On 08-Sep-14 10:27 PM, SS wrote: >> (to what degree do the philosophers and the priests differ from the >> fiction writers?) > > Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but Sci Fi writers ( to the > extent that I have read scifi in recent decades) generally do not deal > in questions of morality except in terms of some power or entity who is > a threat to humanity or something that restricts rights.
I think you are wrong. See below. > Philosophers and priests tend to address morality. Morality is generally > a restriction of rights. Morality is generally not about restriction of rights, except as they impact Right. And Wrong. Which are what morality is about - the identification of Right and Wrong. Morality can be completely individual, or applicable within a context. There is no such thing as "universal morality". (e.g, perhaps the most often quoted example of a universal moral rule is "thou shalt not kill" - but if were truly universal then one wouldn't have the death penalty, for instance.) A special case of morality is the notion of "sin", which is a theological concept that redefines Right to be "that which pleases God" - conveniently leaving the definition of "pleases" and "God" up to the various priesthoods to create livelihoods from. Coming to SF and morality - I'm not sure how to even start. But let me make an attempt. > Sci Fi can be taken as one type of literary output from societies where > science and technology have profoundly influenced the lives of people in > those societies. In other words, every society in today's world (barring a few outliers [1])? > Strictly speaking I don't think the societal issues that Sci Fi writers > deal with coincide with the issues that priests and philosophers deal > with. The common areas are restricted to where science has affected > morality - and to that extent science and morality have come into > conflict. I am not sure if Sci Fi writers have taken sides on these > issues. SF, like other literature, is at the end an exploration of what it means to be human (this includes the "literature of ideas" or "gee whiz" aspects). This is, at this level of abstraction, *exactly* what priests and philosophers deal with. To take a more focused view, one of the key drivers of SF is what one call Large Questions - such as the ultimate fate of the species, the ultimate fate of the universe, how to deal with other sentient species, utopias/dystopias, and so on. At this level of abstraction, too, this is at least well aligned with philosophers &c. To take an even more focused view, consider the literary device of a "morality play"[2], which, to quote Wikipedia, is "a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil." It turns out that SF is well positioned to use this device - I can think of many examples off the top of my head, from various works by HG Wells right down to practically every episode of Star Trek. > But surely it would have to be sociologists, more than any other people > who would be able to comment with authority and knowledge on all > societies and express some opinion on features of societies that may be > negative or positive. If they don't know who would? I'm not really sure what you're saying here - but one comment is that that being a "sociologist" doesn't really bar you from being a SF writer, for one thing. Udhay [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_play -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
