From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 
Subject: RE: (urth) TBOTSS and colonialism
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 09:25:27 -0700

Hartshorn wrote...

> The ghost-soul in the inhumi may attain to a sort of human 
> virtue.  The flesh remains evil.   Of course the question is
> whether "evil" in this context means anything other than
> "evil to humans".

It does indeed ... recall Krait's comment that humans are the
cattle of the inhumi (from memory, haven't read that passage in
a while...)

This also ties into my sermonette on souls and selves ... if 
the inhumi can't not drink blood because of their physical 
nature (though I suppose that an occasional, extraordinarily 
self-sacrificing, inhumX might choose to die rather than doing
so), then whatever souls they may possess should not be judged
by this ... the soul is responsbile for guiding the person's
behavior toward morality, but is limited by the facticity of
the person's physical circumstances, including the person's
body. This is a complex moral issue made more complex by the
introduction of a variety of non-humans, and Wolfe's deliberate
and concerted attempts to have the inhumi push as many "THESE
THINGS ARE SCARY/BAD!!!" buttons in his readers as possible. 
(Off the top of my head: they're reptilian; they're vampiric;
they're infiltrating shapeshifters; they're capable of deep and
malefic schemes; they have human intelligence without [or so
we are at first led to believe] human emotion; they drink beef
tea...)

> And the whole point of the inhumi is to put these concepts to 
> the Question. To Excruciation

Well, yes, but that's also the point of the alzabo, the aqastors,
the chems...

--Blattid


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