{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2940", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2940, "subject": "\"Hour of Trust\" and evolution", "messages": 3, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-02-09T22:24:30+00:00", "last": "2002-02-10T19:55:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-02-09T22:24:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) \"Hour of Trust\" and evolution", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hartshorn wrote:\nOh dear, this is my fault. My background thinking is steeped in\nEvolutionary psychology.\n\nI didn't mean \"evolve\" as in \"get better\". That is not an idea much\ncountenenced today. It is simply a new winning group competitive strategy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I must also be at fault: I thought I was using \"evolve\" as \"change from one\nstate to another state.\" I then qualified it as being good or bad with\nregard to human institutions such as War and Slavery (which change for good\nand bad; which can be replaced with new institutions that are better or old\ninstitutions that are worse).\n\nYour use seems to be shorthand for \"to the victor goes the spoils,\" which\nis very \"ends\" oriented but with no clear parameters on what constitutes\nvictory, or time frame, or scale. My examples from history were addressing\nthese angles: military short term, genetic long term (since you brought up\nthe whole reproductive issue), cultural long term (i.e., a given\ncivilization, as distinct from general human civilization).\n\nA broken bottle as a weapon can win a bar-room brawl, after all, but seems\nineffective at larger scale/longer term struggles of will involving more\nthan mere bloodshed." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Their suicide is a political statement directed at the government troops\n\n**WE ARE ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS. EVEN IF YOU WIN YOU WILL GET NOTHING. OUR\nRESOLUTION IS TOTAL. HERE, I WILL DEMONSTRATE**" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Then again, a willingness to die on command is not a guarantee of\nvictory. The medieval assassins would die on command and were getting along\npretty well controlling the Islamic world in a behind the scenes sort of\nway, until those Mongols came along with overwhelming force and pretty much\nwiped them out.\n\nBut back to the story. Right, and after the warriors (a minority of most\npopulations) have fought the fight out of their system, the vast majority\nof the population will get on with their lives under whatever regime is on\ntop.\n\nProbably including members of the old empire. The fatcats just \"convert,\"\nsaying something like \"There is no ken but ken and groovy is the ken of\nken,\" and whambang, they get all the real \"reproductive\" nookie they want.\n(Eeuww!)\n\nThese kamikaze huggers are the pawns, match-heads used by the rebels for\nthe political statement you say. Personally they are all saying something\ndifferent (which has nothing to do with the rebel cause), but it is being\nchanneled and manipulated by the leaders, the leaders who are not and\nnever will Flame On.\n\nOr is this, in fact, your larger point? That my sticking point of the\nstory, my sense that it makes no sense for Clio to kamikaze when she is\nworth more alive and in place--are you telling me that Clio is a leader and\nyes, she is ready, willing, and finally able to kill even one corporate\nstooge with a suicide bomb?\nThat this, finally, is the point of transcendent evolution I have not yet\nunderstood?\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-02-10T15:37:28+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Hour of Trust\" and evolution", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Hartshorn quoted and wrote:\nOr is this, in fact, your larger point? That my sticking point of the\nstory, my sense that it makes no sense for Clio to kamikaze when she is\nworth more alive and in place--are you telling me that Clio is a leader\nand\nyes, she is ready, willing, and finally able to kill even one corporate\nstooge with a suicide bomb?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Basically, yes.\n\nBut it is not the fact that she kills someone. The real fight is a moral\none, like all real fights. It is the fight to build and maintain a winning\ncoalition.\n\nI am speculating here, but I believe that the rebel kamikazis are not\n\"pawns\" but more like \"saints\" - epitomes of ideals that the best of\nrevolutionaries follow as best they can. If they were not utterly honest,\nand if their leaders were not utterly honest, the revolutionaries would fall\napart." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So the short form would be to say: \"The signature phrase 'hour of trust'\napplies equally to both the corporate and the rebel forces, not just the\ncorporate forces as one might believe after following the viewpoint\ncharacter.\"\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-02-10T19:55:07+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) \"Hour of Trust\" and evolution", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hartshorn wrote:\n----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Michael Andre-Driussi\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "So the short form would be to say: \"The signature phrase 'hour of trust'\napplies equally to both the corporate and the rebel forces, not just the\ncorporate forces as one might believe after following the viewpoint\ncharacter.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Exactly - as I read the story.\n\nThis is Clio's act of fulfulling and affirming the trust her followers have\nplaced in her.\n\nFor **her** side - the winning side, evolutionarily ascendant - this is a\ntriumphant affirmation of their group morality and group strength.\n\nTo the other, the losing, side, it is a lethal betrayal of the deepest form\nof human trust." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, no! The losing side fails because they are decadent, corrupt, and\nbungling; they lack the creative vision, and only lead through dominance,\nmanipulation, and coercion, rather than leading by example. (Then again,\nif the corporate civilization is as terminal as it seems to be, then any\nattempt at \"leading by example\" would actually be ineffective\nmartyrdom--that is, like those clerks with rifles dying on the ground. In\ncontrast to the ragtag group of slaves and boys who saved Rome from\nHannibal: at that stage, the civilization was still vigorous, even\nwithstanding the scorched earth campaign of a different civilization.)\n\nThe \"hour of trust\" for the corporate side was to be the telecast of a\nclean victory as a starting point for a drumming up of support for US (the\ncorp, if not the United States itself). With a \"we all hang together or we\nall hang alone\" on the side.\n\nThe betrayal you talk about is at the more personal level.\n\nAt a level beyond Peters, the betrayal would appear to be (if I follow this\nreading correctly) actually a stunning coup-de-grace. Flaming Peters walks\ninto the next room, where the \"distant from the war\" party-goers as well as\nthe all-seeing telescreen can witness. Now =this= is true \"Old Man of the\nMountain\" assassin style: intimidate the leaders with a spectacular example\n(they don't want to kill leaders unless they prove intractable). Suddenly\nthey are on notice that they have long been infiltrated--chaos and paranoia\nensue throughout the fomerly impregnable redoubt.\n\nWith this in mind, Clio was programmed to flame on this day--Peters was\nchosen by Clio, not because he represents some corporation\nsaviour-in-the-rough (which I find hard to believe, as I mentioned before),\nbut he simply was the best candidate at that time and place. And, since he\nhas these anti-revolution attitudes, all the better to remove him, if that\nis really a factor at all.\n\nThat is: the large-scale message is not killing Peters, the message is\nshowing the fat cats and the viewers back home the high degree of\ninfiltration that exists, and thus the effective end of the conflict.\n\n(You continue to use your \"evolution for the winners\" term, but I have yet\nto see what you might term \"change used by the side which ultimately lost\nagainst the winners.\" After all, they have not been static in any way:\nthey have changed in ways which, under testing, have not been successful\nagainst their human opponants.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }