Broad Horizons by Tony Noland
"We are all capable of infinite kindness," Bishop Kanetta said, "just as we are all capable of infinite venality."
She paused, adjusting her face into what Behan-18 recognized as an invitation for acknowledgement and/or rebuttal. He dipped his head, but said nothing.
Logical fallacy, he thought. Finite beings cannot encompass the infinite.
In the timeslice before Bishop Kanetta's next sentence, Behan-18 allocated additional mental focus to consider her statement more fully. As the human had given many indications of being intelligent (for a human), it seemed unlikely that she was unaware of her pronouncement's logical impossibility. Therefore, it was intended as, 1) deliberate falsehood; 2) a verbal form of referential encoding; or 3) an example of "poetic" expression.
Possibility 1 had a low, but non-zero, probability.
Possibility 2 had a higher probability. Humans often made textual and sub-textual references to societal norms or shared cultural knowledge, far more often than they'd realized prior to contact with the wider culture beyond their planet. Their speech was laced with these idioms, and humans used them the way primitive computers refer to a pre-written table of numeric values to solve equations instead of doing actual calculations. Without knowing this context, their speech was almost unintelligible. Even after much study, it was a struggle for him to understand them. Indeed, there were still some races that remained unconvinced that humans were really capable of true thought. Behan-18 made note to set the translation systems to cross-reference human concepts of "infinite" as applied to behavioral science.
Possibility 3 had the highest probability. Unfortunately, if the human did intend the statement in a "poetic" sense, then all that could be done is to file it and wait for her to interpret it in some comprehensible manner.
Decision made, he reduced his mental focus back down to the level he usually used when dealing with humans. Time seemed to speed up again and the Bishop resumed speaking.
He listened for more than 260 seconds. Behan-18 was surprised that she made no attempt to explain her statement, but spoke instead about the need to not only preserve human standards of behavior, but to introduce those standards to the races of the universe. She expressed the same concept several different ways, but the rephrasings were irrelevant.
Contextual instability, he thought. Altered cultural environment necessitates altered cultural norms.
"Excuse me, Bishop Kanetta," he said, "but is your desire to shield human society from contact with other races?"
"Not at all, Behan-18. I wish to see humans and other races interact in terms of mutual respect."
"Because you fear annihilation? Either cultural or actual?"
The Bishop swallowed and folded her hands before speaking. "Partly. The societies of the universe are much older and more technologically advanced than our own. There is much to be admired, much that is compelling among them. However, whatever cultural advantages exist among these races new to us, this does not mean that human society is without unique merits. I do not wish to see our culture lost, either through actions taken by another race or by our own too-hasty rejection of human cultural legacies."
"Yet, is not the history of your planet rife with such examples of cultural replacement? From the first development of agriculture and industry through machine intelligence and quantum foam propulsion, cultural upheaval is the norm. Stronger, more flexible cultures supplant weaker, more rigid cultures. Is this not the way of things?"
"It doesn't have to be."
"There is no alternative," Behan-18 said. "A culture which functions well under one set of environmental conditions may be unsuited to another context. Once you humans set out to build your first orbital transwarp node, you must have realized the implications."
"No," she said, "I don't think we did. Not fully, anyway." She looked out the carbonglass windows at the surface of the moon - the prefabricated cities, the energy extraction towers, the hundreds of mining wagons on the endless stone roads. "We searched the skies for centuries, looking for some sign of life, but found nothing. To us, the universe seemed empty of life. Even when that first Node was being built, we intended it as a kind of telescope. It was only to let us see farther and more precisely, to learn what was out there. We didn't expect it to become a crossroads to endless trillions of profit-hungry aliens, of more races than we can catalog."
Behan-18 spread his forearms, approximating the human gesture of a shrug. "It is not surprising you lived in ignorance; it is a function of being isolated. Photons are an unsuitably slow medium of detection and communication. They barely allow analysis of nearby stars in one's own galaxy, let alone provide any meaningful information about the wider universe." He waved at the starry black sky. "Life is unlikely, this is true. There are hardly more than a dozen sentient, spacefaring races in any given galaxy. But the universe is large, Bishop Kanetta, very large indeed. There are almost a million galaxies in this supercluster alone. As the entire universe is connected by the underlying quantum foam, distance between galaxies, clusters and superclusters is irrelevant. Through the Nodes, the billions of races that make up the universe are in close contact. Your planet and your race were isolated; you are isolated no longer. This cannot be undone."
"We don't wish it undone, we just want to maintain independence."
He snapped his jaws dismissively. "I was appointed as the administrative liaison to this planet. The government of this supercluster is fully experienced with integrating races when they emerge from isolation. You became a protectorate of the government the moment you opened the Node, and you will remain a protectorate until your race is fully integrated. These are facts, not subject to idealized interpretation."
"But must we be subsumed so completely? There are things the other races can learn from humans," Bishop Kanetta said, "important things about how to treat one another, how to live, how to make the world... make the universe a better place!"
Defensive cultural relativism, he thought. Fear-driven reactionary rejection of established norms to protect the familiar and the parochial, however unworkably primitive.
Again, he dipped his head, but again, said nothing. He checked the time display on the wall. This interview had another 700 seconds to run. Then he could get back to work.
He made a mental note to add "a better place" to the linguistics search program, along with "infinite".
