[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
She raised her eyes and looked at the young woman once more. "Then you don't deny these?" she
asked motioning toward the papers that lay on the table between them.
"Deny them? Why should I deny them? Who else could have written them? Surely none of the
ignorant little fools here could have done it. Yes, those are the chants my mother taught me. And if you
knew enough to read and understand them, you'd realize how well she taught me!"
"And you don't deny that rather than meditating on your lessons, you mutter the chants to yourself?"
"I don't 'mutter' them. I chant them. Softly. They have a beauty you could never grasp."
"But you know such things are proscribed. They endanger the security of the Way. Jerome himself. .
."
"Jerome never said any such thing and you know it! Jerome was the one who suggested the Keepers
go to the Flagship. He wasn't afraid of knowledge."
"How then, my Daughter, do you interpret his Koans?"
"I'm not your daughter," Yolan gritted out. "And I don't see what Jerome's Koans have to do with it."
"Precisely," answered Mother Elena quickly, "you don't see. But think a moment. 'The sword in the
sheath is a treasure beyond compare.' The sword is clearly technology, the sword that cut Earth down
and destroyed it. Jerome is saying that it must be kept in the sheath, that it must not be drawn here on
Kensho, or else it will destroy us.
"And his second Koan reinforces this interpretation. 'As the Ronin strikes, oh, how beautiful the
constant stars!' Obviously, he's trying to tell us that even in extreme emergencies, we must never forget
the Way and its emphasis on the natural life. He doesn't call on technology to save him as the killer
attacks. He looks at the stars, the Eternal Truth of the Way, as his only salvation."
Yolan snorted derisively. "Rubbish. I can give you ten different interpretations of what Jerome's
Koans mean. You just twist them to support your viewpoint. The Keepers see them differently."
"But technology nearly destroyed the Home World!"
"And technology is the only reason we're even here on Kensho!"
"Ah, but once we got here and the Mushin attacked, it wasn't technology that saved the day.
Nakamura had all the resources of the computer at his fingertips, all the scientific knowledge of Earth at
his beck and call. But he chose not to use them! Instead he conceived the Way of Passivity, complete
with the Grandfathers and the 'hoods and tricked the Mushin into adopting his plan. He did it knowing
that sooner or later someone would discover the Truth and find the Great Way. Jerome did just that.
Without science. Without technology."
"Also without knowing about the Message." Yolan looked solemnly at the older woman. "I wonder
how he would have reacted to the Message. In any case, it changes everything. If Earth does come and
we're still a backward bunch of farmers scratching a meager living from the soil, we're wide open to
whatever they decide to do with us."
It was the older woman's turn to smile ironically. "You almost sound like Mitsuyama."
"I don't like the man any more than you do. But that doesn't automatically make him wrong on all
counts."
"Perhaps. But it does raise the issue of just how far the Keepers would be willing to go in supporting
him for the purpose of achieving their own goals."
"You already know the answer to that. Not at all. None of the Keepers has joined the PlainsLord."
"One has. We know that. He's not very important, true. But there's nothing to stop others. And
Mitsuyama has launched a new attempt to find and convince Keepers to throw in with him.
"Besides, even if you aren't on his side, what's to stop him from taking advantage of the innovations
you'd introduce? How would you keep him from using the things you create for his own purposes? That's
the real issue, you know. How do you keep the fruits of science from being used by evil people for evil
ends? Or what about the simple fact that you can't even foresee the unintended consequences of your
own discoveries? Surely the people of Earth didn't set out purposely to ruin their world.
"No, Yolan. It's not the 'hoods and the Council who are blind. It's those who reject the Way and
refuse to see and understand the lesson of the Home World."
"That's exactly the point! We do see the example of the Home World. We know where they went
wrong. We don't have to repeat their mistakes!
"And we don't reject the Way. We see it as essential in guiding us, in providing the values we need to
keep Kensho from repeating the disaster of Earth. The Way gives us . . .
"Nonsense," Mother Elena interrupted. "The Way was not intended to serve as an ethical guideline
for science or technology. It was created to help us survive here on Kensho among the Mushin.
