Sandra Tamarin-Asmundsen listens to the morning news. It sounds like ours:
"'Babur could not and would not tolerate...'" (p. 49);
some powers have "'...demonstrated hostility to Babur's legitimate activity in space.'" (ibid.);
the Solar Commonwealth government "'...is willing to negotiate...'" (ibid.);
that government "'...will stand firm...'" (ibid.) and will take forceful measures if necessary;
this is announced by Prime Minister Lapierre at a Justice Party convention.
Sabre-rattling: war is imminent as in the opening chapters of The People Of The Wind and The Game Of Empire. It is legitimate for us to feel a sense of excitement because it is only fiction. Mirkheim will display every possible response of Terrestrial and Hermetian populations to the rumours and realities of war. Mirkheim, in particular, is a comprehensive novel.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I get suspicious of political parties bombastically calling themselves the Justice (or Democrat) parties! After all, who could dare oppose parties with such noble names??? (Sardonic snort)
Actually, THE GAME OF EMPIRE opens with mention of a recently concluded border clash with the Merseians.
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's just an elaboration of the usual "My tribe good, your tribe stinks, kill-kill-kill" which is instinctive in human beings.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! And I firmly believe my political tribe, the Republicans, to be vastly better than the odious Democrats, for many reasons.
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, everybody does. I don't have to think 'my side' is in any objective sense 'better'. It's just mine.
"Odious."
Paul; the other guy's tribe is always odious. That's the instinctual reflex at work here. My tribe good, your tribe stinks, kill-kill-kill.
Well, ok.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that tribalist instinct we humans have seems so obvious to me that it alternately amazes and frustrates me that too many stubbornly denies it exists! The chief advantage of a democracy is that, sometimes, we can temper that instinct into grudgingly accepting peaceful transfers of power between rival political tribes.
Sometimes, of course, it breaks down, when quarrels between rival political tribes becomes so fierce that civil wars start. Which is what happened with the US in 1860-61. Or between the supporters of the Crown and Parliament in the English Civil War (sometimes called the Wars of the Three Kingdoms).
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Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
People who disagree with you are not stubborn. They just disagree with you. There are many conditions in which members of different groups live peacefully side by side. These conditions can be identified and reproduced. Yesterday morning, many people attended different churches without attacking each other en route to church. Civil wars result from socio-economic conflicts which can be made redundant.
Paul.
By now, I can anticipate responses.
Wars in the name of religion are really about something material. Jihads and Crusades were about grabbing land and loot, not about how many persons there are in God. Riots and virtual civil war in Northern Ireland were about decades of gerrymandering and institutionalized discrimination, not about transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception or Papal infallibility. It would be absurd to suggest that such beliefs alone could cause violence, especially since such beliefs often exist alongside contrary beliefs without any violence. My remarks are based on observation of people in society, not on unrealistic Utopianism.
I do not accept the phrase, "human nature," because this implies something unchanging. Nothing anywhere inside or outside of us is unchanging. We are differentiated as a species by the fact that we have cooperatively changed our environment with hands and brains and have changed ourselves into linguistic thinking beings in the process.
"Power" means ability to coerce. Means of coercion are weapons, which need not be produced, and bodies of armed men, which need not be maintained. Production of abundance will make economic competition obsolete, indeed counterproductive. With abundance, there will be no motivation for discrimination in allocation of housing or other social resources.
In such conditions, only a very insane individual would attack anyone else for no reason whatsoever and society as a whole would easily restrain him and offer him psychological help.
More detailed discussion of some of these specific arguments might be helpful. Mere repetition that human nature will always compete for power, prestige, status and kudos will just make me repeat the argument about power.
I really am trying to break out of this impossible impasse.
Note that 'tribe' can mean 'any group I identify with'.
My first boarding school was small and had no chapel so we were marched across town to a parish church every Sunday morning. We passed churches of other denominations and once a pupil expressed extreme hostility to one based, I afterwards learned, on complete ignorance of a different tradition. That was a result of how we were brought up. We were told and believed - how could we not? - that other interpretations of Christianity were obviously wrong. We never heard their point of view. We never visited other churches even at Christmas or Easter which surely were opportunities for unity and fellowship.
In our sf group for a while, there was an Anglican and a Methodist. The Methody liked the minister in a church in a particular village and was prepared to travel some distance every Sunday to hear him. The Anglican, attending his church in that same village, remarked, "I know him, Mr. Brown, because once a year we have a pulpit swap. He's a great chap!"
Those are examples of different kinds of relationships between groups. We collectively are capable of conducting our affairs much more positively than we have been doing for a very long time.
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