"Immense flocks of seabirds dipped and wheeled. Or were they birds? They had wings, anyhow, steely blue against a wan sky. Perhaps they cried or sang, into the wind skirl and wave rush; but Laure couldn't hear it in the enclosed place."
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 709-794 AT p. 720.
They are birds if they are descended from seagulls imported at many removes from Earth whereas, if they are the outcome of independent Serievean evolution, then maybe they should be classified as equivalents of birds.
In another future history series, Kithmen explore a planet where there are:
"...seabirds, whose wings made a white storm over the tower tops and whose flutings mingled with wind skirl and drum roll of surf..."
-Maurai And Kith, pp. 215-216.
Since this planet had also been colonized by human beings, maybe these seabirds were imported?
Each description reminds us of the other. Flandry's Legacy is Volume VII of The Technic Civilization Saga whereas Maurai And Kith is two short future history series in a single volume.
Serieve is on the edge of another spiral arm of the galaxy whereas the unknown planet visited by the Kith is:
"...three hundred light-years from Sol's calculated present position." (p. 220)
"Starfog" is listed as set in 7100 whereas the Kith story is set twenty thousand years after the Golden Flyer had departed from Tau Ceti to:
"...the fringes of the galactic nucleus." (p. 224)
- which, in turn, was thousands of years in our future.
34 comments:
In places near the sea (like Denmark, or most of England) you get flocks of seagulls following plowmen. They're waiting for earthworms and other insects to be turned up.
Kaor, Paul!
I think its reasonable to believe human colonists will introduce many Terrestrial birds and animals to their new homes.
Ad astra! Sean
Seabirds also live in & near inland water bodies. Eg: I have seen gulls & pelicans by a small shallow lake south of Calgary.
Kaor, Jim!
I've seen birds looking a lot like seagulls inland as well.
Ad astra! Sean
BTW I don't find that post-Technic civilization very credible. It's all very well to 'grow beyond war', but what if someone else has a different idea?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! I am very skeptical of dreamy notions of somehow "outgrowing" war. I've tried to suggest to Paul that all the Commonalty has to do is bump up against war like barbarians or an aggressive civilized power--and it's back to normal!
Ad astra! Sean
Of course the human civilizations might meet someone aggressive but meanwhile they can have peace among themselves.
Paul: until they really, really disagree about something... 8-).
Basically, you can't abolish war - or other forms of political violence -- unless you abolish politics. And you can't abolish politics without genetically severely altering human beings.
We can have a different kind of politics.
If (this is possible) it is no longer necessary to compete for raw materials, trade routes or profits, then there will be less reasons for real disagreement.
People living in a society where weapons and instruments of mass destruction are no longer produced and where large numbers of young men in different regions are no longer organized to wear uniforms, obey orders and wield weapons in order to defend their regions against each other, then anyone with real disagreements will have to disagree just by arguing with each other!
A different social context - different social responses.
Kaor, Paul!
No, that peace within the Commonalty will last only as long as no really, really serious quarrels disrupts it.
No, this stubborn insistence that only material things causes quarrels and fights is not true. People can and have fought over anything. Pride, malice, ambition for power, ideological/religious fanaticism, etc., will do.
No, fights and quarrels often escalate from small causes, as we see in Chapter 6 of GENESIS. Your hopes are unrealistic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not stubborn. I am disagreeing. I have replied on "power" many times. That word should not merely be repeated without any reference to the context in which it is applied. My hopes are realistic. Conflicts between, e.g., Protestants and Catholics or Muslims and Hindus happen in socioeconomic conditions of discrimination and oppression. They do not happen merely because people have different beliefs. Churches of different denominations, mosques, synagogues and gurdwaras can exist peacefully side by side.
Society can identify and encourage the conditions that generate peace. At present, however, we must oppose rising racism precisely because economic conditions are bad, therefore minorities and immigrants are scapegoated.
Paul.
Crusades and jihads are about leaders and groups grabbing land and loot, not about how many persons there are in God.
Paul: no, because human beings are instinctually competitive about -power-. And power is a positional good, which means it can never be available in quantity.
OK. Maybe I need more input on what "positional" means here. In my experience, groups of people are capable indeed of many things, including of course vicious power struggles. However, another of the things that they also often do is to work together on a common project with agreement and consensus and shared satisfaction in a collectively achieved outcome. I am not conscious of wanting power over friends and comrades when planning and acting together with them. So there are different ways of operating and we can try to steer society in one kind of direction instead of in the opposite direction. (Right now the most dreadful aspects of human interactions are all too apparent just about everywhere but there is also a lot of good as large numbers come together to try to build alternatives.)
