If you are psychologically suited to living in Little Belaire, you will probably not be happy in Dr. Boots' List, and vice versa. Nor would you be happy in the sky-platform of the angels, or in a single nuclear family unit, or as a hermit. But all of them are valid ways of living, different and equally interesting modes of human experience. Once a Day knew perfectly well where she did not belong, and very sensibly went to where she did. Rush's problem is that he was already living where he belonged. He left his utopia because of his infatuation, which was his mistake to make-- you will note nobody stops him from making it-- and significantly failed at making himself into a person who could fit in as well in other places as he had at his first home. This changes his existential status from that of a citizen of utopia, whose only goals are to exist and to be happy, into the more melancholy and yet more common goal of being historically remembered, of synthesizing something about the world around him, of putting the pieces of a plot-puzzle together, of becoming a saint.
That ambition, once achieved, is incompatible with the life of a citizen of utopia... which is why we do not know what happens to Rush after the impression of the crystal. But I have always hoped he went home and lived there happily, because Little Belaire does not seem to me to be the sort of place where knowing too much about the outer world would destroy your ability to be in it; rather the opposite, honestly.
I mentioned that I think it's important that the speculative elements of the book are presented as technology rather than as magic, and I think it is, because of the historical dimension. Dr. Boots, and the crystal, and the angel city, are all human far-futuretech; the Four Pots and the bubbles they smoke in Little Belaire are alien; truthful speaking seems to be a form of meditation or internal thought process raised to the level of technology via long practice and is understood by most of its practitioners on the level in which many people in our society understand the internal combustion engine, i.e., not very well but they use it every day. If any of these were magic, the question would arise as to why they are not usable now, in our society; the magic would set a barrier between that world and ours, since even in a 'return of magic' story one is aware that in our current universe we just do not think that is a thing that will ever happen. The bubbles are implausible, Dr. Boots is implausible, truthful speaking is implausible as all get out-- but none of them are things that are entirely known to be outside the realms of possibility. Crowley's utopias are founded on things which are very unlikely, but it is important, when one is trying to say something real about human nature via presenting a utopia, that they not be founded on genuine impossibility, or on a fundamental change to human nature itself. If I found my utopian society on the idea that there is magic which has made everybody nice, I may still be able to say things about what I think humans would do if our nature was changed so that everybody is nice, but I can't say that those people are still us. In fact the gulf between them and us is unbridgeable. Interesting, and possibly fictionally useful, but unbridgeable. Whereas, if there is alien tech which makes people nicer because everybody is slightly stoned all the time, well, people who are slightly stoned all the time quite often are nicer, if more likely to do stupid shit, and hey, alien drugs, maybe they all don't have that problem. Expose a person from here-and-now to similar stimuli, and you may well get a similar result. At any rate you can see how Crowley got to Little Belaire from here-and-now people. The SF nature is what makes a utopia psychologically convincing.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-15 07:29 am (UTC)If you are psychologically suited to living in Little Belaire, you will probably not be happy in Dr. Boots' List, and vice versa. Nor would you be happy in the sky-platform of the angels, or in a single nuclear family unit, or as a hermit. But all of them are valid ways of living, different and equally interesting modes of human experience. Once a Day knew perfectly well where she did not belong, and very sensibly went to where she did. Rush's problem is that he was already living where he belonged. He left his utopia because of his infatuation, which was his mistake to make-- you will note nobody stops him from making it-- and significantly failed at making himself into a person who could fit in as well in other places as he had at his first home. This changes his existential status from that of a citizen of utopia, whose only goals are to exist and to be happy, into the more melancholy and yet more common goal of being historically remembered, of synthesizing something about the world around him, of putting the pieces of a plot-puzzle together, of becoming a saint.
That ambition, once achieved, is incompatible with the life of a citizen of utopia... which is why we do not know what happens to Rush after the impression of the crystal. But I have always hoped he went home and lived there happily, because Little Belaire does not seem to me to be the sort of place where knowing too much about the outer world would destroy your ability to be in it; rather the opposite, honestly.
I mentioned that I think it's important that the speculative elements of the book are presented as technology rather than as magic, and I think it is, because of the historical dimension. Dr. Boots, and the crystal, and the angel city, are all human far-futuretech; the Four Pots and the bubbles they smoke in Little Belaire are alien; truthful speaking seems to be a form of meditation or internal thought process raised to the level of technology via long practice and is understood by most of its practitioners on the level in which many people in our society understand the internal combustion engine, i.e., not very well but they use it every day. If any of these were magic, the question would arise as to why they are not usable now, in our society; the magic would set a barrier between that world and ours, since even in a 'return of magic' story one is aware that in our current universe we just do not think that is a thing that will ever happen. The bubbles are implausible, Dr. Boots is implausible, truthful speaking is implausible as all get out-- but none of them are things that are entirely known to be outside the realms of possibility. Crowley's utopias are founded on things which are very unlikely, but it is important, when one is trying to say something real about human nature via presenting a utopia, that they not be founded on genuine impossibility, or on a fundamental change to human nature itself. If I found my utopian society on the idea that there is magic which has made everybody nice, I may still be able to say things about what I think humans would do if our nature was changed so that everybody is nice, but I can't say that those people are still us. In fact the gulf between them and us is unbridgeable. Interesting, and possibly fictionally useful, but unbridgeable. Whereas, if there is alien tech which makes people nicer because everybody is slightly stoned all the time, well, people who are slightly stoned all the time quite often are nicer, if more likely to do stupid shit, and hey, alien drugs, maybe they all don't have that problem. Expose a person from here-and-now to similar stimuli, and you may well get a similar result. At any rate you can see how Crowley got to Little Belaire from here-and-now people. The SF nature is what makes a utopia psychologically convincing.