Tuesday 20 January 2015

Politics Of The Games

Poul Anderson's Genesis (New York, 2001), Part One, Chapter VI, section 2.

I am having trouble with the word "auvade" (pp. 59, 61).

Wei, captain of Clan Belov, is almost seventy years older than his son, Mikel. His other children are virtual.

The customary five-year cycle of succession would have made Wei not merely one of the stewards but Supreme Steward of the Darvic Games on New Century's Eve. Further, he deserves such recognition because he:

"...served well at earlier Darvics..." (p. 60);
"...won trophies for mountaineering on the moon and dune skiing on Mars..." (p. 61);
is "...president of the national wildlife commission..." (ibid.);
negotiates between ethnoi under the Worldguide.

However, Arkezhan, Captain Socorro, Wei's enemy, is a favorite of the Chief Enactor who has prevailed upon the Regnant to make Arkhezan Supreme Steward! Young Belov clansmen drunkenly brawl with Socorros...

Laurinda Ashcroft's generation debated how to counteract an Ice Age and an interstellar nebula. Mikel and his contemporaries rage against Socorro and the Enactor. Something has gone wrong.

"If this be the whole fruit of victory, we say: if the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if prophets and martyrs sang in the fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, to protract in saecula saeculorum their contented and inoffensive lives - why, at such a rate, better lose than win the battle, or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding-up."
-an extract from The Will To Believe by William James, quoted in James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT p. 474.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I think the real problem is sheer BOREDOM. That is, life is so peaceful and placid that Arkezhan picked a quarrel with Wei and the Belov clan simply in order to have some thing to do. Because Terra Central had, de facto, assumed all real power and decision making to itself. But had not yet realized that--until Terra Central prevented them from even quarreling with one another!

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
That is clearly what Anderson intended us to understand. However, I think that AI's and intelligent human beings would be able to build an educational/cultural system that would develop the talents of every individual. Children are not bored when presented with interesting information about the world around them. There is no reason why their curiosity and interest should be lost as they become teenagers and adults. That happens at present because many people's upbringing prepares them only for the changeable labor market and leaves their personalities and psychologies undeveloped.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. I don't share your optimism about what might happen between AIs and human beings (assuming the former ever comes about, of course). And adults will be different, and far more demanding than children. Nor do I think all or even most adults will retain the curiosity of children. Everything I've seen and read in human nature and human history makes me the scenario developed by Poul Anderson is far more likely.

Sean