What's So Great About Ushas?

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 14 Jul 2008, 06:47 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:47:46 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <20080714064747.8F35C2003D at mailserver7.hushmail.com>

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:58:53 -0400 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>
>Wolfe shows the Hierogrammates to have their own self-serving 
>agenda. He
>shows them as powers above the stage manipulating events on Urth, 
>and their
>intentions to continue manipulating the humans of Ushas to achieve 

>their
>desired, and acknowledged, ends. It's too much to quote it all 
>here, but it
>is right there in black and white in the dialogue Severian had 
>with Apheta
>immediately after the fight with the sailors. In order to achieve 
>their
>goals, the Hierogrammates will have to do unto humans exactly what 

>the
>Hieros had done unto them in another universe. As Sev said to 
>Gunnie then,
>"That's their justice, their whole reason for being. They bring us 

>through
>the pain we brought them through."
>
>If the Hieros of that other universe sinned by cruelly fashioning 
>the
>Hierogrammates (which seems to be axiomatic in the Urth Cycle), 
>then the
>Hierogrammates will be guilty of the exact same sin in Briah, and 
>will start
>the whole ugly cycle all over again. The morality of the actions 
>of
>self-serving creatures of Man's creation is not above the reproach 

>of any
>man.
>
>One's having power that is greater than another does not define 
>morality.

Given all this, I still can't figure out why you believe that the 
Hierogrammates are working directly for the Increate. They weren't 
created directly by him; they display no apparent superiority to 
man apart from wielding greater power; their explicit agenda is 
entirely self-serving with no hint of holiness or whatever. And so 
on ...

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