Seven Theses For The Empire
(i) Everything that exists is both interconnected and changing.
(Expressed negatively: nothing is isolated or static.)
(ii) Even when powerful forces resist change, no set of social relationships can remain unchanged indefinitely while everything else changes around it.
(iii) Delayed change seems sudden but is the culmination of many unnoticed changes.
(iv) Imperial rule is a temporary set of changing relationships.
(v) Every civilized planet must be strengthened in preparation for the eventual withdrawal of Imperial protection.
(vi) Civilizations built in diverse environments and interacting with different intelligent species will be neither uniform nor predictable.
(vii) Each civilization needs to approach a collective self-understanding with the help of planetary social philosophers.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I mostly agree, with some quibbling.
(i) I agree.
(ii) I agree, with the proviso that not all changes will be good, that it just might be possible for people who oppose "changes" to be right.
(iii) I agree.
(iv) All states and gov'ts, no matter what forms they have, are temporary. Albeit some can last for centuries on centuries.
(v) Unfortunately, that "withdrawal of Imperial protection" was not peaceful, being an agonizing, violent, and brutal collapse of the Empire into the chaos of the Long Night.
(vi) That "collective self-understanding" will most likely take the form of a set of ideas and beliefs that different races and peoples will believe to be right and legitimate for their planets, with or without social philosophers. More often, IMO, without.
Ad astra! Sean
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