Kaor, Paul!
Persisting in disagreeing with what is so obvious, to me, is the same as being stubborn. You also overlook how unlikely it is that those peaceful groups you talk about will last, or gain similar like minded new members as the old ones die off.
Struggles for power don't have to be vicious, as long as all factions agree to play by the rules. But they are struggles for power, competitions for gaining power and the right to make decisions and issue commands. That is what all politics is about.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Come of it. What is so obvious to you is not so obvious to everyone. You really do equate your view with the truth. All our views are approximations. The truth is bigger than any or all of us.
"Struggles for power..." I have replied repeatedly that power exists where there are means of coercion and that there can be societies without such means. (But I do need elucidation on "positional.") Of course struggles for power don't have to be vicious but I referred to vicious struggles as an extreme case, not because that was my simplistic view of all power struggles. All politics is not about struggles for power. A lot of it is about resistance to power. I attend large meetings where individuals have influence and respect but neither exercise "power" nor want to. Decisions are made collectively, not imposed by factions.
Why is it unlikely that peaceful groups will last? There is a great deal of dissatisfaction with governments that still think that it is legitimate to slaughter populations. This dissatisfaction is expressed repeatedly but it is easy to dismiss it because it happens on the streets, not in Parliament, Congress etc, and you only see it in headlines or in brief clips on TV. This dissatisfaction is out here now and has remained at an unprecedented level in Britain. There is also another kind of dissatisfaction that generates xenophobia and we have to oppose that.
Paul.
Sean,
I honestly believe what I say. If you think that I stubbornly continue to say something despite really knowing that it is false, then we cannot converse. Imagine if I addressed you on the assumption that you really accepted everything that I say but that you refused to admit it. Impossible! (Not to say offensive.) Can we start again on a completely different basis?
I understand that you are surprised to be disagreed with. Nevertheless, you are disagreed with. The world is full of a multitude of fundamentally incompatible opinions and beliefs. Each of us two has reasons for what he believes. That has to be the starting point, surely?
It seems that we must take backward steps in order to move forward again.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, I will not "come off it," because it is an amply proven fact that all humans, without exception, are prone to sin, error, foolishness, etc., in varying degrees. And any of us can be or become violent at any time. That is why the State, with its means of coercion, exists, to restrain and punish those who go too far. Nor do I believe that people who believe in somehow changing all humans into what they are not will succeed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If you think that I am being dishonest in disagreeing about this, then we have a problem. We can trade contradictory assertions forever. Here goes: It is not an amply proven fact that all humans, without exception (!), are prone to sin, error, foolishness etc... Any of us cannot be or become violent at any time. At any time? A good person without any provocation can suddenly become violent for no reason? Does that happen? The state exists because property is unequally distributed and the have nots must be prevented from stealing from the haves. This need will cease when abundant wealth is equally distributed.
It is not a matter of changing people into what they are not but of changing social conditions so that the same people experience, respond and behave differently.
I have great difficulty in understanding how an sf reader can think that, despite all the evolutionary changes that produced homo sapiens and despite all the historical and social changes that have produced twenty-first century mankind, we have now frozen and will remain as we are unchanged forever into an indefinite future. I do not know what will happen but I do know for certain that that will definitely not happen.
As obvious as all this seems to me, I do not think that you are failing in honesty by thinking otherwise. But, if you think that, by standing by what I think, I am refusing to acknowledge what I really see to be true, then we have a big problem. It is that and that only that I refer to when I say, "Come off it."
Two issues: (i) a disagreement; (ii) how to conduct a disagreement. I am trying to address (ii). Of course we do not agree about (i)!
Paul.
Paul:
See the book available here for some of the major obstacles to getting a better society such as you or I hope for, & what might be done about those obstacles.
https://theauthoritarians.org/
Jim,
Thank you. I might look at the book but meanwhile I am all too aware of the chief obstacles. They are all around us: entrenched power; social inertia; "common sense" which says that social relationships have always been and will always be as they are now.
"Common sense" is not true. When Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain, a Conservative Member of Parliament, Ted Heath, appeared on TV. An adult somewhere in the country told a child, "That man was a PM before Thatcher." The child asked, "Were men allowed to do it, then?" People take for granted what is presented to them and what is presented changes. We have since had a Hindu British Prime Minister and a Muslim Scottish First Minister and a black woman is now Conservative Party Leader. Enormous changes happen in a single lifetime and greater changes happen historically.