"Besides, ethics never stopped the scientists of the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth from exploring
and developing dangerous areas. They considered science to be ethically neutral. They only sought the
truth. What others did with their findings was not their responsibility.
"And they were right. The science of their time was ethically free. It contained no moral prescriptions.
And every attempt to impose them from outside was doomed to failure or ended in tyranny.
"It's not hard to understand why, either. Historically, philosophy and science had been united
disciplines. In ancient Greece, Aristotle had developed a natural science and a philosophy, complete with
ethics, based on the order he perceived in nature from actual observation. Saint Tomas Aquinas took
Aristotle's hierarchical structure and blended it with Christian ideas to create a unified whole which
related religion, ethics, science and social order in a way that dominated Europe for several hundred
years.
"Then when Galileo and Newton broke the mold with their new views of the way the world worked,
philosophy and ethics were restructured by men like Locke and Descartes. The new science, with its
independent atoms of matter, interacting with each other in predictable patterns, perceived and
comprehended by separate minds, gave rise to political systems like the English and American that
stressed the separateness and independence of individual men.
"I'm generalizing, of course, fainting a picture in broad sweeps of the brush. But the point I'm trying to
make is that philosophy and ethics always derived from the same source as science from the way men
perceived the world.
"And that's where things went wrong in the 20th century. A new view of the world gradually emerged
with the ideas of Einsteinian Space-Time and Quantum Mechanics. But no corresponding philosophy
was developed. Why? Because the philosophers had shut themselves away in their own little corner. And
the religions had refused to face up to the changes that Newton had wrought, so they weren't about to be
able to deal with Heisenberg. Instead of deriving ethical prescriptions from within the new world view,
those in power tried to impose old forms from the outside. It was doomed to fail. And it did.
"The result was that science went its own way, unaffected by ethical considerations. And ruin came
to all alike.
"Yolan, Yolan. We can't ignore the example of Earth in any way. It's just too final, too horrible. The
Way was not meant to be imposed on science and technology in an attempt to force them to accept [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl freetocraft.keep.pl
She raised her eyes and looked at the young woman once more. "Then you don't deny these?" she
asked motioning toward the papers that lay on the table between them.
"Deny them? Why should I deny them? Who else could have written them? Surely none of the
ignorant little fools here could have done it. Yes, those are the chants my mother taught me. And if you
knew enough to read and understand them, you'd realize how well she taught me!"
"And you don't deny that rather than meditating on your lessons, you mutter the chants to yourself?"
"I don't 'mutter' them. I chant them. Softly. They have a beauty you could never grasp."
"But you know such things are proscribed. They endanger the security of the Way. Jerome himself. .
."
"Jerome never said any such thing and you know it! Jerome was the one who suggested the Keepers
go to the Flagship. He wasn't afraid of knowledge."
"How then, my Daughter, do you interpret his Koans?"
"I'm not your daughter," Yolan gritted out. "And I don't see what Jerome's Koans have to do with it."
"Precisely," answered Mother Elena quickly, "you don't see. But think a moment. 'The sword in the
sheath is a treasure beyond compare.' The sword is clearly technology, the sword that cut Earth down
and destroyed it. Jerome is saying that it must be kept in the sheath, that it must not be drawn here on
Kensho, or else it will destroy us.
"And his second Koan reinforces this interpretation. 'As the Ronin strikes, oh, how beautiful the
constant stars!' Obviously, he's trying to tell us that even in extreme emergencies, we must never forget
the Way and its emphasis on the natural life. He doesn't call on technology to save him as the killer
attacks. He looks at the stars, the Eternal Truth of the Way, as his only salvation."
Yolan snorted derisively. "Rubbish. I can give you ten different interpretations of what Jerome's
Koans mean. You just twist them to support your viewpoint. The Keepers see them differently."
"But technology nearly destroyed the Home World!"
"And technology is the only reason we're even here on Kensho!"
"Ah, but once we got here and the Mushin attacked, it wasn't technology that saved the day.
