"[Trevelyan] noticed that weeping didn't disfigure [Ilaloa] as it does a human." (p. 99)
That is a good characteristic for a humanoid species.
Only a few lines later:
"Looking on the warmth of [Trevelyan's] face, Nicki wondered how much of it was acting." (ibid.)
POV switch: in the course of a single passage, the narrative point of view has switched from Trevelyan to Nicki. Shouldn't really happen - some of us think.
Over the page but still in the same narrative passage:
"The hypnotism didn't take long. Ilaloa went under fast. Sean winced at the violence of her re-enactment, but the peace that followed was worth it." (p. 100)
Are we being informed not that Trevelyan and/or Nicki noticed Sean's wince but that he felt it and then thought that the peace was worth it? If the latter, then the POV has shifted again, this time to Sean.
Meanwhile, Ilaloa is misleading her companions. She pretends to have heard an alien thought in order to direct them towards a particular region of space where her people wait.
Before the hypnosis, Ilaloa tells Trevelyan that she has no words to describe how a received thought felt if he has never felt them. Why not? We all directly experience our own thoughts so, if we suddenly detected someone else's, then we ought to be able to say something about it. Indeed, Trevelyan makes an attempt. He makes four points:
"'It comes all at once...'" (p. 99);
there is "A main thread..." (ibid.);
there are also what he calls sidelines, overtones, hints, whispers and glimpses;
"'...it's always changing.'" (ibid.)
Does that sound like thought? Ilaloa accepts the description. But she then describes a thought of some fictional species other than her own. The Nomads and their Coordinator ally are being misled.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We are seeing masks within masks from Illaloa.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that human beings not only act for one another, but act in a way that often fools -themselves-. Thus, if you pretend to believe something consistently, you often end up actually believing it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember you mentioning that in your Emberverse books vis a vis the gangster barons of Norman Arminger's PPA. At first many of them only pretended to be Catholics, but as time passed quite a few actually believed in Christianity, probably to their surprise.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: most people find hypocrisy a strain. Some don't, of course.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Too true, such as demagogic politicians and revolutionaries.
And it was good that many of those PPA gangster barons came to believe in Christianity, for them and the people they ruled. That faith/belief would restrain and moderate how they governed.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: no, demagogic politicians and revolutionaries often believe what they say. Lenin sincerely believed in Marxism, for example.
The problem is often how firmly they hold to the belief. See near the bottom of this web page.
https://terrorism.lawcomic.net/what-is-terrorism-page-7-state-terror-and-orthodoxy/
"The justification? SELF-DEFENSE. To a committed ideologue, a challenge to his or her orthodoxy can seem far worse than a mere difference of opinion. It's felt as a personal, existential threat."
"My beliefs are a major part of who I AM. If they're destroyed then so am I! Contrary views are a personal attack on ME!
"My doctrine is the source of my LEGITIMACY as ruler. If it's undermined, so am I! If I allow dissent, I could be deposed or decapitated"
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: I sit corrected, the contempt I have for Ilyich's bloody cruelty made me doubt he believed in anything except sheer lust for power. Yes, belief in the Marxist nonsense was what enabled him to be so brutal/tyrannical.
Jim. That makes sense to me! Fortunately I don't believe in any rigid, one size fits all ideology. My basic political views are Aristotelian, Scholastic (see Thomas Aquinas' treatise ON KINGSHIP), Burkean (see Edmund Burke's REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE), etc. I could cite other writers, like John Adams, but this is enough. Or ponder how Dennitza handled its politics in Anderson's A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Ad astra! Sean
Marxism is not nonsense. Marx's explanation of economic booms and slumps is now generally accepted. His accounts of exploitation and alienation are clear and reflect experience whereas mainstream economics soon becomes difficult to follow and remote from experience.
Kaor, Pauil!
We cannot agree, all we have ever seen from Marxism is bureaucratic one party dictatorships.
Joseph Schumpeter is the man to study re "booms and slumps," which he considered an example of creative destruction in free enterprise systems. We have "busts" because as time passes mistakes, misallocations of resources of all kinds accumulates during a "boom." Slumps and recessions are necessary to force more efficient reallocation of those resources, despite coming with real pain for many people. Attempts to prevent slumps will fail and make the pain more intense and prolonged. Best to let slumps run their course as quickly as possible--with assistance given to those who most need it, as a temporary measure.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are not trying to agree.
Bureaucratic one party dictatorships are not all we have ever seen from Marxism. The Stalinist dictatorship came out of the physical destruction of the small industrial working class by the Civil War and the armies of intervention.
Marx is the man to study re booms and slumps. Attempts to prevent slumps within the competitive system will fail.
Paul.
Sean,
If you still think that we are trying to agree, then we really are talking at complete cross purposes.
Paul.
Apart from any mistakes or misallocations, competitive reinvestment in the means of production/technology lowers the rate of profit, inevitably causing periodic disinvestment but not in any way that is predictable in detail. Hence, chaos, confusion and anarchy of production coinciding with overproduction.
Paul: the market is an efficient, but not perfect, feedback mechanism. It "hunts" around an optimum.
I agree that the market was an improvement on barter! We had to develop through a market economy.
Paul: Plenty of ancient societies had planned economies. They didn't work very well, except for the people at the top -- which was true of the Soviet Union as well. It produced lots of weapons, and luxuries for the powerful. For ordinary people, not so much.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course, the Politburo, Central Committee, and top nomemklatura creamed off the goodies! IWHBD in such centralized autocracies.
Ad astra! Sean
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