At 08:56 AM 8/14/97 -0400, Allan wrote:
>Anyway, I guess my question is what
>outlet does the Sharer society have? If someone is basically a stable,
>healthy person who does not want to be part of the Sharer society ...<snip>
>where can that person go? A raft of her own?
I think that's an important point, which I tend to overlook in my
enthusiasm over the variety of means the Sharers have for peaceable
resolution of conflicts. If someone really doesn't want to be a part of the
society, I guess they have to go somewhere else, whether on a raft alone or
to the planet, or as you mention, starfaring afar.
Though this isn't a totally satisfactory solution, I think it's important
that Sharers don't try to "keep" or "restrain" those who don't share their
values. I guess for me, it comes down to that issue of equal rights AND
equal responsibilities ... you don't get the advantages of living in an
egalitarian community if you don't pull your weight and abide by the
consensus. That may leave out some people ... but those people probably
don't want to live in a Sharer society anyway. And the woman emissary who
is a "part-time" Sharer seems to have both acceptance within Sharer society
when she's there and the freedom to lead a different kind of life when
she's not.
Is the person from the Twin Oaks intentional community still on the list?
If so, what are your thoughts on this issue?
>If you really stretch it, you might say that as Merwen processes
>the foodstuffs, she generates waste products that the plants will feed
>on later, but that encompasses much more than the simple action "to eat".
I like that interpretation ... it embodies the kind of awareness of
consequences and processes of interrelationship of the Sharer language.
Maybe not consciously, but on a deeper level, within the assumptions of the
language and its relation to the speakers' attitudes and actions. Maybe
it's a strech only because our language doesn't connect us to each other
and our environment in those terms.
>They don't have much need for
>geology, physics, electronics, etc. Some questions that might be
>interesting to think about... How well would they weather a
>catastrophic event like a meteor impact? What if something happened to
>their sun? Where do they go? What do they do?
Since they don't have any non-organic materials, geology doesn't make
sense, but the "laws" of physics also apply to organic material and I'm
fascinated by the possibilities of neurophysiology ... since they are so
advanced in biotechnology it doesn't seem too far-fetched to imagine some
kind of organic electronics, including biocomputers, based on biochips and
biocircuits (and a WWW based on clickflies).
As far as natural disasters ... I thought the description of the "sea
swallower" season was a compelling look at how a community like the Sharers
deal with natural external forces beyond their control. They wouldn't be
able to "control" (the way traditional science/engineering attempts) these
kinds catastrophes, but I think they'd weather them in the same way they
survive the sea swallower season.
>
>Don't get me wrong, I like the society a lot. I'd be happy to try and
>learn to like fish more and become a part of that world--even though I
>work with computer for a living now and that would be a completely
>useless skill there. I think I'd probably apprentice to a life-shaper...
Me, too. Or maybe we could help create biocomputers!
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