(urth) the Epitome

[Adam Stephanides]

on 4/6/05 12:21 AM, Roy C. Lackey at rclackey at stic.net wrote:

> I don't know if my use of "H's" as shorthand for Hierogrammates is causing
> confusion with Hieros, or what. Anyway, to be clear, the Hieros were the
> humans of a previous universe who caused the eventual creation of the
> Hierogrammates. That creation was their great sin; a sin certainly in the
> eyes of the H's, but also, more importantly, in the eyes of the Increate.

As far as I know, there is no evidence that the Increate considered the
shaping of the Hierogrammates to be a sin. The Hieros' shaping of the
Hierogrammates is spoken of in terms equivalent to the Hierogrammates'
shaping of Sev's race into the next "generation" of Hieros. There's nothing
to indicate that one is a sin and the other isn't, or that one had the
blessing of the Increate and the other didn't.

> Let me condense it this way: either the H's did what they did (mess with the
> Sun, drown Urth, manipulate mankind, etc.) with the consent of the Increate,
> or they didn't. That they did have that consent is what I have argued. To
> argue that they only _thought_ they had that consent doesn't change
> anything; either they did or they didn't. The absence of divine sanction
> reduces the Pancreator to a spectator to events profoundly affecting his own
> Creation.

If the Increate is omnipotent and omniscient, as the Christian God is, then
everything that happens must be part of his "plan" in some sense. But it
doesn't follow that it all takes place at his order, or with his blessing.
An act can be part of God's plan, and yet still be a sin: the Crucifixion is
an obvious example (speaking from a Christian point of view).

> From the Garden to Noah to the Christ, the Bible presents a decidedly contrary
portrait of Divine Right.

In the first place, these examples are poor ones for your argument, since
they don't show God preventing sin, merely punishing it afterwards. In the
second place, as I said before, there's no evidence in the New Sun books of
the Increate intervening directly in his creation at all. Even if you toss
in the Long Sun and the Short Sun books, Wolfe's Increate is still far less
interventionist than the God of the Old Testament.

> If the H's had their own agenda -- regardless of what that agenda may have
> been -- and were operating without the blessing of the Increate, then they
> lack the _moral authority_ to pass judgement on mankind. It's that simple.

But the H's explicitly say that they have their own agenda. As I say in my
other post, it's hard to see why they would claim to have their own agenda
if they actually don't.

> Without moral authority, the H's are just cosmic cowboys, hypocrites guilty
> of precisely the same sin for which mankind had been condemned. They can be
> neither "compassionate" nor "just", as Wolfe says of them.

Wolfe doesn't say it of them; Sev does.

> Finally, if Wolfe didn't intend the destruction of Urth and the birth of
> Ushas to be, in a religious sense, a good thing, why did he write it that
> way? Why write it at all?

Wolfe does indeed surround the coming of the New Sun with a religious aura,
which makes it hard for me to simply say that he intended us see it as
immoral. But if by "in a religious sense, a good thing" you mean that it was
done at the Increate's order, I've been arguing that Wolfe didn't write it
that way, and I haven't yet seen anything to convince me otherwise. The
hidden premise here seems to be that the destruction of Urth cannot be a
good thing unless it was ordered by the Increate. But there seem to be a lot
of people on this list who don't agree, or who at least give reasons why
it's a good thing without mentioning the Increate's orders. Wolfe may well
have seen things their way instead of yours.

--Adam