"...world state, orderly, scientific, and secured..."
-HG Wells, The War In The Air (Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex), Chapter 11, p. 228.
The World State is built in Well's The Shape Of Things To Come.
Robert Heinlein's Future History Time Chart ends with:
"...the end of human adolescence, and beginning of first mature culture."
-Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold The Moon (London, 1963), p. 7.
A U.N. world government is established in 1965 in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History Chronology of the Future but does not last.
However, Sandra Miesel's Foreword to the Psychotechnic History, Volume I, is written:
"From the standpoint of our mature integrated culture..."
"From the standpoint of our mature integrated culture..."
-The Psychotechnic League (New York, 1981), p. 10.
In these futures, mankind is going somewhere.
17 comments:
Technological progress is profoundly disruptive; it upsets social balances and disrupts the distribution of power.
In Europe, that was a notable difference between England (later Britain) and the Continental states; in England property-owners -as such- (not the same thing as the nobility) were firmly in the saddle and they didn't allow caution to get in the way of profit.
But because Europe was divided into quarreling separate states, no state could allow its rivals to get ahead in technology -- you'd be eaten alive if you did.
So countries, despite misgivings, had to follow Britain's innovations because falling too far behind would be a disaster.
China didn't have that incentive to change. Eg., the central government could suppress overseas voyaging -- in Europe, that would have been impossible.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! And Poland was a horrid example of what happens to nations which did not stay up to date: it got eaten alive!
Since science and technological advances are innately disruptive it follows that the only way to have a peaceful, stable, "mature" civilization is for such society to be stagnant, to have the State to impose an unchanging stasis. Yet another reason for me to dismiss Utopian fantasies of a "mature" society!
Again, I'm reminded of Anderson's "The High Ones."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Nothing follows about what societies will do in future. Nothing can be unchanging. Peace is not stagnancy or stasis. A sufficiently dynamic technologically based society should be able to live with and thrive on constant innovation and renewal. I think that some possible futures can be ones that would previously have been dismissed as Utopian fantasies. Of course right now a lot of powerful people are taking the world in precisely the opposite direction.
Paul.
Paul: you may note that, as of now, utopia has often been predicted but has never arrived.
This is History giving you a -hint-.
Sure. I do not predict it. Indeed, I am getting the message that history is low probability accidents, although we have made some progress nevertheless: civilization; knowledge; arts; mercantilism; scientific revolution; industrial revolution; democracies (such as they are); technological revolution; new possibilities. We can argue, lobby and campaign for one way forward as against another. A universal basic income would totally disrupt the present economic system but nevertheless has been proposed as a way to address the issue of technological unemployment. Until we really do succeed in destroying ourselves (!), I think we can continue to hope, and more than hope, for a better future.
Kaor, Paul!
Candidly, I don't believe one bit in the plausibility of what you hope for. Real history and real life have never shown any of these Utopian dreams coming to pass. I'm going to stick with those "hints" Stirling mentioned,.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But that is a kind of argument that no sf reader should ever use. Something has not happened yet so it will never happen? Thus, before 1969: No one has ever landed on the Moon yet. Therefore, no one will ever land on the Moon? No one had ever split the atom before someone split the atom.
Conditions have changed, are changing, will continue to change. Change accelerates. Conditions will be different in future. Production of abundance will make everything very different. You can continue to argue that certain human changes will not happen but you cannot continue to argue that they will not happen in the future on the ground that they have not happened in the past.
All that I argued for on this occasion is the possibility of a future society more dynamic than our current society already is. We have overcome and left behind static societies.
When you think of science disrupting society, you might think of vested interests resisting change but there will not have to be vested interests if no one any more has to compete for a bigger share of a finite store of wealth. If everyone benefits from technological innovations, then everyone will welcome such innovations.
Paul.
"From the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can be made."
If we just look at how people have been and still are and then ask, "Can such people suddenly be miraculously transformed into a completely different kind of person?," then the answer is no. However, even now, the same people are violent in some conditions and peaceful in other conditions. So the conditions that generate peacefulness can be generalized while the conditions generating violence can be eliminated, not eliminated quickly or easily but nevertheless eliminated. Someone who has every reason to remain at peace with his neighbours and who has no external factors motivating him to become violent does not suddenly lynch his neighbours and burn down their houses for no empirically discernible reason or, at least, the vanishingly small percentage of the population who might still be motivated to do such things would easily be restrained and offered mental treatment. Over time, the crooked timber can be straightened.
Kaor, Paul!
And I still disagree. All it takes is for a catastrophic war or any kind of massive disaster and that crooked timber of humanity Stirling mentioned immediately shows us what he meant.
It is totally unrealistic to believe to believe "conditions" allegedly generating peacefulness can somehow be made permanent. Only the existence of the State, with its monopoly of the means of violence makes internal peacefulness within a nation possible. And the chaos in Haiti and Venezuela occurring right now shows us what happens when a State collapses or loses all legitimacy.
The blunt fact remains: mankind is a Fallen race, corruptible, flawed, imperfect, prone to violence, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The blunt fact is that mankind has risen, not Fallen. We can end the economic and territorial conflicts that cause wars. The State will no longer be necessary when there are no longer causes of violence between individuals. I do not advocate States collapsing or losing legitimacy. That is a totally different circumstance, going backward instead of forward. I have presented my reasons why just to assume the perpetual existence of states and wars is not to understand how the proper use of abundant technological wealth can transform social interactions, eliminating crimes like theft and street violence.
We are not "prone to violence." There are many circumstances in which people are not violent and those circumstances can be extended. How will we be "corruptible" when everyone has everything that they need and more? I do not think that you understand the extent of the change that is possible.
Paul.
We can and should get rid of the appalling arms industry. Human beings sharing their planet certainly do not need an endless supply of means of killing each other.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we have reached an impasse, only a clarifying of views being possible.
We have weapons because human beings are quarrelsome, ambitious, prone to violence, etc. Arms makers merely supply what is demanded.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Human beings are not quarrelsome or prone to violence. It is the economic and political systems that you defend that mass produce and deploy instruments of destruction.
Paul.
Sean,
I have difficulty in understanding the strength of your opposition to all this. Some disagreement, discussion, argument, of course, but this just becomes endless, repetitive, uncompromising, never a single point conceded, and we just wind up back where we started. And, of course, agreement is not the object. Sometimes I reply merely because I feel that I have to repeat an argument that I have already made because otherwise it seems that it has been forgotten.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I have difficulty in understanding how you can be so opposed to what is so obvious to me, the sheer innate imperfection of the human race. Which Anderson attributed to us being either Fallen or imperfectly evolved chimps. That is where we can do nothing but clarify opposing beliefs.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Pre-human animals changed fundamentally by evolving into human beings. They changed their environment and changed themselves in the process. We have changed the Earth and our societies (our societies = ourselves) out of all recognition. We must now make further big changes in how we operate or risk destroying ourselves. We have not Fallen. "Imperfectly evolved"? We have not yet completed the change into fully rational beings able to act on the basis of individual and collective self-understanding. Making this further change is at least possible. Saying that it cannot happen is like saying that animals could not have become human, that hunters could not have become farmers, that city merchants could not have displaced feudal despots etc.
Paul.
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