Trotsky wrote that revolutionary changes are violent precisely because people are conservative. People cling to outmoded institutions while the original basis of those institutions is gradually undermined until, at some point, the institution comes crashing down. Quantitative changes become qualitative.
The world is changing now. Changes will be either good or bad but will, in any case, happen and each of us is part of that process.
Paul.
Paul: power is both a means to other ends, and an end in itself, to human instincts. This was because, for most of our existence, power led to successful reproduction; so desiring power is instinctual.
I want to be a member of a community and not to exercise power over anyone else in it. I am not alone in this. I am a member of various social groups in which it would in any case be impossible to force or coerce other members to do anything that they didn't want to do. A large part of our experience consists in this. Sure, there are also power relationships going on in society at large but I think that the aspect that I am drawing attention to exists and is important and can be encouraged.
Kaor, Paul!
No, your hopes and dreams are not realistic. The mere fact of you wishing very hard humans are not as we see them is not going to change matters. The State, with its monopoly of violence is going to remain necessary. The Catholic Church and Stirling, even if somewhat different arguments are used to reach similar conclusions, are right, not Utopian dreamers.
The optimum we can hope for, based on actual facts and real history, remains the limited state, in whatever form, and free enterprise economics.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes, my hopes and dreams are realistic. I have not argued that the mere fact of my wishing will change anything. Humans are not as you see them. They are differentiated as a species by the fact that they have changed their environment with hands and brains and have changed themselves into rational linguistic beings in the process. We have already changed ourselves. There is no unchanging nucleus anywhere in us. I am not a Utopian dreamer. I continually present arguments with evidence for what I say. These are the actual facts. Free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant. State coercion can become increasingly unnecessary. I have cited numerous examples where human beings are violent in one context but not in another yet you say anyone can become violent in any circumstances! They do not. This statement of mine is based on experience.
Every statement that you have just made I have replied to several times before. We need to say something new if we are to continue. Since you have not addressed this, I want again to reiterate that I am not dishonestly saying anything that I myself perceive as untrue. If something seems obvious to you, there is no necessity that it seems equally obvious to someone else. There are genuine and deep disagreements and we go wrong if we do not fully recognize that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because no agreement is possible on some issues. And you err in saying I think you are being dishonest in any way, I merely think you to be sincerely wrong.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If no agreement is possible, then it is pointless just to repeat the statements that are in disagreement. I repeat that we are not unchangeable but are defined by our pro-active change of the environment and of ourselves. I repeat that technology will make wealth abundant and thus also make free enterprise redundant. I repeat that the state is primarily to protect property, not to prevent us from unaccountably attacking our neighbours instead of just greeting them as we pass on the street as we usually do. I base such remarks on experience, not on Utopian idealism.
The adjective, "stubborn," definitely implied refusal to acknowledge a perceived truth. You define your view as so obviously right that anyone who disagrees must be in denial. That is not a level playing field for a discussion.
Paul.
I am not sincerely wrong.
When you merely repeat "free enterprise," you ignore a lot of discussion that has gone on in between. Of course I take the point that you disagree with a lot of that discussion but nevertheless you ignore it. Thus, we never really meet in discussion. We just talk past each other like two giants with megaphones. I find it hard to communicate about such subtleties of dialogue. They just get lost somehow.
Kaor, Paul!
Because I have never seen any alternative to free enterprise that works. The only alternative that has been seriously attempted was bureaucratic state socialism, which has never succeed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No. Attempts have been made at non-bureaucratic democratic socialism and these have been defeated so far. Struggles very much continue.
But things can, hopefully will, be different in future when technology produces so much that distribution through a market will become redundant! Of course this has not happened yet because the productive capacity has not been there yet. Things will be different in the future. We are science fiction readers and we know this. Things might very well be worse but it is our responsibility to try to make them better. I have said this before in reply to "free enterprise."
Let's just stick to what we think and why we think it. There has been too much of this "You are so obviously wrong"/"No, I am not." That does not help. After all that has been said, the issues still remain and have to be addressed all over again.
Paul.
Sean,
You seem not to remember previous discussions. I know that you do not agree with much that is in those discussions but nevertheless you seem not to remember them.
"That (e.g., a peaceful and equitable society) has never happened before" or "It has not happened yet" is irrelevant as a response to the argument that technological productive capacity is increasing so rapidly and has such enormous potential that economic relationships and systems can be qualitatively different in future. Of course it hasn't happened yet. Men had not landed on the Moon before they landed on the Moon.
Paul.
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