(urth) What's So Great About Ushas?

[Dave Tallman]

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> **Moral** flaw? I almost choked on a mouthful of roast beef when I read
> that! I've been a news junkie since at least the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet
> it somehow escaped my notice that "Environmentalists" had become the
> arbiters of morality.
>   
I'm sorry I mentioned environmentalism -- I thought their term 
"anthropocentrism" shed an interesting light on the debate. My point 
remains whether you believe in environmentalism or not: with the New 
Sun, the solar system remained capable of sustaining life for millions 
of years more. With no New Sun, the solar system would have been a dead 
zone in a very short time.

> >/ The whole
> />/Urth and its ecosystem was at stake, not just humanity. Typhon's empire
> />/started an interstellar war,
> /
> It did? Citation, please.
>   
"I have told you that I was autarch on many worlds. I shall be autarch 
again, and this time on many more," suggests an expanding empire outside 
our own solar system. Empires normally expand by war. The story of the 
boastful cock also suggests humanity fought other powers in space.
> And the upheaval of continents and a worldwide flood left all those innocent
> species unscathed? I wonder what Noah needed that Ark for.
>   
No, obviously many species and habitats were destroyed. But Ushas 
remained a place where life and evolution was possible. In Ragnorak, the 
whole solar system would soon be devoid of life without any hope of 
recovery.

Note that the Ragnorak way wasn't human-casualty-free either:
I asked if everyone would escape.
"No, not everyone. Some would not go, some could not be found. No home 
could be found for others."

Given a habitable Ushas, there was no need for a Noah's Ark this time. 
Time travel and mirrors could bring people, animals, and plants from the 
past and other planets. There's a hint of this when the old Autarch said 
"Many will seek to flee by that road (the Mirror Book) if the pelagic 
argosy sights land."
> As Andrew (Thalassocrat) has already indicated, the human race had long ago
> spread (during the First Empire) all over the galaxy, and probably beyond.
> No matter what happened to Urth, the bulk of humanity would be unaffected.
> If humanity had to pay a price on Urth, that price was almost entirely
> symbolic. The Hierogrammates, for all their power, could not overcome
> entropy. Humanity was spread too far and wide for every world to be
> punished.
>   
I meant "pay the price" in the sense of making a sacrifice rather than 
taking a punishment. To me, it is worth the short-term cost in lives to 
preserve the biosphere.

//Andrew (Thalassocrat) wrote://

> Anyway, I still don't see evidence of God's will in all of this.
>
>   
There's Sev's ability to raise the dead, which is beyond the technology 
of even Tzadkiel. "Why couldn't Tzadkiel have called me back as I called 
back Zama?" which caused Famulimus to kiss the floor before his feet. It 
looks to me like Sev was on the side of the angels (real ones) in the end.