A disappointing gun fight between human beings and aliens is ended by an even less appointing argument between the psychman, Avery, and his fellow human beings. Avery claims that a mature civilization can be built only by:
"'...a thousand years of slow, subtle, secret direction...'" (p. 140)
Not secret. People have to be consciously and actively involved in their own maturation. A thousand years? Someone proposes to operate in secret for that long a time? Is that even possible?
Lorenzen:
"'Personally, I believe that no small group has the right to impose its own will on everybody else.'" (p. 146)
No, they haven't. And that is what they would be doing if they worked in secret for a millennium.
Lorenzen on the previous page:
"'I claim that man crawling into his own little shell to think pure thoughts and contemplate his navel is no longer man.'" (p. 145)
That is a parody. We can improve our thinking and contemplate a lot more than our navels. But some self-knowledge is surely necessary?
Arguments like this tend to be expressed in extreme terms and in antitheses instead of in syntheses. We need the psychmen involved in interstellar exploration, not trying to sabotage it as they do here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, as would Stirling, about the sheer unlikelihood of a cabal of psychmen and politicians being able to rule and manipulate all Earth like this for a thousand years.
However heatedly expressed my sympathies are with Avery's views.
I have no objection, per se, of again employing some of the psychmen again some time after getting fired from their current posts. As long as they have a strictly subordinate and advisory role.
Ad astra! Sean
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