Subject: (urth) "Hour of Trust" and evolution

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 22:24:30 +0000

Hartshorn wrote:
>Oh dear, this is my fault.  My background thinking is steeped in
>Evolutionary psychology.
>
>I didn't mean "evolve" as in "get better".    That is not an idea much
>countenenced today.  It is simply a new winning group competitive strategy.
>

I must also be at fault: I thought I was using "evolve" as "change from one
state to another state."  I then qualified it as being good or bad with
regard to human institutions such as War and Slavery (which change for good
and bad; which can be replaced with new institutions that are better or old
institutions that are worse).

Your use seems to be shorthand for "to the victor goes the spoils," which
is very "ends" oriented but with no clear parameters on what constitutes
victory, or time frame, or scale.  My examples from history were addressing
these angles: military short term, genetic long term (since you brought up
the whole reproductive issue), cultural long term (i.e., a given
civilization, as distinct from general human civilization).

A broken bottle as a weapon can win a bar-room brawl, after all, but seems
ineffective at larger scale/longer term struggles of will involving more
than mere bloodshed.

>Their suicide is a political statement directed at the government troops
>
>**WE ARE ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS.  EVEN IF YOU WIN YOU WILL GET NOTHING.   OUR
>RESOLUTION IS TOTAL.   HERE, I WILL DEMONSTRATE**

Yes.  Then again, a willingness to die on command is not a guarantee of
victory. The medieval assassins would die on command and were getting along
pretty well controlling the Islamic world in a behind the scenes sort of
way, until those Mongols came along with overwhelming force and pretty much
wiped them out.

But back to the story. Right, and after the warriors (a minority of most
populations) have fought the fight out of their system, the vast majority
of the population will get on with their lives under whatever regime is on
top.

Probably including members of the old empire.  The fatcats just "convert,"
saying something like "There is no ken but ken and groovy is the ken of
ken," and whambang, they get all the real "reproductive" nookie they want.
(Eeuww!)

These kamikaze huggers are the pawns, match-heads used by the rebels for
the political statement you say.  Personally they are all saying something
different (which has nothing to do with the rebel cause), but it is being
channeled and manipulated by the leaders, the leaders  who are not and
never will Flame On.

Or is this, in fact, your larger point?  That my sticking point of the
story, my sense that it makes no sense for Clio to kamikaze when she is
worth more alive and in place--are you telling me that Clio is a leader and
yes, she is ready, willing, and finally able to kill even one corporate
stooge with a suicide bomb?
That this, finally, is the point of transcendent evolution I have not yet
understood?

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
http://www.siriusfiction.com/

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 15:37:28 +0000

Hartshorn quoted and wrote:
>Basically, yes.
>But it is not the fact that she kills someone.  The real fight is a moral
>one, like all real fights.  It is the fight to build and maintain a winning
>coalition.
>
>I am speculating here, but I believe that the rebel kamikazis are not
>"pawns" but more like "saints" - epitomes of ideals that the best of
>revolutionaries follow as best they can.   If they were not utterly honest,
>and if their leaders were not utterly honest, the revolutionaries would fall
>apart.

So the short form would be to say: "The signature phrase 'hour of trust'
applies equally to both the corporate and the rebel forces, not just the
corporate forces as one might believe after following the viewpoint
character."

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 19:55:07 +0000

Hartshorn wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Michael Andre-Driussi" <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
>>
>Exactly - as I read the story.
>
>This is Clio's act of fulfulling and affirming the trust her followers have
>placed in her.
>
>For **her** side - the winning side, evolutionarily ascendant - this is a
>triumphant affirmation of their group morality and group strength.
>
>To the other, the losing, side, it is a lethal betrayal of the deepest form
>of human trust.

No, no! The losing side fails because they are decadent, corrupt, and
bungling; they lack the creative vision, and only lead through dominance,
manipulation, and coercion, rather than leading by example.  (Then again,
if the corporate civilization is as terminal as it seems to be, then any
attempt at "leading by example" would actually be ineffective
martyrdom--that is, like those clerks with rifles dying on the ground. In
contrast to the ragtag group of slaves and boys who saved Rome from
Hannibal: at that stage, the civilization was still vigorous, even
withstanding the scorched earth campaign of a different civilization.)

The "hour of trust" for the corporate side was to be the telecast of a
clean victory as a starting point for a drumming up of support for US (the
corp, if not the United States itself).  With a "we all hang together or we
all hang alone" on the side.

The betrayal you talk about is at the more personal level.

At a level beyond Peters, the betrayal would appear to be (if I follow this
reading correctly) actually a stunning coup-de-grace.  Flaming Peters walks
into the next room, where the "distant from the war" party-goers as well as
the all-seeing telescreen can witness.  Now =this= is true "Old Man of the
Mountain" assassin style: intimidate the leaders with a spectacular example
(they don't want to kill leaders unless they prove intractable).  Suddenly
they are on notice that they have long been infiltrated--chaos and paranoia
ensue throughout the fomerly impregnable redoubt.

With this in mind, Clio was programmed to flame on this day--Peters was
chosen by Clio, not because he represents some corporation
saviour-in-the-rough (which I find hard to believe, as I mentioned before),
but he simply was the best candidate at that time and place.  And, since he
has these anti-revolution attitudes, all the better to remove him, if that
is really a factor at all.

That is: the large-scale message is not killing Peters, the message is
showing the fat cats and the viewers back home the high degree of
infiltration that exists, and thus the effective end of the conflict.

(You continue to use your "evolution for the winners" term, but I have yet
to see what you might term "change used by the side which ultimately lost
against the winners."  After all, they have not been static in any way:
they have changed in ways which, under testing, have not been successful
against their human opponants.)

=mantis=

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