At 01:25 AM 4/30/01 -0400 David Hobby wrote:
> The fighting is INTENTIONALLY kept low-tech and "nonlethal".
>Since the biology of everything else is worked out so well, we could
>try to figure out why this low-tech state is maintained. Naroin's
>comments seem to indicate that this way of fighting is culturally
>enforced.
So, even in war, combat is highly ritualized to ensure that noone really
gets hurt? If the founders pulled that off, that is a particularly mean
feat of social engineering. On Earth, I think that wars are very often
no-holds barred.
> I see Brin's role as dispassionately reporting what this
>society is like. The clans flow naturally from the biology, as does
>almost everything else. You've heard me praise Brin for this before,
>I'm sure!
But how is this structure flowing naturally from Biology? Indeed,
Stratoian society seems a bit like Social Darwinism run amuck - rather than
the inevitable output of Stratoian genetic changes.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of institutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
