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He is not too dark. He just don't know better. ;) This is one of my criticisms of the author who write about, basically, deep planning: he himself didn't have
by thesz 8y ago
He is not too dark. He just don't know better. ;)
This is one of my criticisms of the author who write about, basically, deep planning: he himself didn't have horizon of planning far enough to envision future where horrors he plan to write about have been foreseen and humanity overcome them at their inception and these horrors are removed as class of errors. Imagine PSP/TSP at the level of humanity progress/interaction with other civilizations.
Strugatskie brothers came there very closely - they have a civilization which plans progress around possible bad things that can happen [1] (including not having space travel so that tagorians won't fight, I guess). But they also was wrong - they saw this as impeding progress while in effect PSP/TSP-like practices make progress more streamlined and faster. But at least they tried.
Watts didn't.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagorians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagorians
- red75prime 8y agoYou foresee the horrors, what do you plan to do about them? Nuclear weapons made the road to the world government extremely dangerous, and without the world government enforcement of bans on certain dangerous technologies is practically impossible.
- thesz 8y agoI don't know. You jumped on me out of the blue with this. I have about a week to answer before comments will be closed here and, frankly, I do not have enough free time to think my answer through. So here I am: I don't know. On contrary, Watts, who spend several years thinking his fiction through, should have better answers than what he presented to us.
- red75prime 8y agoThe Strugatsky brothers didn't offer a solution too. They mostly hand-waved the question. It goes like this, if I am not mistaken: when humanity situation became dire, humans suddenly changed their minds and became one single family.
- thesz 8y agoYou are not completely right. "The Final Circle of Paradise" offers a view on problems besides "humanity situation became dire" and a solution, if you may call it a solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Circle_of_Paradise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Circle_of_Paradise
- red75prime 8y agoIt is not a solution indeed. It's what happens now. Marijuana legalization, computer games and so on.
- thesz 8y agoAnd there was a solution proposed.