Langley and Valti converse.
Langley:
Medicine has advanced. A wound heals quickly and completely when artificial enzymes stimulate regeneration. Any surgery heals completely in a few hours without leaving scars. Earlier in history, innovations like agriculture and machinery were vast improvements. Maybe, therefore, progress continues and:
"'...given a few more millennia, man will do something about himself, change his own mind from animal to human.'" (p. 124)
My comments:
We already have human minds or we would not be discussing the issue! However, Langley means a complete transition from animal to rational. Maybe now that the question has been formulated, it can be addressed sooner than over a few millennia. There has already been practice of yoga and meditation over many millennia. Such practices need to be scientifically understood while intuitive and intellectual understandings need to be synthesized.
Valti:
He claims to be responding to Langley but really changes the subject because he argues that immortality is impossible either in civilizations or in individual organisms. Langley was asking about progress, not about immortality.
Langley:
Accepting this change of subject, Langley asks whether it follows that there will always by rise, decay and fall - and also "'...always war and suffering?'" (ibid.)
My comments:
Mortality means always rise, decay and fall but not necessarily always war and suffering.
Valti:
"'Either that, or...death disguised by a mechanical semblance of life.'" (ibid.)
My comment:
A false dichotomy.
They continue to talk.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
My reply, in contradistinction to both Langley and you, is that I don't believe there will ever be such a "complete transition from animal to rational." Nor do I share your faith in meditation, which only a small percentage of humans will practice.
Yes, civilizations will always continue to rise, decay, and fall, accompanied by war and suffering--because they spring from how flawed all humans are.
I think Valti was referring to the civilization of the Technarchy with his "...death disguised by a mechanical semblance of life." A walking corpse of a civilization, which I think was too harsh.
Ad astra! Sean
"A walking corpse of a civilization, which I think was too harsh."
Which reminds me of Arnold Toynbee's opinion of Pharaonic Egypt after the Old Kingdom. He saw the later dynasties of Egypt as simply a revival of the Old Kingdom with as little change as possible. Nothing that might possibly be progress.
Reason is a means, not an end -- it serves ends which are not, themselves, rational. There's no rational reason to want to live, for example; that's your DNA talking.
Jim: in fact, the Middle and New Kingdoms weren't replicas of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. There was a generic resemblance, but that was due to the nature of Egyptian life as much as anything -- the Nile and its regime imposed certain rhythms on life on its banks.
But religion and government changed fairly substantially over that time.
Kaor, Jim!
Stirling responded much as I would have, disagreeing with Toynbee's dismissive view of Egypt. I went thru an Egyptian phase decades ago and I read enough that I agree with Stirling.
The Pharaohs of the XI and XII dynasties had to grapple with problems unknown to their Old Kingdom predecessors. And that alone would make the Middle Kingdom very different.
There was an archaicizing trend during the XXVI Dynasty for many Egyptians to hark back to former eras of glory.
Ad astra! Sean
Toynbee did seem to have in mind a pattern of civilizations rising and falling based on what we see in the Greco-Roman civilization. He then seemed to be shoehorning everything into that pattern & got some rather odd ideas about individual cultures from that.
I'm not sure to what extent Hord has done the same thing.
Kaor, Jim!
I think Hord contributed some useful insights for historically analyzing the rise and fall of civilizations, including probable stages or phases within them. And Stirling was right to stress the need to always keep the unexpected, contingency, in mind. A classic example, discussed by Anderson in his essay "Discovery of the Past," being the totally unexpected rise of Christianity, when God's directed intervention thru the Incarnation of Christ, changed everything, worldwide.
Ad astra! Sean
Poul did a story in which the Hebrews didn't survive, and it had an interesting post-Roman evolution of religion.
"The House of Sorrows," which I regard as a companion story to "Eutopia."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, as Paul said, that story was "The House of Sorrows," set in a timeline where the Assyrians, first under Shalmaneser V and then Sennacherib, destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The story shows us a timeline where, without the impetus of a monotheism teaching how God respected the laws of the universe He created, no true science arose. Even the dualism of Zoroastrianism, which came so close to monotheism, couldn't break out of the straitjacket of polytheistic mythologies.
Iow, in this alternate world, Sennacherib did more than lamely boast of "shutting up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage in his royal city" (quoting from memory), he captured Jerusalem! And tremendous things flowed from that scenario.
Ad astra! Sean
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