What's So Great About Ushas?

Paul B · 14 Jul 2008, 19:49 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: pb.stuff at gmail.com (Paul B)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:49:35 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
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Okay, but then you're simply saying that evil actions can produce good
results.  That is a truism which doesn't help determine the morality of the
Hierogrammates' actions, which is what we're after.
I'm certainly willing to concede that some good came of what they did, but
that does nothing to excuse the Hierogrammates.

Paul

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 1:58 PM, John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't think it means anything like the idea that everything is part of
> God's plan and thus morality is meaningless.  I think it means something
> much more mundane--that, as Severian himself notes "time turns our lies into
> truths."  In an even less poetic phrasing, habituation works--we become the
> thing we discipline ourself to feign being because that's how character is
> shaped.
>
> When the lie in question is that we speak for the divine, habituation and
> the Increate together act to annex our actions.  For Patera Quetzal, a
> bloodsucking alien pretending to be a kindly old priest, this meant that he
> called off the human sacrifices and generally operated as a strong and
> faithful leader for his flock.  For Kypris, and arguably even for Pas, it
> means that the sham religion of the Whorl is still operating to some degree
> to further the Outsider's ends.
>
> I'm suggesting that a similar explanation could be at work behind the
> plans of the Hierogrammates, although in a more opaque manner.  I am not
> suggesting that there is no basis for judging the actions of the
> Hierogrammates--their part in a divine plan could be necessary but
> completely unwitting.
>
>
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