Nakamura had all the resources of the computer at his fingertips, all the scientific knowledge of Earth at
his beck and call. But he chose not to use them! Instead he conceived the Way of Passivity, complete
with the Grandfathers and the 'hoods and tricked the Mushin into adopting his plan. He did it knowing
that sooner or later someone would discover the Truth and find the Great Way. Jerome did just that.
Without science. Without technology."
"Also without knowing about the Message." Yolan looked solemnly at the older woman. "I wonder
how he would have reacted to the Message. In any case, it changes everything. If Earth does come and
we're still a backward bunch of farmers scratching a meager living from the soil, we're wide open to
whatever they decide to do with us."
It was the older woman's turn to smile ironically. "You almost sound like Mitsuyama."
"I don't like the man any more than you do. But that doesn't automatically make him wrong on all
counts."
"Perhaps. But it does raise the issue of just how far the Keepers would be willing to go in supporting
him for the purpose of achieving their own goals."
"You already know the answer to that. Not at all. None of the Keepers has joined the PlainsLord."
"One has. We know that. He's not very important, true. But there's nothing to stop others. And
Mitsuyama has launched a new attempt to find and convince Keepers to throw in with him.
"Besides, even if you aren't on his side, what's to stop him from taking advantage of the innovations
you'd introduce? How would you keep him from using the things you create for his own purposes? That's
the real issue, you know. How do you keep the fruits of science from being used by evil people for evil
ends? Or what about the simple fact that you can't even foresee the unintended consequences of your
own discoveries? Surely the people of Earth didn't set out purposely to ruin their world.
"No, Yolan. It's not the 'hoods and the Council who are blind. It's those who reject the Way and
refuse to see and understand the lesson of the Home World."
"That's exactly the point! We do see the example of the Home World. We know where they went
wrong. We don't have to repeat their mistakes!
"And we don't reject the Way. We see it as essential in guiding us, in providing the values we need to
keep Kensho from repeating the disaster of Earth. The Way gives us . . .
"Nonsense," Mother Elena interrupted. "The Way was not intended to serve as an ethical guideline
for science or technology. It was created to help us survive here on Kensho among the Mushin.
"Besides, ethics never stopped the scientists of the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth from exploring
and developing dangerous areas. They considered science to be ethically neutral. They only sought the
truth. What others did with their findings was not their responsibility.
"And they were right. The science of their time was ethically free. It contained no moral prescriptions.
And every attempt to impose them from outside was doomed to failure or ended in tyranny.
"It's not hard to understand why, either. Historically, philosophy and science had been united
disciplines. In ancient Greece, Aristotle had developed a natural science and a philosophy, complete with
ethics, based on the order he perceived in nature from actual observation. Saint Tomas Aquinas took
Aristotle's hierarchical structure and blended it with Christian ideas to create a unified whole which
related religion, ethics, science and social order in a way that dominated Europe for several hundred
years.
"Then when Galileo and Newton broke the mold with their new views of the way the world worked,
philosophy and ethics were restructured by men like Locke and Descartes. The new science, with its
independent atoms of matter, interacting with each other in predictable patterns, perceived and
comprehended by separate minds, gave rise to political systems like the English and American that
stressed the separateness and independence of individual men.
"I'm generalizing, of course, fainting a picture in broad sweeps of the brush. But the point I'm trying to
make is that philosophy and ethics always derived from the same source as science from the way men
perceived the world.
"And that's where things went wrong in the 20th century. A new view of the world gradually emerged
with the ideas of Einsteinian Space-Time and Quantum Mechanics. But no corresponding philosophy
was developed. Why? Because the philosophers had shut themselves away in their own little corner. And
the religions had refused to face up to the changes that Newton had wrought, so they weren't about to be
able to deal with Heisenberg. Instead of deriving ethical prescriptions from within the new world view,
those in power tried to impose old forms from the outside. It was doomed to fail. And it did.
"The result was that science went its own way, unaffected by ethical considerations. And ruin came
to all alike.
"Yolan, Yolan. We can't ignore the example of Earth in any way. It's just too final, too horrible. The
Way was not meant to be imposed on science and technology in an attempt to force them to accept [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]