From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey@stic.net>
Subject: (urth) Mankind
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 17:45:56 

Apparently, the Hierogrammates intend to exact revenge/retribution on all of
mankind, not just Urth. From (V, XIX), Sev to Apheta:
-------------

"Is Urth really so important to you?"
She shook her head.
"Then why bother with it or me?"
"Because your race is important to us. It would be far less laborious if we
could deal with it all at once, but you are sown over tens of thousands of
worlds, and we cannot."
-------------

She then goes on to explain the difficulties of space/time travel, hence why
"it" can't be dealt with all at once. I think this answers the question of
who crippled the Old Sun. Will all the suns of all the other worlds also
develop black holes? Will the Cataclysm wrecked on Urth be visited on all
the other worlds of the imperium? Seems like it. This implies a slaughter of
life unparalleled by even a comic-book villain. Are there thousands of other
Sev-like dupes on as many worlds?

If, according to the fundamental Christian tenet that the birth, death, and
resurrection of Christ was a one-time-only historical event, then it follows
that any other beings in the universe cannot have known Jesus. Never having
known Jesus, whatever mean-old-Man may have done to them, they cannot be
regarded as equivalent to humans, no matter how human-like they may be or
become--rather like how the Pelerines viewed the Ascians. God gave Man
dominion over all the lower lifeforms. To scourge Mankind because they
wronged another lifeform would seem to me a violation of the unique covenant
of God with Man, which was signed in the blood of Christ.

How then can the Hieros, a higher, or at least more powerful lifeform than
Man, be any less culpable for doing to Man what Man is being punished for
doing? Whence the moral authority? The Increate? This is at best cosmic
hypocrisy. Or is this another case of "do not as I do; do as I say do",
which is a variation of the "might makes right" ethos.

Roy



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