/////
Image source: http://amwritingblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/640px-Nearsc.gif
She paused, adjusting her face into what Behan-18 recognized as an invitation for acknowledgement and/or rebuttal. He dipped his head, but said nothing.
Logical fallacy, he thought. Finite beings cannot encompass the infinite.
In the timeslice before Bishop Kanetta's next sentence, Behan-18 allocated additional mental focus to consider her statement more fully. As the human had given many indications of being intelligent (for a human), it seemed unlikely that she was unaware of her pronouncement's logical impossibility. Therefore, it was intended as, 1) deliberate falsehood; 2) a verbal form of referential encoding; or 3) an example of "poetic" expression.
Possibility 1 had a low, but non-zero, probability.
Possibility 2 had a higher probability. Humans often made textual and sub-textual references to societal norms or shared cultural knowledge, far more often than they'd realized prior to contact with the wider culture beyond their planet. Their speech was laced with these idioms, and humans used them the way primitive computers refer to a pre-written table of numeric values to solve equations instead of doing actual calculations. Without knowing this context, their speech was almost unintelligible. Even after much study, it was a struggle for him to understand them. Indeed, there were still some races that remained unconvinced that humans were really capable of true thought. Behan-18 made note to set the translation systems to cross-reference human concepts of "infinite" as applied to behavioral science.
Possibility 3 had the highest probability. Unfortunately, if the human did intend the statement in a "poetic" sense, then all that could be done is to file it and wait for her to interpret it in some comprehensible manner.
Decision made, he reduced his mental focus back down to the level he usually used when dealing with humans. Time seemed to speed up again and the Bishop resumed speaking.
He listened for more than 260 seconds. Behan-18 was surprised that she made no attempt to explain her statement, but spoke instead about the need to not only preserve human standards of behavior, but to introduce those standards to the races of the universe. She expressed the same concept several different ways, but the rephrasings were irrelevant.
Contextual instability, he thought. Altered cultural environment necessitates altered cultural norms.
"Excuse me, Bishop Kanetta," he said, "but is your desire to shield human society from contact with other races?"
"Not at all, Behan-18. I wish to see humans and other races interact in terms of mutual respect."
"Because you fear annihilation? Either cultural or actual?"
The Bishop swallowed and folded her hands before speaking. "Partly. The societies of the universe are much older and more technologically advanced than our own. There is much to be admired, much that is compelling among them. However, whatever cultural advantages exist among these races new to us, this does not mean that human society is without unique merits. I do not wish to see our culture lost, either through actions taken by another race or by our own too-hasty rejection of human cultural legacies."
"Yet, is not the history of your planet rife with such examples of cultural replacement? From the first development of agriculture and industry through machine intelligence and quantum foam propulsion, cultural upheaval is the norm. Stronger, more flexible cultures supplant weaker, more rigid cultures. Is this not the way of things?"
"It doesn't have to be."
"There is no alternative," Behan-18 said. "A culture which functions well under one set of environmental conditions may be unsuited to another context. Once you humans set out to build your first orbital transwarp node, you must have realized the implications."
"No," she said, "I don't think we did. Not fully, anyway." She looked out the carbonglass windows at the surface of the moon - the prefabricated cities, the energy extraction towers, the hundreds of mining wagons on the endless stone roads. "We searched the skies for centuries, looking for some sign of life, but found nothing. To us, the universe seemed empty of life. Even when that first Node was being built, we intended it as a kind of telescope. It was only to let us see farther and more precisely, to learn what was out there. We didn't expect it to become a crossroads to endless trillions of profit-hungry aliens, of more races than we can catalog."
Behan-18 spread his forearms, approximating the human gesture of a shrug. "It is not surprising you lived in ignorance; it is a function of being isolated. Photons are an unsuitably slow medium of detection and communication. They barely allow analysis of nearby stars in one's own galaxy, let alone provide any meaningful information about the wider universe." He waved at the starry black sky. "Life is unlikely, this is true. There are hardly more than a dozen sentient, spacefaring races in any given galaxy. But the universe is large, Bishop Kanetta, very large indeed. There are almost a million galaxies in this supercluster alone. As the entire universe is connected by the underlying quantum foam, distance between galaxies, clusters and superclusters is irrelevant. Through the Nodes, the billions of races that make up the universe are in close contact. Your planet and your race were isolated; you are isolated no longer. This cannot be undone."
"We don't wish it undone, we just want to maintain independence."
He snapped his jaws dismissively. "I was appointed as the administrative liaison to this planet. The government of this supercluster is fully experienced with integrating races when they emerge from isolation. You became a protectorate of the government the moment you opened the Node, and you will remain a protectorate until your race is fully integrated. These are facts, not subject to idealized interpretation."
"But must we be subsumed so completely? There are things the other races can learn from humans," Bishop Kanetta said, "important things about how to treat one another, how to live, how to make the world... make the universe a better place!"
Defensive cultural relativism, he thought. Fear-driven reactionary rejection of established norms to protect the familiar and the parochial, however unworkably primitive.
Again, he dipped his head, but again, said nothing. He checked the time display on the wall. This interview had another 700 seconds to run. Then he could get back to work.
He made a mental note to add "a better place" to the linguistics search program, along with "infinite".
/////
Image source: http://amwritingblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/640px-Nearsc.gif
