Responding to the Procyonites, Ramacan reflects that:
nations that have known only war glorify military virtues;
a militaristic state avoids peace, leisure and prosperity but instead controls its population and maintains its rule by further conquests;
the Procyonites, now capable only of fighting, have become beasts of prey.
My reflection is that it is not only militaristic states that control their populations by directing their attention outward against an external enemy!
Conflicts against external enemies are reflected in popular fiction. James Bond must fight SMERSH, SPECTRE, Blofeld as an individual, then the KGB. Full circle. There would have been no shortage of new villains if the series had continued after the Cold War although Bond himself was approaching retirement age. Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner and Alan Moore in V For Vendetta turned their attention towards enemies that were not external, an idea that would have been both incomprehensible and antithetical to a regime like that of the Procyonites.
12 comments:
Human beings are instinctually -- genetically -- tribal. They form tribes (of whatever nature, by descent or by ideas or whatever) and the tribes fight for territory, power and plunder.
The -terminology- changes; the reality doesn't.
OTOH, if you've experienced war you know the result isn't preset -- you could lose. The odds have to be calculated.
Frederick the Great of Prussia attacked Austria when the Empress took the throne... and ended up at war with France, Austria and Russia. He won battles but was losing the war -- until the Czarina Elizabeth (who hated him) died at 52, and her (I think) nephew was a demented Frederick fanboy and dropped out of the war.
That was the "Miracle of the House of Brandenberg", and he didn't start another war!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! We might not agree on the ultimate origins of whatever it was made human beings what we see them/ourselves to be, but we agree at least about we actually are, tribalistic. And that it's not going to change no matter what some people hope will happen.
So much HAPPEENED because Empress Elizabeth died when she did--had she lived even just another six months Frederick the Great would have been utterly ruined and Prussia would never have unified Germany. As late as December 1761 Frederick was despairingly talking of asking for terms of surrender.
I'm rereading BLACK CHAMBER, and recently reread the chapter where Paul von Hindenburg agreed to the annihilation gas attack on the US in that alternate 1916. I can't help but think that was a mistake, because the attack plan was so complicated, depending on EVERYTHING going right and did not allowed for the unexpected. Such as Luz O'Malley! Such an attack, if it failed (which it mostly did) brought the US into the war against Germany sooner than it had to be. And this mostly failed attack infuriated the great mass of the American people, meaning the US entered the war far more unified than it might have been.
It seemed to me that it would make more sense to prepare to attack the US but to do nothing until TR managed to persuade Congress into declaring war on the Central Powers. The longer such a declaration was not made after Germany used the annihilation gas against the UK/France the better it would be for Berlin. Even if it was only a week or two. Then it would make sense to attack the port cities of the eastern and Caribbean coasts, after war was declared. The US would not be able to use such an attack as a casus belli.
Ad astra! Seam
We can and possibly will cease to be tribalistic. There is nothing that will never change.
Paul: Except the genetic nature of human beings, which (failing genetic engineering) is constant.
Sean,
I know. This point has been made before and I accept it. But our genetic inheritance is that we are makers, builders and thinkers who can assess new situations and adjust our actions and behaviours accordingly. Some species adapt to a single set of conditions whereas others, especially including us, are adaptable and flexible and thus have survived and prospered so far.
Sorry about the Sean. In haste.
Kaor, Paul!
And we will not cease to be tribalistic and competitive because these drives/passions are innate to human beings. It's precisely because we have those drives which enables us to do the other things you listed.
No, if you want to eliminate aggressiveness and competitiveness from mankind you are going to have to use genetic engineering. And that would be more likely than not to have unintended bad consequences, such as turning mankind into a r ace of feeble Eloi or the H. servus of Stirling's DRAKON.
Or, even more drastically, into creatures like the empty of selfhood Zolotoyans of Anderson's "The High Ones."
Ad astra! Sean
We are not blank slates that can be overwritten.
Nothing is innate. Everything changes.
We have social and creative drives that enable us to do what we do.
There are many conditions in which no one has any reason to be aggressive and those conditions can be reproduced and generalized. If everyone was aggressive all the time, then society would not exist. Even the most violence-prone individual has occasions, e.g., when he is with close family members, when he wants to be anything but violent and a set of social relationships in which that is always the case is perfectly conceivable.
Causes of aggressiveness and economic competitiveness will cease to exist when technologically produced wealth is shared equally without any need for genetic engineering.
Far from being overwritten blank slates, individuals will then be free to develop their full potentials.
Kaor, Paul!
We are not blank, infinitely re-moldable slates. And it's precisely because many human beings are ambitious, competitive, aggressive, that we get changes, bad and good. Eliminating those innate drives prevents further changes, Nor will SOME individuals bother "...to develop their full potentials" unless inspired by ambition and competitiveness.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We are in agreement that we are not blank, infinitely re-moldable slates. We are active, dynamic and creative and have remade our world and ourselves.
It is not only ambition, competition and aggression that have caused changes. This is a one-sided cliche. It was human cooperation that developed language, tamed fire, domesticated wolves, enabled helpless babies to grow to maturity etc. Nothing is innate. Who is talking about eliminating drives? I am talking about cooperatively using advanced technology to improve material and social conditions for everyone. Competitive economies WERE necessary to develop technology to a point where we can now begin to transcend competition.
SOME individuals will "develop their full potentials" because they are curious and intelligent and want to learn and to create more, not because they are ambitious or competitive. There will no longer be any need for competition. The free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.
But can we not just discuss these important issues instead of going hammer and tongs against each other about them all the time? You wrote, "We are not blank, infinitely remoldable slates," in the apparent belief that you were disagreeing with me about something.
Paul.
Post a Comment