Urth-Earth links

Lee Berman · 20 Oct 2011, 13:48 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:48:21 -0400
Subject: (urth) Urth-Earth links
Message-ID: <SNT123-W56DB65C82229CD71B18FDDCFEB0 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson: From that perspective, it's no different from getting scanned and
> uploaded. A little scary, maybe an ethical question or two, but you do
> it because the alternative is worse.

>David Stockhoff:  But that's almost a trip to the dentist in comparison. We're discussing
> cannibalism in the form of a mock Last Supper. I submit that there are
> other, formal considerations here that are higher than choice and
> self-determination.

>Jeff Wilson: Like saving the world and preventing the extinction of the human race?

It isn't a idea which personally bothers me so much but I still get the impression Wolfe
himself is bothered. Adding to the Mr. Million and Typhon examples of the horror aspect
of one's consciousness being transferred to another body, I'll add Lemur's and the other
Ayuntamiento members' situation in Long Sun. Surely all these are presented as horror,
though the process was voluntary and even desired and by command. Are there other examples
from other stories?

I agree with Jeff that as Severian is becoming Autarch it is presented as a positive thing
(the "scarlet ruin" of the old autarch's face aside). After four books of being a 
wandering vagrant, Severian gets some power and luxury. He saves the memories and
provides a version of eternal life for all those previous autarchs. Life is good!

I just get the impression that in the broader picture of Wolfe's work, eternal (material) life
is not to be considered a good thing be it via cloning or robot existence or whatever.
Seeking it and achieving it inevitably lead to horror and misery.

I question whether Severian's autarchal status is directly necessary for his New Sun status. In
my view, the Hiero-types set up the New Sun quest for an autarch because they knew Severian
would be the autarch. The old autarch (and Ymar) fail not because they really failed a test but
simply because they weren't Severian.

It's been noted that, at minimum, the Hiero-types allowed Severian to participate in his brain-
feasts, so how could they be bad? In my view they allow a lot of bad things to happen because 
stopping them, enforcing human-level morality, is not their goal (a parallel to Earth's 
Judeo-Christian God).

Trying to grasp the "moral of the story" I see Wolfe's model being that humanity is being forged.
We can label the hammer as evil because it hits us, and the anvil as good because it supports us
but they both play an equal role in shaping us.

I think Wolfe uses divine beauty and horror in this story to provide us a way to distinguish good
from evil. We are SUPPOSED to choose good. But if we attempt to escape our humanity for a moment
and try to consider the universe from God's point of view we can sort of understand the necessity
of evil, even if we are always supposed to choose against it.

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