Recently we confirmed that Technic civilization has abundant cheap energy and antigrav plus, of course, FTL. They can also clone human beings and construct "consciousness-level computers." (Philosophical issues there but we have been over those ad nauseam.) The combination of all these factors should revolutionize every aspect of industry, manufacturing, commerce, transportation, culture and everyday life.
Diana Crowfeather asks:
"'A whole galaxy, a whole universe, a technology that could make every last livin' bein' rich - why are we and [the Merseians] locked in this senseless feud?'
"'Because both our sides have governments,' Targovi said..."
-Poul Anderson, The Game of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 349.
Or because the author has not fully thought through the implications of his premises? Poul Anderson wrote other future histories in which technology had further reaching consequences. In the Technic History, Avalonian human beings lose the habit of government under Ythrian influence.
There is something in Anderson's Psychotechnic History about small mobile energy units that I must check.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I would argue with Diana that conflicts/wars humans and other beings can and probably will fight over other things than the merely material. The Empire arose largely as a means for repelling barbarians and a defense against aggressors. Plus, the ideology of racial supremacy seen in the Roidhunate, allied with aggressive expansionism, will provide example causes for conflict.
I am skeptical that the humans on Avalon no longer have a state. However attenuated, I think it still exists, to handle things like law and order, responses to emergencies, or war. The Domain was anxious about Merseia, recall!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think the main point here is that such technological advances would change everyone's lives so fundamentally that there would also be massive changes in society and in how it is organized. Maybe not the abolition of all governments straightaway (!) but not just a continuance of the way things were before, either.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I have to continue to disagree with you. Our technology today is incomparably more advanced than what our distant ancestors had 80,000 years ago--yet mankind is still quarrelsome, violent, strife torn, and prone to folly today. And I see no reason to think that's going to change. It's not realistic to think or act otherwise.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I am not at this stage thinking of moral improvements, just changes in general. In a materially comfortable population with lots of freedom of movement, individuals would be far less inclined to heed government propaganda urging them to improve their lot by joining the armed forces, for example.
Paul.
Paul: it would change people's lives, no doubt about that. Industrialization has changed people's lives.
They'd still kill each other, of course.
Material abundance will not cancel or much change, eg., sexual jealousy, lust for power, or hatred/fear of out-groups, or desire for revenge, etc.
Why should it?
These are not caused by life-experiences, though they're -shaped- by them.
They're caused by our -genes-.
Note: my father joined the Canadian army in 1939. There was no conscription, and he was a Newfoundlander in any case, and comfortably off by the standards of the day.
He just -wanted- to fight the enemies of his tribe.
In fact, he lied and cheated and broke rules to get into a combat branch of the service, because he wanted it so -badly-.
I am learning to distinguish between two kinds of human/social change:
(i) changes that we think WILL happen if the right conditions are met, e.g., reduced mortality with improved medicine (obviously);
(ii) changes that we think (a) will become possible and (b) should be encouraged (and we will disagree about what should be encouraged).
So the following examples are a mixture of (i) with my version of (ii):
if everyone is well housed, then no one will be susceptible to propaganda along the lines of "newly arrived immigrants with their large families are getting onto the government housing list ahead of you" because there will be no need for a government housing list or any other mechanism for rationing accommodation;
if everyone either has meaningful work or at least is not obliged to seek even meaningless work just to keep body and soul together, then they will not be susceptible to "immigrants are stealing your jobs";
if everyone is better educated, with access to varied news media and with more time to think and reflect, then they will more readily analyse and reject any such propaganda.
We can compete in sport and disagree in debate without wanting to kill anyone! So I don't think that wanting to kill has to be regarded as genetic. Currently there are appalling conditions in which people do lash out and kill each other in large numbers. We need to change the conditions.
Paul: but they'll still be susceptible to the "immigrants are taking the future from your descendants".
Because it has a substantial element of truth.
Intergroup relations are fraught because, among other things, what your genes are doing is try to make the maximum number of possible copies of themselves.
Because you are the descendant of those who successfully did that.
That means that non-relations (a category easier to make congruent with DNA in hunter-gatherer societies but still with the emotional "outsider!" tag) are a threat to your descendants.
Though more males than females, particularly from a male point of view.
As I understand it, human morality has a double genetic basis. We are naturally selected to help others either because they bear the same genes or because they might help us in return and we experience this motivation not as calculating self-interest, which is what it sounds like when expressed in purely biological terms, but as compassion, charity, moral obligation etc. Thus, people (at least in Britain!) respond to appeals for emergency funds for foreign disasters.
This materially explains morality which Christian apologists like CS Lewis argue can be explained only by reference to a divine law-giver.
In Britain, over several decades, whenever an anti-immigrant political movement has got off the ground, we have been able to counteract it with an even bigger "Immigrants are welcome here" movement.
Kaor, Paul!
I continue to disagree with you, for the reasons given by both myself and Stirling.
I also oppose and reject open, out of control immigration. No one has a right to just shove himself into other peoples countries. All healthy nations will have reasonably strict laws setting the terms and conditions allowing foreigners to come in.
That senile dotard "Josip's" refusal to police the borders of the US is a big reason why there is so much fury against him. And rightly so!!!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But all that I am trying to establish at this point is that technological changes will cause some social changes and that we will disagree about both the extent and the desirability of any such social changes.
Paul.
And if only one side has a government, it wins.
Certainly. Any society that is under threat of attack will need to elect/appoint a government to coordinate defence if it doesn't already have one. It might not be quite like any government that we have ever seen but it would have to have some points in common like emergency powers and should have full cooperation from its population as long as necessary but not any longer than that.
My idea of the optimal human being is someone who benefits fully from the highest level of technology but at the same time is equipped with knowledge of history and of past crises and with survival skills to be deployed if and when the technology ever fails. A tall order, maybe just an ideal to be approached but not reached, but let's not put limits on possible future developments.
"immigrants are taking the future from your descendants"
I've long had the idea that potential immigrants who would oppose their children marrying outside their own ethnic group are the sort of bigoted jerks I wouldn't want as neighbors.
Now that you mention it that is part of both their attitude & mine.
Kaor, Paul!
I am skeptical of such ideals about optimal humans. Such paragons will never be more than rare in any human society.
As for the State, any State, in whatever form, I don't think it's ever going to be better than what we now have. It's a huge advance that ever since Aristotle's advocacy of "mixed" gov't, the most tolerable States has been the ones which tries, sometimes, to rule according to law.
Ad astra! Sean
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