In Poul Anderson's works, the two highest human values are freedom and diversity. Interstellar colonization offers multiple opportunities for both. Bureaucrats are enemies of freedom which they condemn as unacceptable chaos. However, "chaos" as disorder, whether cosmic or social, does have a negative value in Anderson's works. His Old Phoenix multiverse, which includes a volume called
Operation Chaos, involves a cosmic conflict between the opposed principles of Law and Chaos. Nazism is one expression of Chaos and Hell is chaotic. His Time Patrol guards human history against temporal chaos. His Psychotechnic Institute guides primitive mankind towards what to it is the unnatural state of civilization and freedom - order being necessary for freedom. In "Sargasso of Lost Starships," the villainess, Valduma, is:
"...the outlaw darkness, the last despairing return to primeval chaos..." (p. 426)
We find a vast consistency.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS, which links up to the OPERATION books via the Old Phoenix inn, also has the struggle between Law and Chaos.
Anderson was not totally hostile to all bureaucrats. Aaron Snelund, of all people, discussed how they perform necessary functions in THE REBEL WORLDS. And we see similar remarks and a very able and decent bureaucrat, Chunderban Desai, in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I think Poul was conflicted about governmental authority.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, he was! In quite a few of his stories Anderson made it plain, given his libertarian leanings, that he wished the State would somehow "wither away." But he was too much a realist, and hence a conservative, to believe, when push came to shove, to think that was possible or desirable. He knew too well how flawed, quarrelsome, prone to violence, etc., human beings are to really believe in Utopian impossibilities.
The best we can hope for is some combination, in whatever form, of the limited state with free enterprise economics.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Free enterprise will be redundant when technologically produced wealth is abundant as will bodies of armed men to protect property or territory. No longer controlling such means of coercion, no individual or group will exercise power over the population.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, that is not going to happen. First, basic economic principles, like demand and supply, will determine what goods and services will be practical at whatever it will cost to produce and offer for sale. Prices will not necessarily have to be high--they could be low, even very low.
And people will still have property. People will still want to own real estate and chattel goods of all kinds.
Again, no, humans are still going to be quarrelsome, ambitious, acquisitive, etc. They will still contend for status, prestige, power. And that can and will be attended by violence. Your hopes are totally unrealistic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No one knows what is going to happen.
When there is a common store containing more than everyone needs and to which everyone has equal access, then there will no longer be any need for a class of people, like van Rijn, who buy from producers and sell to consumers at a profit to themselves. Money will become redundant as a means of exchange. (I do not know that this will happen. I argue that it can happen.)
People will not always want to own real estate and chattel goods. These things have not always existed and will not always exist. You are merely projecting current conditions into an indefinite future. Things change. Eventually, everything changes.
There will be no power when there are no longer any means of coercion. Some can compete for status and prestige but others will not and such ideas will die out when there are conditions that develop and fulfil everyone. Vast resources can be deployed to do this instead of resources deployed for mass destruction as at present.
Human beings are not always going to be anything. Things change. There will be no need for acquisitiveness when everyone has everything that they need. Someone can be ambitious to be the best at what he does and might or might not succeed.
There are conditions in which there is nothing to quarrel about and such conditions can be made universal.
What is the point of only emphasizing the negative? People even now are not just quarrelsome etc. They are also cooperative etc. Without cooperation, we would not exist.
My hopes are totally realistic.
Every time you mention free enterprise and the small state, I describe conditions in which free enterprise can become redundant and you seem not to understand those conditions. The same statements and counter-statements are repeated as if they had not been said before. Every new statement of an opinion should at least acknowledge (of course not accept!) previous arguments and counter-arguments. Surely mere repetition is pointless?
Paul.
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