(urth) What's So Great About Ushas

[Jeff Wilson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> 
>> I don't subscribe to the usual free will/predestiny dichotomy. You can't
>> escape God's plan because He's eternal and outside of time and space, any
>> more than A. Square can escape the observation and intervention of
>> three-dimensional beings hovering over Flatland. Your choices still make a
>> difference in how you will fit into His plan, and His delivered wisdom  as
>> trickled down to you may influence those choices. Presumably, the closer one
>> hews to righteousness, the less suffering all round.
> 
> I agree with everything you say here, wiht the possible exception of
> the last sentence (God seems to like suffering and sacrifice an
> awful lot).

Loss is necessary, or at least unavoidable, and presumably loss in the 
name of God (sacrifice) is better than loss for no reason. I agree that 
whenever wrong is done there is a price to be paid (and usually one for 
doing right, for that matter), but I don't think gratuitous loss is 
righteous.

God also likes beetles, but I don't think 300000 varieties are strictly 
necessary.

> I was pointing out that there are two ways to say that the Hiero*s' (or
> Yesodis' or whatever) actions re: Urth are not morally wrong, or at
> least morally questionable. One is to say that they are privy to God's
> will; the other is to say that God predestined them to do it and that it
> is therefore God's will.
> 
> Since I don't buy into either of these, at least pending some serious
> textual evidence that God is talking to them (or that Wolfe is a
> predestinarian), I regard them as morally questionable at best.

The disappearance/ascenscion of the Hieros leaves a suggestive gap. 
Wolfe may have borrowed a page from Teilhard De Chardin and had the 
Hieros join with the Godhead at the end of their bang-gnab and relay an 
utterance from the Increate before completion. The Hierogrammates would 
be working from this received wisdom ever since, and are eager to uplift 
humanity to Hieros-status so they can receive word from the Outsider if 
they have been successful or not.


>> I move that we adopt my term "Yesodis" to mean the current and former
>> inhabitants of Yesod during the period of the Book and their non-human
>> servants, including the Hierodules, Hierogrammates, and Hieros. It's
>> certainly easier to spell and shorter.
> 
> Eh. It sounds to me like a terrorist group.

Not unintentional.

>> I don't see much evidence that the Yesodis are the proximate cause. It's
>> possible that they created the the White Fountain, but it seems to be
>> Severian who draws it to Urth. They seem to work pretty hard to make sure he
>> is there to keep it from striking Urth at the last second, too.
> 
> The source of the White Fountain is Severian's mating with Apheta. The
> H/Ys knew that would happen, and brought Severian to Yesod specifically
> to do this. Due to their freedom of time, they knew the results of creating
> it. Ergo, they bear moral responsibility for its effects.
> 
> One can argue that they also know that this is better than the alternative,
> but that still begs the question of not evacuating the planet when they have
> been shown to have the capability to do so. They choose to let billions die.

I don't think there are billions left on Urth, millions perhaps. But 
where will they put the millions in a colonized galaxy?


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >