What's So Great About Ushas?

John Watkins · 14 Jul 2008, 20:16 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: john.watkins04 at gmail.com (John Watkins)
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:16:30 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
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I think Wolfe's point is deeper than merely "evil actions can produce good
results."  There's a significant difference from the fate of, for example,
Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, who does evil things which lead to good
results, and the fate of Kypris or Quetzal, whose evil is, to some degree,
masquerading as good.  In the Urth cycle, evil that masquerades as good
winds up becoming good to some degree--not just accidently having a good
result, but changing internally to reflect the good that it imitates.  This
change isn't absolute--Quetzal still picks Green (although possibly that was
a ploy to get them to Blue) and still drinks blood to survive.  But it is
significant.

At least, that's the sense I get from the juxtaposition of "time turns our
lies into truths" and "When a demon mimics a god, it can not help in some
ways becoming like a god."  I would be surprised, with the significance this
theme has in the Long Sun, with Quetzal and Kypris, and in the Short Sun,
with the merger of the demonic Pas with the personality of the saintly Silk,
if this same theme has no bearing on the New Sun.

This does not mean that I think the Hierogrammates are properly understood
as archangels.  Despite the name, Tzadkiel seems more sinister than that,
and the scheme--genocide to further evolution--seems very morally
problematic.  But, again, I'd be surprised if the presumably evil
Hierogrammates posing as presumably good angelic beings has no significance
other than messing with our and Severian's assumptions.  There's got to be
something more going on than evil aliens manipulating Severian to bring
about devastation--I just don't know what it is.

On 7/14/08, Paul B <pb.stuff at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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