It seems that an omniscient narrator recounts the course and consequences of the Council of Hiawatha on pp. 138-143 of Chapter IX in:
Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March, 2011), pp. 1-291.
The account is not part of the dialogue of any of the characters and there is no indication within the text that the information is imparted from any particular perspective within subsequent history. It is as objectively factual as the author can make it - I think. On the other hand, there is an element of interpretation and commentary as well as of fictional "fact." When Home Companies magnates gain political power within the Solar Commonwealth, the narrator states that the Commonwealth has become:
"...the corporate state." (p. 142)
- a phrase that has connotations as well as denotations!
But it would be hard to eliminate that level of commentary. In any case, it is not van Rijn or any other actor in the plot of the novel that tells readers about Hiawatha. The passage is an extended interruption to a conversation between van Rijn and Bayard Story.
There might be more purely impersonal and factual narration in the opening passage of the Prologue which describes a supernova 500,000 years ago, long before any human social interactions? However, in this case, a plural first person pronoun comes on-stage:
"There may have been lesser worlds and moons as well; we cannot now say. We simply know that the giant stars rarely have attendants..." (p. 1)
This narrator is not omniscient and acknowledges some limits to his knowledge but is a scientifically informed individual living within Technic civilization and addressing some of his own contemporaries.
Robert Heinlein's The Star Beast has a narrator who not only recounts the points of view of different individual characters but also informs us of the fact that an extrasolar crustacean species as yet unknown to humanity will be long dead eleven thousand years hence when Terrestrials eventually reach that planet: an unprecedented degree of prescience in any narrator!
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It might have been better, as well as interesting, if Anderson had framed pages 138-43 as a quote from A HISTORY OF THE POLESOTECHNIC LEAGUE.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Yes. And the whole later TECHNIC HISTORY would have benefited from an equivalent of the EARTH BOOK.
Paul.
Note that power and wealth have an innate attraction for each other -- powerful people want wealth, wealthy people want influence on those who are powerful. They want to control entry and competition, for example -- capitalists don't like competition any more than anyone else, they just put up with it if they have to.
Trying to keep power and wealth apart is like trying to keep iron filings off a magnet.
This is why, incidentally, in the long term, attempts to politically control wealth tend to backfire and produce "corporate states".
It's the natural magnetism, which in the long view overcomes ethical constraints.
Which is why, in the long term, minimal governments concentrating on war abroad and controlling violence at home, are best. Otherwise they're going to become corporate states, where the regulated capture the regulators.
The late Soviet Union, for example, became a festival of kleptocracy -- some regional panjandrums even had private gladiatorial arenas, and I'm not kidding there, where they threw people they didn't like to wild beasts or forced them to fight to the death. Putin's Russia is similar, though not quite so baroque... yet.
Or China now -- Xi keeps purging his military trying to eliminate corruption, which is like Sisyphus trying to push that boulder up the hill.
And no, human beings will not become angels. Ever.
Kaor, M. Stirling!
Exactly, which is why I don't believe in Utopian dreams and fantasies of perfect, ideal societies for a Fallen race like ours. The limited State, in whatever form, and free enterprise economics (plus Christianity, to enjoin caution), is the best we can hope for.
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Free enterprise will be redundant went wealth is abundant. There will no longer be any need for economic competition. This is neither a Utopian dream nor a fantasy but a legitimate extrapolation of the future of human labour enhanced by technology. We have not Fallen but risen. We can not only hope but also work and campaign for so much more.
Wealth and power will remain intertwined as long as there is a money economy. However, money has not always existed and need not always exist. It was a standardization of exchange and an improvement on barter but has become the means by which a few control the labour of many and will become redundant when abundant wealth is held in common.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree, because I don't think you understand "money," which is just short hand for how many goods, resources, services, etc., are available to anyone. Also, take note of what Stirling said on why power and wealth are mutually attracted to each other and moralistic attempts to control/prevent that attraction always fail.
The genius of free enterprise, when allowed to function, is how it reduces the costs for more and more people making use of such goods, resources, services. I see no reason to agree it should ever be replaced.
We are going to have to agree to disagree re the Fallen/imperfect nature of mankind. To quote Stirling: "And no, human beings will not become angels, ever."
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
I disagree. I don't think you understand money. It is not just short hand for how many goods, resources, services etc are available to anyone. Large accumulations of money are economic power over the work and lives of populations. Of course power and wealth attract each other in a money economy. This critique is realistic, not moralistic.
Free enterprise will be redundant when wealth is abundant. While it exists, it generates wealth for a few and poverty for many. The rate of profit is in long term decline, causing national and international turmoil.
One species of animals has become human beings. Human beings can become better human beings. As long as the Fall doctrine is merely stated, it can be merely denied.
Paul.
Paul: wealth is -already- abundant. The thought that nobody starves to death would have been wildly utopian in, say, the 1500's.
But there is no such thing as "enough". Wants grow with the feeding.
And power, of course, is not capable of expansion, so competition for it is always going to be... ah... rough.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, poor people of today would be thought fantastically wealthy as "recently" as 1900 (only three years before my father was born).
Many of us might be satisfied with enough, however that might be defined, but many others will not.
I agree, competition for power and status will always exist because there is never enough to satisfy all who crave it. The chief advantage of democracy, when it works, is how it sets some limits, sometimes, on how rough that competing will be.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Power means ability to coerce and there will no longer be means of coercion when all public officials are elected and recallable and when they no longer control bodies of armed men with which to control populations. Status as prestige or reputation does not matter.
All will be satisfied when socially controlled wealth is used to develop the full potential of each individual.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Seriously? Recall elections? You reminded me of how it was the horrible Democrats, back in the early 20th century, who yelled and howled for recall elections in the US. Guess what happened when that was actually tried: it was the hypocritical Democrats who fought most strongly to defeat recall elections. And often succeeded.
Your hopes for somehow eliminating the human drive/urge to compete for power and status thru such superficial means as political tinkering and "wealth" are unrealistic.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean,
Seriously. Easy to set up if enough people want it. Elections as such were thought to be unworkable until enough men and women insisted on having them.
"Horrible," and "yelled and howled" are emotive words which seem to express hate!
I have replied endlessly about "power and status." I do not talk about somehow eliminating a drive or urge. I describe in detail conditions in which some human beings will no longer coerce or control others.
Your account of humanity is ludicrously one-sided. There are drives/urges to cooperation, compassion, solidarity, fellow feeling, friendship, enjoying each other's company, helping a stranger with a problem etc. We can discuss how to encourage and enhance all that. But apparently I am secretly planning how to control or even attack my neighbour when I know that he is unwell so I offer to do some grocery shopping for him!
Can't we just discuss this sensibly instead of each categorically denouncing and rejecting everything that the other says?
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I copied, with attribution, your comment about humans not ever becoming angels into my second Andersonian Notebook. It deserves to be preserved and quoted, when appropriate.
Ad astra! Sean
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