Civilization has reached further west in North America in the beta timeline than in the alpha timeline but also seems to be in retreat. Over the Golden Gate, there is still white fog. Nature has not changed. There are also:
shining bay;
summer-tawny earth;
ruined walls, towers and strongholds;
brush reclaiming crumbled adobe buildings;
a village where Sausalito should be;
a few fishing smacks at sea;
where timecycles hover at eagle height, "...whittering wind." (p. 369)
That Andersonian wind has its say. "Whittering" seems appropriate for crumbling buildings. Something has happened here but what? The Patrol agents do not risk descent but go to look elsewhere.
Poul Anderson's strengths include detailed descriptions even of briefly glimpsed scenes that will never be seen again. Now on its guard, the Patrol will avoid any entanglements on the ground in the beta twentieth century.
19 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
An empire has fallen, and we are seeing some of its ruins.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that political stability is essential to large, dense populations.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that requires a stable, long lasting State, in no matter what form. Another reason for me being totally skeptical of Utopian dreams that everybody will be permanently nice and peaceful!
Ad astra! Sean
We can be and are peaceful when the conditions are right.
Paul: those conditions are always fragile and temporary.
They sure have been and still are but we have the potential to build a better future.
Kaor, Paul!
Considering how flawed and imperfect all humans are (except the Incarnate Logos, Christ, and the BVM) I don't believe one bit that even idyllic "conditions" will ever be anything but "fragile and temporary."
Not too terribly bad is the best we can hope for.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not flawed and imperfect. Advanced technology used by society as a whole can produce what everyone needs for physical, personal and social development. There will then be no need for conflict.
Paul.
Sean,
Whenever you say yet again that we are flawed and imperfect, I think that that is a one-sided and inadequate statement so my immediate response is to deny it. But my mere denial is also one-sided and inadequate! Surely the real situation is subtler and more complex? Throughout my life, I have been saddled with personal qualities that I wish that I had not but what follows from that? What makes us the way we are? Nothing is unchanging. Society has changed throughout history. We now have the capacity to make much greater changes although powerful vested interests actively preserve the status quo despite all its built-in conflicts. A very different society and upbringing would enable each of us to understand ourselves much better from an early age and then to work on those personal "flaws" and "imperfections" instead of just letting them fester and solidify under layers of resentment and misunderstanding to be handed on to future generations. (It has more recently emerged that there was at least one paedophile member of staff at each of the two boarding schools that I attended. I realize all too clearly that, if my life had gone differently, then I personally could have wound up like one of them.)
I believe that we have risen to where we are now and can rise further, not that we have Fallen. If the "Fall" is going to keep rearing its head in discussion, then it is going to have to be addressed directly. The evidence is that social, chattering bipeds with opposable thumbs cooperatively manipulated their environment, thus producing tools, including language. Non-human animals transformed themselves into human beings. Collective self-change is our heritage. Human beings were not created in a Paradise from which they Fell by an act of their own free will. (We can have freedom of choice in relation to our fellow finite beings but not in relation to an omnipotent creator of all things other than himself who by definition would create every part of our individual psychologies including all our motivations.)
I prefer reasoned discussion to uncompromising disagreement although I usually respond to the latter in kind.
Paul.
Paul: the best indicator of what human beings -can- do is what they -have- done.
Surely we still have untapped potentials? Provided that we survive (of course), we have an indefinite future ahead of us and are only just beginning?
Kaor, Paul!
The point is I don't believe in your arguments and reasoning, because, at a minimum, I don't believe your views conform to the hard facts of how human beings behave as seen in real life and real history. I agree with Stirling, the most probable indicator of what people can do is what t they have done. And suggestions about "untapped potentials," with no proof, no evidence for what you hope, is not convincing.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But future real life will be different from real history. There is plenty of proof and evidence that there is "untapped potential" in all of us. At present we are educated and trained to do only what the market economy wants from us. Our full aptitudes are not identified or developed:
"Everard had never realized how his own life had crippled him; he was only half the man he could be." (TIME PATROL, p. 12)
Less than half. Patrol training helps him to control his muscles and discipline his emotions and to think consciously, swiftly and precisely.
Believe me, I have long since ceased trying to convince you of anything. Whatever I say about the possible future of mankind, you try to refute it utterly instead of just acknowledging it as another point of view. The future, by definition, is unknown and presents different options. I reply to show that a reply is possible, not because I have any hope of convincing someone determined not to be convinced.
Paul.
An impoverished view of humanity:
we have no further potential;
we have already done all that we are going to do;
even when all empirically discernible material and social causes of conflict and violence have been ended, people who will by then be living comfortable, happy, fulfilling, harmonious lives will be so prone to violence that, for no reason whatsoever and with absolutely no provocation, they will contrive pretexts to lynch their neighbours and to burn down the houses of the most recent incomers because that is what people have always done? And grandparents will attack their grandchildren? (As a matter of fact, they do not even do that now.) Am I exaggerating?
In a word, no. We have more capacity now -- we could blow up the world, for example -- but our motives and behavior haven't changed in 80,000 years.
Kaor, Paul!
The technology of the 21st century is vastly more advanced than what was known in the Old Stone Age, and humans are still as prone to violence now as they were back then. Pinning your hopes on mere technological advances is not convincing.
Nor are your quotes from "Time Patrol" convincing, because I took what PA said about Manse to be "color," to make the story interesting. Also, Anderson moved away from such ideas, making it plain he did not believe them.
I thought I was acknowledging your POV. And people don't need to be starving and miserable to be frustrated or quarrelsome. Any excuse will do, as we see in "Quixote And The Windmll" or Chapter 6 of GENESIS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am not pinning my hopes on "mere" technological advances - although there is nothing "mere" about the potential production of abundance. I am pinning my hopes on our ability to use technology for the maintenance of life instead of for continued destruction of each other and of our environment! I feel that I must continue to correct misunderstandings of what I am saying.
I am not trying to convince you. I took PA to mean what he wrote and I agree with what he wrote on that occasion. I do not claim that he stayed with one set of ideas.
I do not say that people need to be starving or miserable to be frustrated or quarrelsome. I do not deny that any excuse will do, an absurd idea. "Quixote and the Windmill" showed a period of transition. GENESIS did not show a society in which technological advances were used to develop human potential.
Can we stop this?
Paul.
I DO deny that any excuse will do...
(I try to respond to every point that is made which is what makes this process so exhaustive and exhausting but I missed one point this time. You do more than just acknowledge the existence of a contrary point of view and more than just discuss that point of view. You try to refute it utterly which is surely "over the top"? The other person is always able to make some kind of rejoinder. I think that this is a way of trying to reassure yourself that your view is unassailably right and none of us can ever make such a claim. At best, each of us has only an approximation to the truth which is bigger than all of us. Theory is grey. Life is green.
(But, as I say, can we stop this?)
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