Commanders are disarmed before they meet the Chairman because:
"...everyone had grown far too used to settling disputes violently." (p. 17)
I think that that was why there was a Civil War after Partition in Ireland instead of just two massive rival political campaigns.
But also:
"The officer frisked him, and that was a wholly new indignity, which heated Fourre's own skin. He choked his anger, thinking that Valti had predicted as much." (ibid.)
A British soldier frisked me once in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I cooperated by moving my arms out so that he could feel beneath them but felt that I was handled like an inanimate object, not acknowledged or respected as a human being. I was neither thanked nor even looked at. When asked later by someone else how I felt about this experience, I said, "OK," but realized that some, perhaps many, would have reacted like Fourre - not that I had read about Fourre back then but the character represents a particular human response.
All human life is here in the future histories.
(Which Poul Anderson work is represented by the attached cover image?)
15 comments:
A soldier in that context is expecting -- at some level -- a fight to the death at any moment. He's understandably focused on that, not on pleasant human interactions.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You clarified what I was trying to think. And that's also true of police officers, albeit they have to pay more attention to the "public relations" aspect.
Ad astra! Sean
As the old Roman saying goes, "intra armes, enim silent leges". Freely/colloquially translated: "When weapons speak, laws are silent."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I interpreted that as meaning, among other things, that law abiding persons could use lethal force, when necessary, to defend themselves if attacked by criminals.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: that's one possible interpretation. Usually Romans who used that saying were referring to war, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree that makes sense. And Flavius Vegetius famously wrote: "If you want peace, prepare for war."
Ad astra! Sean
Governments get peace, of a kind, by preparing for war only because they exist in a world where other governments are preparing for war. A self-perpetuating process that we can do away with.
Paul: it takes two or more acting in concord to make peace, but only one to make war. If Party A is incapable of war, and Party B is capable of it... things don't look good for Party A. Or any number of Party A's.
Basically, war is a means of getting people to do what you want. So is persuasion -- but someone can always refuse to listen to you. They can't refuse to notice when you start chopping off their hands and feet.
I agree that is how things are. We can hope for and work toward something better.
In a peaceful civilization with abundant resources and everyone a shareholder, disagreements will not have to come to violence.
Paul: I find that statement genuinely baffling. Why not?
Most violence is -not- motivated by the needs of subsistence.
In fact, if you're totally preoccupied with getting enough to eat, you usually (but not invariably) don't have -time- to fight.
Except possibly to kill and eat someone.
For a long time, most violence was low-level but continuous -- blood-feuds, raiding, abduction of women, that sort of thing.
Real large-scale war requires organization and an economic surplus.
A possible future global society (I think):
socially controlled advanced technology producing all material and cultural needs;
elimination of drudgery;
everyone free to engage in work or other activity that is meaningful to them;
a breakdown of the distinction between work and leisure;
education to develop the abilities and aptitudes of each individual, not just to mass produce literate, numerate factory- or office-workers;
no division of the population into employers and employees;
no division of the global population into armed nation-states with opposed territorial interests;
no arms industry or armaments stockpiles;
a new phase of humanity.
Paul: I don't doubt that would suit you. A substantial number of people would be bored out of their gourd and would start fights spontaneously.
However, we have to imagine not people as they are now transported into a very different future society but people growing up in that society and taking it for granted because they have never experienced anything else: an education system that addresses their needs and interests and develops their potentials.
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