for a lift across the river. The frog says: "But you might sting me!"
The scorpion replies: "That's crazy -- if I stung you, I'd drown and we'd -both- die."
The frog says: "That's logical, hop on."
Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog.
"But now we're both going to die!" the frog screams.
The scorpion shrugs. "It's the Middle East," he says, just before drowning.
Glug, glug, glug...
Or on a more serious note, look at how humans fall victim to the "sunk cost fallacy" over and over and over and over...
All of that is valid. My hope is that a shared common interest will make a difference. Clearly, if Earth were attacked by Martians or Merseians, then MOST of us would unite to resist. Not all, even then. A natural disaster can have the force of an alien invasion. Like the imminent irreversible ecological catastrophe. Of course, people might still keep blaming and fighting each other even in a sinking ship.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! I don't believe one bit anything like the Ythrian system could possibly work for human beings.
Candidly, I don't even believe it could work for Ythrians, not if they too, like humans, belong to a fallen race.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Ythrians have their faults, but they're somewhat -different- faults.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. And I admire how Anderson could convincingly speculate about non-humans like the Ythrians. The fact I can find them irritating shows how skillful Anderson was.
Ad astra! Sean
Ythrians are more 'feline' in some respects than humans -- they're more like lions, and they're obligate carnivores.
Humans are more like wolves -- or since we're self-domesticated, like dogs. We're a chimp that evolved to be more like wolves.
There's an amusing documentary I saw once on a pack of Arctic wolves. The 'low wolf' on the pack's pecking order is left to guard the cubs while the others are out hunting.
He's a scruffy doofus, an obvious dimwit by wolf standards, but he has a whale of a time playing with the cubs, herding them together when they stray too far, letting them hang on his ears, and so forth.
When the cubs come boiling out of the den to wrestle with the doofus, the person I was watching the documentary started murmuring:
"Unca' Bob! Let's play, Unca' Bob! Wheee!"
It's not surprising that wolves are the first animals that took up residence with us.
S.M. Stirling:
What you wrote about the wolves very much reminds me of "Never Cry Wolf" by Farley Mowat. He was studying a small wolf pack in the tundra of what is now Nunavut. He called one of the wolves "Uncle Albert".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha, very amusing! Ythrians are flying "felinoids" (to coin a word!) while we humans are more like chimps with canine characteristics. That explains why Ythrians can be so irritating.
Ad astra! Sean
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