Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress by Charles T. Rubin

Author:Charles T. Rubin [Rubin, Charles T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594037368
Google: _hnIAgAAQBAJ
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Goodreads: 34081686
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

LOVE OF ONE’S OWN

It should not be news that people tend to protect their own interests; it is a manifestation of the love of one’s own that is pervasive in The Diamond Age. Hackworth goes outside the law to give his daughter a leg up, yet repeatedly also expresses loyalty to his phyle; Harv severely beats and perhaps kills his mother’s boyfriend, who has abused Nell; Finkle-McGraw wants the Primer to improve the life of his granddaughter and advance the interests of his phyle.106 Carl Hollywood looks out for Miranda, his employee and perhaps romantic interest; Miranda comes to think of Nell as her daughter; the Mouse Army will do anything for their Queen Nell.107 As these examples suggest, while love of one’s own forms a basis for phyles that protects them from outsiders, it can also threaten their internal organization. This perennial tension inherent in voluntary human associations is not changed by technological development. Hackworth is loyal to his phyle in relation to outside phyles; he is loyal to his family inside the phyle; his wife might claim he is loyal to his own love of engineering problem-solving, putting his family on the outside. It is all the more a challenge to reconcile inner and outer when the definitions of each can shift in this way. The multiple layers of the love of one’s own make relevant a variety of moral qualities that contain it or direct its expression, virtues like loyalty, honor, courage. Having been well instructed throughout the book in how phyles take care of their own, we are hardly surprised when a grandmother blows herself up to save her fleeing cohort from oncoming Celestial Kingdom troops.108

Sometimes the love of one’s own directs violence against outsiders, sometimes it contains it in relation to those inside the group. It may involve competition among phyles, but there is also competition within phyles that must be dealt with. People in whom the moral qualities that discipline, train, and direct love of one’s own are missing become dangerous; here again the thetes are instructive. Nell’s mother and father have very limited attachments to anything beyond themselves. One of the reasons Bud is sentenced to death for a mugging is that he is not aware that his girlfriend Tequila has given birth to Nell; hence, the judge is confident that Bud’s departure will not be a loss to his children.109 While young neo-Victorian ladies are taught to think of late-twentieth-century urban America as a historical low point,110 the thete lives we see are pretty nasty and Bud’s is also literally poor, brutish, solitary, and short. Given their nearly unmediated selfishness, being spared the perils of starvation and other kinds of gross material deprivation by the free goods offered by the matter compilers only seems to liberate thetes to be more self-indulgent, irresponsible, and depraved.

But if thetes have little concern for anything outside of their own gratification, the other extreme is represented by the Drummers. In this tribe, individuals become parts in a “gestalt society,” which is to say they share thoughts without being aware they are doing so.

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