While Skip travels, a bore on a bus gives us more background information. Education has been technologized with the teaching machine (?), psychophysiological conditioning, subliminal exposure, simpler, subtler, deeper approaches and effective positive reinforcement. It sounds as if the methods of the Psychotechnic Institute have survived in this future. The bore bemoans the loss of scholarship but then says that he would joyfully nuke the Satanic Sigman! Not scholarship but obscurantism and worse. If an alien arrived tomorrow, then some among us would say precisely that.
Skip reflects:
"Frustration breeds fanatics..." (III, p. 26)
Yes, frustration. There is a social explanation.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Here we see that uniquely science fictional trope: the infodump. A necessity due to the new SF writers have of imparting fictional information readers would need for understanding the backgrounds of these fictional futures.
Ad astra! Sean
From SM Stirling:
Of course, human beings have the -capacity- to become fanatics.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! Fanatics have done vastly more harm than the merely corrupt.
Ad astra! Sean
And how often do the fanatics provide cover for the corrupt?
"This is a good cause, you are not to question where the money is going."
Kaor, Jim!
More accurate to say the corrupt becomes a source of useful propaganda to the fanatics.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: fanatics tend to be easy to manipulate.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And fanaticism makes it easier for monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc., to become so cruel and brutal.
Ad astra! Sean
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