On the Uplift Series

Greetings.

Jewish date:  9 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath ’Aḥare Moth-Qedhoshim).

Today’s holidays:  Day 24 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Festival of Ridvan (Bahá’í Faith), Feast Days of George and Adalbert (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Susan DeLucci (Church of the SubGenius), Feast Day of St. George (Greek Orthodox Christianity), Feast of Sir Richard Payne Knight (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “PETITION: NO "TOO BIG FOR JAIL" | Progressive Change Campaign Committee”, “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.”, “ColorOfChange.org:  Keep the Internet open”, and “World Jewish Congress - Support for Israel”, and “Stop KFC From Destroying Our Forests - The Petition Site”.

Image of the guy responsible for the Uplift Series via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  Continuing on the topic of catching up on reporting on my readings and watchings relevant to this blog, I recently finished reading the Uplift Series by David Brin.  (A bibliography follows my description and commentary.)  Please forgive your humble if the description presented below is somewhat disorganized.  The major themes are woven together tightly, and trying to present them in a linear form feels rather like trying to make sense of knotted yarn.

WARNING:  THERE ARE SPOILERS, THOUGH NOT ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY THE PLOTS.

The Uplift Series is a series of science-fiction stories in which the Five Galaxies (including our own Milky Way), have been dominated by a multi-species civilization of oxygen-breathing sentient beings reaching back over two billion years.  The way things normally work is that promising nonsentient species are modified into sentient beings (“uplifted”) by existing sentient species.  The uplifted client species then serves their patrons for 100,000 years and may afterwards go on to uplift other species themselves.  Successful uplift of client species is a way of gaining prestige.

Species do not simply continue on as they are indefinitely after being uplifted and uplifting clients of their own.  Eventually they mature sufficiently that they withdraw from general Galactic society and take up residence in fractal variants of Dyson shells and become contemplative.  At some point, they may even “transcend” and leave Galactic society completely.  Explaining what “transcendence” really involves here would risk giving away too much of the plots, but suffice it to say that this information is not available to lesser races and is a subject for their religious speculation.

Tradition has it that the chain of uplift reaches back to a single species known as the Progenitors.  Many rival (often warring) religious traditions have grown up dealing with the Progenitors, often predicting their eventual return or claiming they dwell secretly among the younger civilizations.

Another somewhat religious thread is the Library Institute, which is the repository of all knowledge for the Civilization of the Five Galaxies.  Given the sheer amount of data collected by it in over two billion years detailing the histories of untold numbers of sentient species, it is commonly assumed that practically everything doable has already been recorded by the Library Institute and that further improvement is impossible.  As such, Galactic civilization, while far in advance of human civilization, has stagnated.  Furthermore, there is a tendency to assume that the information in the Library is completely reliable.

Notice the themes of order and tradition.  Both of these are very common in real religions, with traditions being passed down from generation to generation and rules ordering society being prescribed.  Also like most real religions with enough members and existing long enough, the primordial ancestral traditions of Galactic society have bifurcated into a plethora of variations on the same theme, even while all claiming validity within the framework of the original tradition.  Many of the variations have gone ideologically rigid, with adherents too often assuming the correctness of their ideology rather than honestly reexamining it as necessary to make sure it is actually correct.  Also dealt with is the common fault of hypocrisy; many groups ignore inconvenient parts of the tradition or rationalize their way around them, e.g., in dealing with environmental regulations or in warfare.

Humanity does not fit well into the highly-ordered Civilization of the Five Galaxies.  No patron species is known to have uplifted them, yet they have managed to become star-farers on their own.  (This is supposed to be impossible.)  Unlike other “wolfling” species, by the time of first contact, humanity has already uplifted two client species:  chimpanzees and bottlenose dolphins.  And rather than assimilate into Galactic society culturally and technology, humanity largely clings to its own ways, persisting even in its own science and mathematics.  All this makes for much of the tension which powers the plots of the series.  While there are oddball species in the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, humanity violates the rules to the breaking point.  Having clients is the only thing which really prevents humanity from being wiped out immediately by aliens trying to avoid embarrassment, even though chimpanzees and dolphins are given freedom and legal rights that no other client species have.  Much of the plots, indeed, revolve around war against humanity.  Unfortunately, intolerance (as opposed to mere lack of acceptance) for those who do not fit into the system is all too common in real religions.  This is found in two forms:  built-in (as in Islam) and hypocritical (as happens periodically among members of other real religions).  Such intolerance is based on the logical fallacies of appeal to force, that squelching the opposition actually wins the argument, and wishful thinking.  Let us take these stories as a reminder of what not to do.

