I had thought that the following passage was in Yewwl's pov in Chapter XI but it is near the end of X so we have to backtrack.
While speaking to Yewwl inaudibly to anyone else, Banner concludes:
"'The bureaucratic mentality.' That last bit was in Anglic, and gibberish to Yewwl." (p. 141)
It would indeed be gibberish. Someone that I met at College thought that even cave-dwellers must have had what he called "their bureaucracy." He could not conceive of a society in which people lived straightforwardly without some behind-the-scenes controllers or manipulators pulling their strings. But these controllers would be crats without bureaus.
But my main point here is that "bureaucratic," an idea outside of Yewwl's conceptual framework expressed of necessity in a language that she does not know, should sound to her like a meaningless noise. She should not be able to discern the four syllables in it. Thus, the text has momentarily stepped outside of Yewwl's pov. A narrator who shares our knowledge and understanding of bureaucracy informs us that this is what Banner is talking about even though Yewwl does not understand it. Of course, usually we do not pause to reflect on such details.
7 comments:
"even cave-dwellers must have had what he called "their bureaucracy." "
The beginnings of bureaucracy would occur only with tribes larger than Dunbar's number. It is the sort of thing that is unneeded in groups small enough that everyone knows everyone else.
Even hunter-gatherer bands have specialists -- shamans, war-leaders.
I am sure that my guy was thinking vaguely of leadership although he misapplied the word "bureaucracy" which means full-time office-holders and power-wielders with means of coercion.
Bureaucracy is an inevitable and necessary development once any society becomes large and complex enough to need administrators and record keepers.
Ad astra! Sean
And I think that we can go beyond it with a combination of AI, information and communications technologies and fully democratized political procedures.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe that one bit! Humans, flawed and imperfect as we all are, will always manage to bollix up everything we try. The best we can realistically hope for is "not too terribly bad."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Non-linguistic animals have changed into human beings. Society has changed from hunting and gathering to a global technological economy. Everything changes. The future might be good or bad but it will be different and can be better. Whatever else happens, it will not be the same.
Populations that have everything that they need materially and culturally and that are no longer divided into armed nation states paranoid about extending their territories will have no reason to fight. This can be done. The only question is how many of us want to bring it about. Many people in every country oppose xenophobia and incessant war-mongering. A better future is potentially very close.
Paul.
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