traveling north

Jeff Wilson · 03 Jun 2010, 20:08 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:08:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) traveling north
In-Reply-To: <COL105-W6542F88CE562742D51698485D10 at phx.gbl>
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	<07e417fccdd43f81f01ae6443657010a.squirrel at brunians.org>
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Message-ID: <4C080BAA.9010607 at io.com>

On 6/3/2010 9:57 AM, Pedro Pereira wrote:
> Severian travelled back in time and became the Conciliator. So the Jesus
> "equivalent" already happened in Urth's past. And maybe Jesus too
> further in the past, and maybe Severian and the drowning of the World is
> the Second Coming or something. I don't know, I don't really know much
> about this kind of stuff, I'm not even religious.
>
> I don't really know but I don't think I can agree with this:
>
> "The Urth we are reading about
> is much older than our current Earth but being stunted in its
> spiritual growth is still troubled by some of the ills which
> plagued our pagan ancestors."
>
> Do the believers among you really believe that Humanity is much
> "enlightened" now than it was at the time of our "pagan ancestors" (not
> to mention that Christianism isn't even the biggest religion around)? Is
> that what Wolfe is going for in these books? I don't know, but
> Severian/Conciliator rings like "Jesus" (probably second comming) to me.

In terms of Wolfe's prespective, yes; slavery is the exception rather 
than the rule, and democracy has alleviated naked tyranny for most of 
the world. In the time of Urth, things have gone back toward the 
slavery-tyranny end of things.

Some of the "Urth is in a previous universe" is double-talk to cover for 
the overlooking of the rainbow covenant.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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