What's So Great About Ushas?

Roy C. Lackey · 09 Jun 2008, 02:24 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 21:24:39 -0500
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <002201c8c9d7$fb4ae400$d5ce4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Jeff Wilson wrote:
>2) a very common Wolfe theme is an evil person's misdeed furthering a
>higher power's plan for the greater good, without the person being any
>less evil or the higher power any less good.

No argument.

>This means that the black hole can be the fault of Typhon *and* it can
>be part of a righteous condemnation for other past or future misdeeds,
>at least in the the author's opinion.

I understand what you are saying, and it's quite true that Wolfe has made
characters express exactly that school of thought. The problem with the
"everything that happens is part of God's Grand Design even if the actors
don't know it and think otherwise" philosophy is that it cuts off all
reasoned argument, period. I don't want to get into a debate about freewill
and/or predestination or predetermination or whatever.

Getting back to Apheta's statement; if her "we" includes the Increate, then
there is no more I can say. But if it doesn't, and unless one is willing to
grant to a superior power the inherent right to impose its will on a lesser
power, then the Hierogrammates' motives become more than suspect. Unless
Might makes Right, they be taken for bad guys.

You can spin the Ushas future into as pretty a picture as you care to
imagine and say that everything will work out for the best in the best of
all possible worlds, but the ends still don't justify the means -- unless
the Increate had a hand in it. Even if the Hierogrammates only *believed*
they were doing the will of the Increate, that doesn't excuse their actions.
History books and modern newspapers are littered with the dead who died
because someone believed they were doing what God wanted them to do.

-Roy

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