What's So Great About Ushas?

Lane Haygood · 13 Jul 2008, 07:38 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: lhaygood at gmail.com (Lane Haygood)
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:38:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
In-Reply-To: <BAY103-W256ADF1E5160631D5D2466D7920 at phx.gbl>
References: <BAY103-W256ADF1E5160631D5D2466D7920 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <8E7E6211-8E56-4EEA-9EEB-50C3DC791659 at gmail.com>

Please call me just Lane. If I understand what you're getting at, I  
think we'd agree that the Hieros have a greater capacity for moral  
understanding, but not necessarily the actuality of it.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 12, 2008, at 10:52 PM, b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Lane Haygood I think I agree with almost your entire post. My only  
> quibble
> would regard where you say:
>
>> It may not be that the Hierogrammates are "morally superior" to
>> humans, in that we all have the same capacity for judging moral and
>> immoral actions, but rather that their nature makes them able to
>> perceive moral dimensions on acts that we cannot.
>
> Well, my claim has all along been that Hierogrammates are superior  
> moral judges
> to humans based on their superior perception of moral (and other)  
> dimensions.
>
> \
>
> Roy, sorry if I wasn't clear in agreeing with you that the  
> Hierogrammates possess a
> lesser moral perception than God.  And I think we agree they are  
> superior to
> humans in this regard?
>
> Roy says:
>> Tzadkiel was not only an admitted liar, he was a cheater as well.
>
> But lying and cheating are considered immoral acts by humans. And  
> not always.
> Many police and military types are specially trained in such tactics  
> and they are
> considered moral actions because they help stop bad guys.  Perhaps  
> Tzadkiel feels
> no more guilt in lying to Severian than we would feel for using  
> artificial mating
> calls to lure animals out of a toxic waste spill area.
>
> and:
>> Being elected to a given position is hardly a qualifier for the  
>> morality of
>> the elected.
>
> Nobody doubts that elections are an imperfect system for choosing  
> morally superior
> individuals, relying as they do on imperfect human judgement. But  
> the fact that we
> continue to engage in elections and other selection processes for  
> judges and justices
> etc. proves that humanity currently thinks it is possible to  
> ascertain the moral superiority
> of one person over another.
>
> and:
>> You have presented a closed system that, by
>> definition, not only excludes challenges from outside the system, it
>> dismisses those challenges as down-right impertinent.
>
> Not true. I'm saying that if the Hierogrammates are as Gene Wolfe  
> seems to present them,
> then humans are no more able to judge their morality than animals  
> are able to judge the
> morality of human behavior.  Hierogrammates might reasonably be  
> judged by members of
> their own race, or by other beings with equal or greater moral  
> perception.
>
> (there is dialog in UotNS suggesting that humans would be like  
> animals on some
> planets and to some other races of beings)
>
> -bsharp
>
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