Bibliography:

• “Aficionado”
• Brin, David. 1980. Sundiver, Uplift Series, book 1. New York: Bantam Books.
• ———. 1983. Startide rising, Uplift Series, book 2. New York: Bantam Books.
• ———. 1995. The uplift war, The Uplift Series, book 3. New York: Bantam Books. Original edition, New York:  Bantam Books, 1987.
• ———. 1996. Brightness reef. Bantam mass market ed, The Uplift Series, book 4; Book one of a New uplift trilogy. New York: Bantam Books. Original edition, New York:  Bantam Books, 1995.
• ———. 1997. Infinity’s shore. Bantam paperback ed, The Uplift Series, book 5; Book two of a New uplift trilogy. New York: Bantam Books.
• ———. 1999. Heaven’s reach. Bantam paperback ed, The Uplift Series, book 6; The Final book of the New uplift trilogy. New York: Bantam Books. Original edition, New York:  Bantam Books, 1998.
• “Temptation”
• Brin, David, and Kevin Lenagh. 2002. Contacting aliens:  an illustrated guide to David Brin’s uplift universe. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Topic 2:  “Video: Is the Western Wall in Israel? - HR Interviews 'Confused' Tourists”.  Just a demonstration that the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority is backing an idea which does not reflect the socio-political reality that Jerusalem is part of Israel.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Umm, scuse but befoo yoo go to light at end of”:


Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

The Goldstone Report, appeal to force, and The Golden Compass

Greetings.

Jewish date:  1 Marḥeshwan 5770 (Parashath Noaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Ro’sh Ḥodhesh (Judaism), Bhai Duj (Diwali, Day 5; Hinduism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Enforce Lower CO2 Emissions to Stop Ocean Acidification”.

Topic 1:  “Exposed: Goldstone & the UN Farce”.  This article on the continuing scandal of the Goldstone Report.  Even Goldstone himself admits that the quality of information in the report leaves much to be desired, e.g., uncritical acceptance of the claims of terrorists, and this information would not be accepted in court.  As such acting upon the Goldstone Report is not justified.

Topic 2:  “Forced Islamization of Christian Conscripts in the Egyptian Army”.  Major rule:  One cannot force people to believe anything, no matter how much one threatens them (appeal to force).  Beating up and killing those who refuse to believe does nothing to prove one’s beliefs are correct.  Lying about what happened afterwards does not help either.

Topic 3:  I have completed chapter 11 of The Golden Compass (Book 1 of His Dark Materials).  Seriously emphasized is this trilogy’s depiction of souls.  I have mentioned before that every human in this world is accompanied by a “dæmon” in animal form, which is some sort of manifestation of the human’s soul.  The form of the dæmon reflects the nature of the human.  Children’s dæmons regularly change shape at will.  Adults, who are more set in their ways, have dæmons limited to a single form.  Usually dæmons are of the sex opposite that of their humans.  (Intuition suggests this may be a veiled reference to sexual preference.)  Dæmons can never get more than a few yards away from their humans, though there is an exception to this rule:  the dæmons of witches can get arbitrarily far away from them.  This may reflect the mystical/occult notion of astral projection, in which the soul is said to separate from the body.  Another species is also depicted as having souls:  polar bears.  For these the soul manifests as thick metallic armor.  Why Philp Pullman chose to have humans and polar bears have physically manifested souls, I have no idea; I am not aware of any religion which holds by such dramatic conceptions of the soul.  Increasingly this book seems less and less to be discussing any real religion and more and more diving into fantastic conceptions.

Peace, and have a happy new month.

Aaron

The Islamic double-standard

Greetings.

Jewish date:  12 Tishri 5770.

Worthy cause of the day:  “Increase Funding to Fight Heart Disease and Stroke” and “Upgrade Aid”.

Unusual personal religious activity:  Yesterday I successfully reassembled my sukkah.  Today I hope to properly decorate it with plastic fruit and CDs.  (The latter have a shiny side and reflect in a variety of colors when light bounces off of them.  Old AOL CDs work very nicely for this purpose, with two placed together with their shiny sides outside and their dull sides inside.)  I may also hang up some Indian corn as well.

Today’s topic:  “Some Holy Books Are More Equal Than Others”.  This is a succinct commentary (with links) on how Islam and the Qur’an are often treated in the West with a deference not accorded to other religions or religious texts.  This is not due to attacks on other religions not being considered offensive; people do take offense at their religion being treated shabbily.  Rather, most people protest in peaceful ways.  Muslims, on the other hand, get violent.  And that scares others into granting them an unfair amount of deference, such as treating desecration of the Qur’an as a hate crime.  While such behavior may not be religiously fallacious for Muslims, it is a double standard for non-Muslims.  If your belief system is not Islam, you do not have any reason to treat Muslims as better than anyone else (or if you do, you belief system is pretty weird).  The fact that someone may beat you up if offended (an implied appeal to force) does not make that person any more right or anyone else more wrong.

Aaron