What's So Great About Ushas?

b sharp · 15 Jul 2008, 18:20 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: bsharporflat at hotmail.com (b sharp)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:20:05 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <BAY103-W1816BD1A424980BA227D44D78C0 at phx.gbl>

Paul B posts:
>Any society is comprised of individuals on a continuum of cognitive
>ability.  To let this govern morality is unfair at best, and horrifying at
>worst.

>This is why letting the Hierogrammates off simply on the basis of their
>superior understanding is an abhorrent idea.

What I think this ignores is that the continuum needn't end at the human
with the lowest cognition, it can extend through the range of animals down 
to  the protozoans (and beyond?). Perhaps Paul is one of that small minority of 
people who consider all animals to be of equal moral equivalence to  human beings, 
equally able to govern morality as any person. If so, his argument makes sense.

If he is not then I assume he is in the majority and considers there to be a gap
which separates animals and humans on a moral basis. This gap means that
animals are separated; not on the same cognitive continuum as adult members 
of human society. Thus we assume the right to kill some populations of animals 
(mosquitoes), corral others in game preserves (tigers), use fake mating calls to herd
and protect them (whales), put some in zoos, eat some of them etc.

If we were discussing the real world, I could see Paul's point. But we are in a fictional
world now.  In this world Baldanders is above average in perception but still human, 
still on the human continuum. In BotNS, Hierogrammates are not human. They have 
powers of perception and travel which dwarf the gap between humans and animals. 
Wolfe makes sure we readers are given hierodules, hierarchs and green men to know
that Hierogrammates are several orders of magnitude greater than human being.
Humans judging Hierogrammates carries the weight of lemurs judging the wildlife 
preservation efforts of the current Madagascar government administration.

I think the view of beings with superior morality to humans is essentially religious.
I am not religious but I can at least stretch my brain far enough to join the majority
of my fellow humans and understand the principle.

-bsharp
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