Every human being welcomes unconsciousness at night, confident that, other things being equal, s/he will regain consciousness in the morning. Of course, we will die sometime and that could be in our sleep.
A Didonian entity ceases to exist when heesh's three units end their linkage. Presumably, the entity expects to be reassembled sometime but that will not happen if even one of the three units dies in the meantime.
The entity designated Cave Discoverer is an explorer and adventurer who shares two units with the wisest, Many Thoughts:
"'Many Thoughts gets the vigor and boldness of the same noga and ruka, but heesh's journeys are of the spirit....'" (p. 460)
When Many Thoughts' krippo replaces Cave Discoverer's, Many Thoughts takes a minute to absorb the information conveyed by the noga and ruka that the two entities share. Then Kathryn has to repeat whatever information went away with the departing krippo.
The loss of either the noga or the ruka would mean that neither Cave Discoverer nor Many Thoughts could be reassembled although much of their knowledge would be preserved in the surviving units.
Primary education comprises two-way linkages between mature and immature units. Didonians cannot have any concept of privacy. Poul Anderson invites us to imagine a fundamentally different form of consciousness.
8 comments:
Not -every- human being welcomes sleep. Some are afraid of it and sleep reluctantly; I've met them. Some of those 'just because', others because they fear bad dreams.
Kaor, Paul!
Besides what Stirling said I would add that we are not always totally unconscious when we sleep--I mean the dreams most of us have. I think of dreams as being how the sleeping brain continues to think or remember things. Albeit usually in a confused, disorganized way.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think all humans have bad dreams. No fun, I agree, but all we can do is literally sleep thru them!
Ad astra! Sean
As to the Didonians, I would say that while they have separate personalities, they're not -as- separate as humans -- 'partial' survival after 'death' for each, as long as some of their trio survive and link up with others.
And memories and personality are transferred from older to younger, so in a sense they don't die the way we do.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, but individual memories from any of the tree "components" of a Didonian entity would inevitably fade away, becomes more blurred as the components die and are replaced by new ones.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: true, but that happens to -our- memories as we age too. After a while, "memories of memories" become more and more common.
Poul brings that "loss of memory" thing out in several of his SF books which have control of aging. Memories have to be edited lest they overwhelm the brain, which leads to odd results -- Hugh Valland, for example!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree and sometimes people try to preserve memories by writing diaries or memoirs.
It was in WORLD WITHOUT STARS that I first came across the idea of memory overload, that after a thousand years we can have too many memories, and even go mad or senile. So some kind of medical procedure was invented for deleting excess memories.
Incidentally, Anderson knew of the problem of memory overload as long ago as his story "Pact," written in the 1950's.
Ad astra! Sean
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