Saturday, August 27, 2005
Clear Dreamers and Future Dreams
 

Clear dreamers in the Okal Rel Universe have visions of the past. This contradicts most people's assumptions that only the future can be worth mystical attention; however, it is perfectly consistent with the Okal Rel worldview which makes a sacred duty of restraint in conflict and societal stability — albeit at the cost of what egalitarian Reetions view as a nasty, hierarchical result.



This morning, in the shower, while thinking about things such as why SF is more into dark fantasy scenarios these days than positive, techno-optimism, I found my thoughts revolving around clear dreams and how they differ from dreams of the future of the optimistic, early Star Trek sort. This post is the initial result. Perhaps it will shape up into a paper one day, or perhaps not.



Okal Rel Looks Back to Stay the Same


Okal Rel's restraint in conflict, which allows for life and death struggle between individuals while condemning the destruction of vital infrastructure, is something I can get behind as a person — not as a "how to" recommendation, but certainly as food for thought about the sanity of no-holds barred conflicts between cultures too technically empowered for their own good (or anyone else's). The social system of Sevildom, though fun to write about, is another matter; but the point, here, is that Okal Rel is perfectly consistent with mystics who look back, not forward. For example, since every Sevolite house descended, originally, from what are now called Purebloods, it follows that everyone (except the few surviving Purebloods) are less Sevolite now than they must have been in some past incarnation. Most Demish cultures likewise venerate a past era of their line's greatest glory, which is different for different lines. (The sameness of Vrellish culture, in Red Reach, is more like that of pre-literate humans.)



Worldviews that look back upon past glory or resist change, in general, offend the reformer in us all, and, indeed, over the course of the ten book saga, change is induced through contact with the Reetions. I think everyone gets that, at some level, even if those who would be revolutionaries need gentle reminders that the hard work lies in setting up the sand castle, not knocking it over with a single, haughty kick. (Anyone who needs help figuring out how a culture might resist such a reformer need only turn to historical evidence such as the struggle of blacks to exercise their freedom in the U.S., women's efforts to get into high status professions, Japanese repression of the introduction of guns, Catholic suppression of science that contradicted church canon, etc. The fun is in making it feel real, not making it easy or quick!)



But apart from the story value and the interesting challenges of culture conflict that the Okal Rel Universe offers me, as a writer, it does sometimes trouble me why I am so interested in a worldview that looks backward, not forward. I used to be very positive about the potential of science to create a better world in the future, and in many ways it has. But I do not feel that optimism any longer. When I reach for it, it is gone. Instead, I feel grave misgivings about the motives of those in control.



Clear Dreaming vs. Dreams of the Future

Rocket Man Techno-Optimism To get back to clear dreaming, juxtapose for a moment the "naive techno-optimism" (Heylighen, F., 1998) of the so-called Golden Age of science Fiction, so often lamented by those who enjoyed the fruits of its mass popularity and exemplified, in caricature, by the Hanna and Barbera strip, "The Jetsons". After reveling for much of my youth in my own version of naive techno-optimism which took it as an article of faith that good science would benefit mankind, as a whole, and not solely the captains of industry and stars of academia, I believe I am simply disillusioned. Any hope I feel is gravitating towards looking back, instead, if we want to survive as a species?let alone progress in the egalitarian, Reetion sense of the word.



Future dreamers neglected to address human history to date, with its heavy weight of evidence concerning problematic aspects to empowering human beings with more and more potent tools. They simply left out the far more important side of the equation in the evolving relationship between human culture and the products of the scientific revolution. They left out man himself. (And I mean to include women in that generic usage of man.) We have to start asking how far we dare trust ourselves, because we are human. We therefore need to understand what it means to be human in far less romantic terms than we do, now. Perhaps (although I do not recommend we go the way of the Lorel Experiment) it is ourselves we need to improve. At the very least we need to get a grip on a set of solid, cross-culturally meaningful, values.



The older I get, the more I think that it might be our own clear dreamers, the sociologist and historians, the visionaries and even those theists whose beliefs do not begin and end with hate and ego, who are more likely to help us with humanity?s next big challenge than any grant — hungry scientist or industrial researcher — and not by looking forward, but by looking back at where we have gone wrong before, and advising us on how to reduce the risk of stacking up even more disgraceful moral wreckage of the sort that clogs history books.



I am still enamored of science as a method of problem solving. My vision of rational, humanistic utopia is reflected in the Reetion way of life, which I admire despite its imperfections. But I am increasingly alarmed by the use of science, and profit, as substitutes for political philosophy and morality in general. Pure science of the rocket-ship or laboratory sort has nothing to say about whether or not you ought to do something unthinkable to other people to achieve your goals. Pure profit, as a cultural icon, would oblige us to celebrate the success of organized crime, which surly deserve the gold star for operating with as little overhead as possible and no moral qualms at all.



Science Fiction is too often preoccupied with bigger guns, nastier nanotechnology and more deadly viruses, as if we worship the evil or the power bound up in such stuff. If those who dominate behave morally, it is nothing but good luck, or perhaps wishful thinking that those who are most clever will also be most moral in the long run. I think there is plenty of room, in the field, for a saga that acknowledges how even enemies have some interests in common, even if only to score a victory one can subsequently enjoy. Blood, death, love, high stakes and violent disagreements are all still possible. But we simply have to figure out how far is too far, no matter what. If we cannot do that, we may be doomed by our own passions. But once again, it is history that gives me some encouragements, because for every Easter Island in the human record, where conflict consumed both sides, there are counter examples like the Geneva Convention or ancient armies preparing battlefields, in a way that seems oddly quaint to us, before arranging to get together and have it out.


If we cannot learn not to fight, we need to learn new rules for doing it, and I fear I have ceased to imagine we can refrain from waging war on each other, given the looking back at history that I have done over the last couple of years. We need a way; however, to wage safe war, every bit as much as we need to practice safe sex. In other words, we must achieve some real life, satisfying, form of Okal Rel.



References: Visions of the Future (in Sci Fi or Cultural Studies)



Static World Views in History



posted by Lynda at 09:17   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

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