<b><br></b>thalassocrat wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><pre>I've argued at length previously for just that inversion. Was it <br>
worth killing almost everybody on Urth to restore the Sun, just one <br>star among many with human-populated worlds?</pre></blockquote><div> </div><div><div>b sharp wrote: <br>
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<pre>For me, it is clear that Wolfe means to depict Urth as populated by a flawed<br>race of people. For the universes to have a better future, this flawed race needs<br>to be wiped out, starting over from scratch.</pre>
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Both of these moral arguments are missing something, in my view. They are only concerned with what happens to the human race. Environmentalists call this anthropocentrism, and they consider it a serious moral flaw. The whole Urth and its ecosystem was at stake, not just humanity. Typhon's empire started an interstellar war, and as a side effect the Sun was damaged. The whole Urth would lose millions of years of life, for countless species and new ones yet to evolve. Is it a good and just solution for the human race to jet off into space
and leave Urth to freeze? I don't think Wolfe would agree, based on his
short stories like "Beautyland." Shouldn't humanity pay some price to put things right? (That's an argument that has some application today, too).<br><br>What's so great about Ushas? It might be awesome in the long run. When Sev asked to find the garden, the Autarch opened a way to the Garden (though he thought Sev wouldn't be permitted to enter, and he was right). It might be the Edenic future of humanity in harmony with nature (as the Green Man also indicated).<br>
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