"God was rising in the west..."
-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), I, p. 5.
"God" is the Milky Way as seen from a planet in intergalactic space.
"On another evening, very far away, I had heard another song."
-II, p. 7.
"I" is the human narrator who will visit the extragalactic planet.
"Make oneness.
"I/we: Feet belonging to Guardian of North Gate and others who can be, to Raft Farer and Woe who will no longer be, to Many Thoughts, Cave Discoverer, and Master of Songs who can no longer be; Wings belonging to Iron Miner and Lightning Struck The House and others to be, to Many Thoughts who can no longer be; young Hands that has yet to share memories: make oneness."
-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, January 2010), pp. 367-520 AT p. 369.
This is a Didonian multiple viewpoint that we do not have to understand yet.
"The prison satellite swung in a wide and canted orbit around Llynathawr..."
-CHAPTER ONE, p. 371.
Prisons are an all too human institution.
Those were two aliens first novels.
Fire Time begins with humanity:
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a wholly just man."
-FOREWORD, p. 1 -
- but soon proceeds to the Ishtarians:
"In Fire Time the north country got no peace from the Demon Sun."
-I, p. 7.
God, oneness and Demon Sun.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Humans being what they are, so prone to strife and violence, we are always going to need courts and prisons!
Ad astra! Sean
We are not.
Kaor, Paul!
Incorrect, we are.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
People are violent only in certain conditions. Those conditions need not be reproduced in future.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Ad I don't believe that. People don't have to be poor to be contentious and violent. I believe people who have hopes like yours are going to be perpetually disappointed as the old Adam keeps rearing up in mankind.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Contentious" and "violent" are different. People are violent sometimes and in some circumstances and not in others. We can eliminate all causes of violence which include more than just poverty.
Imagine civilized people suddenly lynching a neighbour for no reason. Impossible.
Paul.
The amount of human violence varies considerably between societies. See "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker for documentation of how the amount of violence has declined over time & suggestions of reasons for the decline.
Does the observed decline mean it can ever go to zero? What can be done to push it lower than current levels? How can a relatively non-violent society defend itself from a more violent society?
I don't see that either Sean or Paul can claim to have definitive answers to these questions.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: I still disagree. People don't need rational reasons to be violent. E.g., as the British Raj was coming to an end in 1947 many Muslims and Hindus took advantage of the weakness of a waning State to slaughter and lynch one another by the hundreds of thousands. And I can multiply examples over and over and over. You are just plain wrong!
Jim: The primary reason for that decline in violence has been the rise of the State, beginning in Mesopotamia some time after 4000 BC. And that relative peace lasts only as long as the State, any State exists in the background and is willing to use force to enforce that peace. I repeat, ever time a State was unwilling to enforce its monopoly of violence--violence has worsened.
Utopian hopes and dreams I dismiss.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You are just plain wrong. As long as that is said on one side, it can be said on the other. Dystopianism I dismiss. There are many circumstances in which people do not slaughter or lynch one another by the tens of thousand and those circumstances can be reproduced across the Earth.
When technologically produced abundant wealth is held in common so that for an individual to appropriate part of that wealth is not to "steal" it from anyone else, when there is equal access to education and training, when the benefits of the technology of solar energy are not monopolized but available to all, when every individual is able to engage in meaningful activity whether or not that corresponds to a "job" in the modern sense, when resources are not wasted on instruments of destruction, when the world is no longer divided into nation states with armed forces, when there are no longer national governments engaging in territorial disputes, when everyone is treated equally irrespective of age, sex, race or belief - all of this is possible -, then what will motivate anyone either to attack a stranger in the street or to want to annihilate populations elsewhere on Earth and how would anyone be able to set about implementing that last mad wish?
Paul.
And, lastly, do we need to keep repeating these arguments?
Some phrases that I forgot but that fit in with the others anyway:
"...when the bulk of the population are no longer economically dependent on being 'employed' by someone else...when everyone has been living in these (to us) 'utopian' conditions for so long that they have never experienced anything else and have no grievances that would make them want to lynch those who attend different places of worship, which most of us most of the time do not want to do in any case...when everyone is adequately housed so that there is no scapegoating of immigrants for jumping the housing queue and causing homelessness...when there is social provision not only for physical but also for psychological health and well-being..."
And, of course, I still disagree with everything that is said on the other side of the argument.
BTW, although I respond in kind, I think that this "I am obviously right; you are just plain wrong" approach is like a blunt instrument, completely inappropriate to such subtle subject matters.
Again, presumably the object is not to agree but to clarify areas of disagreement, then move on to something else?
Sean:
Yes, a state willing and able to enforce laws against assault etc. is needed.
However, IIRC in 'Better Angels..' Pinker noted the decline in recent centuries and suggested that contributing factors were eg: reading novels inducing more empathy for people not of your own social class or culture. So draconian punishments for eg: stealing a loaf of bread, became regarded as immoral.
What are the characteristics of societies with low crime rates? Can a crime ridden society usefully imitate those characteristics?
Jim,
We need a society in which no one has any need or motive to steal bread.
Paul.
I would like to know more about experiments with Universal Basic Income.
What I have heard sounds promising. Have any cases of trying UBI revealed serious drawbacks?
I don't think it's been tried much yet.
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