Does anyone think that futuristic sf is not relevant to here and now?
Right now we witness death and destruction in different places on Earth and often manage to disagree about who is responsible for it! The crew of the returned interstellar spaceship, the USS Benjamin Franklin, sees death and destruction across the whole Earth and has to deduce who is responsible for it. It was not anyone on Earth. In this scenario, the galaxy is full of intelligent species. In such a scenario, maybe the loss of a planetary population would be less of a tragedy on a cosmic scale although it would still constitute multiple megadeaths. But it is possible that, in our scenario, most life has not advanced beyond the unicellular. In any case, life on Earth is precious. And we are the main threat to it.
12 comments:
Everybody's responsible for it. IWHBD. It's What Human Beings Do. Always have, always will, world without end.
Or world with end, maybe.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! And I don't see IWHBD ever ending. Something that can only be managed, not abolished.
Ad astra! Sean
Disagree.
Kaor, Paul!
My response is what Flandry said to Kathryn McCormac in Chapter XI of THE REBEL WORLDS: "You have insufficient faith in man's magnificent ability to ignore what history keeps yelling at him."
Ad astra! Sean
History shows us change and the potential for far more. Potential, not certainty. I think that this last point is continually missed.
Kaor, Paul!
I have not missed it, I simply don't agree with you about "changes" somehow changing human beings in non-technological ways. My view remains that of Flandry.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There is no "somehow" about it. I have repeatedly spelled out with concrete examples how the same people behave differently in different conditions, contexts and circumstances. Sport generates street hooliganism when there is social alienation. In other social contexts, the same sports generate sportsmanship, camaraderie, shared enjoyment etc. That is just a single example. I have given many. You have simply not understood anything that I have said if, after all of that, you can add the word, "somehow," as if no explanations had been given.
My view remains my view. And we are simply repeating word for word what we have already said many times as if it had never been said before. I find this very odd.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't believe in your examples. Because you persistently overlook how the positive examples you cite are always followed, attended, or accompanied by negative ones.
I find beliefs like yours to be just as odd because they are not realistic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You don't believe that, in some social conditions, sport divides and, in other conditions, it unites? But that is a fact.
I do not persistently overlook anything! How are positive examples always followed etc by negative ones? People enjoy sportsmanship like the cricket I've seen played for decades, then suddenly start rioting because they have lost a match? Of course not.
We CAN, not necessarily WILL, build completely different social conditions in future. Immigrants are not scapegoated for homelessness or unemployment if everyone is adequately housed and employed. People do not riot for food if they are well fed. People in affluent neighbourhoods do not mug each other for their wallets. I do not lynch my Muslim neighbour for no reason although fear and hate are encouraged and treated as a norm WHEN there is a vested interest in "divide and rule," as there is now in the UK and the US. If peaceful conditions are possible in some (many) neighbourhoods, then they can be reproduced in others.
Economic competition will be redundant when technologically produced abundance is equally distributed. There will be no need for weapons, armies or a division of Earth into armed nation states. People will THEN find it difficult to believe that their ancestors slaughtered each other. THAT will be the norm - unless we carry on fighting and destroy our environment and ourselves with it first.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
So you really do believe that, within each and every human being, there is an inbuilt tendency to attack others for no reason and under no provocation in any and every conditions even when (as is possible) social conditions are such that there is no deprivation, discrimination or conflict of interest but instead everything is conducive to mutual respect and support? Such a belief contradicts the facts about human beings. Any individual who became irrationally violent even in such conditions would be easily restrained by society at large and offered psychological help. No apparatus of coercion would be necessary.
Paul.
Post a Comment