Tuesday 19 March 2024

Sanity

Poul Anderson, Question And Answer (New York, 1978), CHAPTER II.

Can a brilliant scientist and mathematician also be a religious fanatic? Yes. People are complicated. Their beliefs can be contradictory. Few learn to think. Others think only superficially. 

"The rest is still conditioned reflex and rationalization of a thousand subconscious fears and hates and longings." (p. 13)

This is the "protean enemy" of Anderson's Psychotechnic History. In Question And Answer, as in that future history series, a science of man is being developed. It will become possible to raise new generations to be "'...truly sane...'" (ibid.) but this will take time because historical insanity remains built into the structure of society.

The problem in the novel will become: who will apply this new science and to what ends? Can the insane make themselves sane? (As I always think: we cannot make a bed while we are lying on it; we get in our own way.)

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

No, it's an error for anyone to say insanity occurs because it's built into the structure of a society. That opens the door to crazed fanatics and radicals claiming that if we got rid of one or two "roots" of our problems everything would become a golden age paradise. We have insanity because all of us are or can be potentially insane--which some of us are.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Human beings are kludges. They screw up and malfunction all the time because of what they -are-.

Also, note that there's no purely rational reason to, for example, want to live.

That's your genes talking because dead people don't have offspring.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I agree, human beings are kludges, all of us. Or, since I'm Catholic, we are all of us Fallen.

And that's why I don't believe in dreamy, Utopian nonsense about the human race somehow becoming "sane," gentle, peaceful, non-aggressive, non-violent, etc., etc.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

And I do. It's possible - but with a lot of work.

S.M. Stirling said...

Paul: the work would have to involve massive genetic engineering... 8-).

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Maybe. I think that high technology combined with social reorganization can take us a long way but, ok, a fully democratic and scientifically educated population could eventually make some decisions and choices about carefully controlled genetic engineering. We can have a long future ahead of us - if we let ourselves have one.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And what you hope for is unrealistic and not going to happen. Moreover, democracy is a competitive political system in which ambitious, power hungry politicians struggle and compete for office. And such a system works only as long as everybody agrees to abide by the rules.

I can well imagine fanatics, impatient with us "evil tailless apes," to use Trotsky's words, using genetic engineering to turn humans into meek, obedient servants of masters like Stirling's Draka.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

too