Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 08:52:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) TBOTSS and colonialism


--- Andy Robertson  wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jerry Friedman" 
> >>The same applies to race.  As far as gender goes, I've heard some
> >>interesting statistics about salaries and levels of advancement, but
> >>I don't know the methods used to compile them.
> 
> 
> I refer to depictions of race and gender in literature and the media,
> not
> real life.    I repeat that you should read Wolfe with an eye to these
> things.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about real life.  I think you're
right that Wolfe tries to avoid political correctness.  (On the
other hand, maybe it was PC of him to admit, in TBotSS, that there
might be people of color in the distant future!)

> 
> >
> > Anyway, one reason humanity on Blue and Green shouldn't strive to
> > exterminate the inhumi is that humanity is in large part responsible
> > for the way the inhumi act.
> 
> 
> No.  And this is part of the ambiguity.    Humanity is "responsible" in
> the
> sense that the inhumi get their patterns of behaviour from humans, but
> humanity is not "reponsible" for the fact that the inhumi are psychic
> and
> physical parasites and that this is how the inhumi must and do act.

True, but the inhumi aren't responsible for that either.

> Consciously, the inhumi may even be friendly: but their genetic drives
> are
> completely counter to human welfare, and when it comes to the pinch the
> genetic drive is what counts.
> 
> As Alice said, they are demons, and remain demons  *even if they believe
> they are human and try to act human*.

What about Krait?

> The basic message is, or at least seems to be, the primacy of genetic
> drives
> over cultural conditioning.
> 
> But one could certainly answer that this is just the latest of a series
> of
> ambiguous conclusions Wolfe comes to, and as I said I am not sure that
> he
> knows the true, final, answer himself.

Well, then, we don't disagree too much.
 
> >.  Another reason may be that the inhumi weren't hurting anybody
> > on Green after the Neighbors left and before humans showed up--unless
> > the speculation is correct that the inhumi were involved in bringing
> > the _Whorl_ to their system.
> 
> 
> The inhumi don't *have* to come to blue and prey on humans.

You just got done saying that they do.

Anyway, there are humans on Green as well.
 
> > > Now let's really, really,  stir this one up.
> > >
> > > Inhumi = jews?
> >
> > In what way?  Wolfe can't mean that Jews have to drink the blood of
> > Christians (literally or metaphorically) to live, or that our souls
> > are copies of Christians'.  He can't mean that the only two choices
> > for dealing with us are Christian love and genocide--the U.S., for
> > instance, hasn't tried either.  Possibly that, in the words of Auden,
> > "those to whom evil is done/ do evil in return"?  That applies to
> > a lot of groups; Auden was talking about the Nazis.
> 
> As you very well know the blood libel *did* say that jews drank the
> blood of
> christians, and jews have been pictured as evil superintelligent
> behind-the-scenes manipulators, pretending to be "human" but actually
> damned
> demons (because they killed christ) very much like Quetzal, for
> generations.
> 
> I'm not going to push this one too hard, but I do think there is some
> input
> here, not from real jews, but from what you might call the catholic
> legendary picture of jews.

Sorry, again I thought you were talking about reality.  Anyway, all
you're going to get here is "some input", and there may be some, but
I agree with Alga and others that there's more input from legends of
demons and vampires who could appear to be human.

-- 
Jerry Friedman

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