the novel is rather pessimistic about human nature
Seems rather realistic to me, actually. Do you know of many examples where “well-meaning liberators” did not end up causing more suffering shortly after their intervention (or forced withdrawal)?
No, I just mean developing new technologies. That is, at time T this community doesn’t have the technology, then someone intervenes, and at time T+1 the community does have the technology.
If that’s out of scope for the kind of interventions you’re asking about, that’s fine, but if it isn’t, then I suspect there are plenty of examples where well-meaning folk end up not causing more suffering after their intervention in a community.
I agree that organic technological development is beneficial on the whole, with some exceptions. It’s the “prime directive violations” which backfire nearly uniformly. And that’s what the story is about, if I recall (been many years since I read it).
I think to answer that, we’d need to be clear about what we mean by saying that a community “has” a technology.
If I go to a tribe of hunter-gatherers, hand them a bunch of solar-powered toasters, and leave… do they now “have toaster technology”?
I think not. I’d have to think a bit harder to define exactly what I would consider to be “having technology”, but my intuition says that being able to build the thing, and/or having people in your society who understand how it works, is a requirement.
To our hypothetical hunter-gatherers, the toasters are outright magic. They haven’t the first clue of the most basic scientific or technological principles behind the artifacts that are in their physical possession.
So I’d have to ask what you think is an example of an intervention that causes a community to have a technology, where previously they did not.
In the present day, the average third world country doesn’t “have” cell phones, by this definition. In fact, the average first world inner city doesn’t have them either.
Jiro’s example of making mobile phones available to a town that lacks the facilities for building its own mobile phones (factories, etc) seems to me a good enough example of an intervention that causes a community to have a technology they previously lacked.
Sure. Note, though, that what you’re doing there is effectively making said town part of your community (in the context of who “has” what technology, in any case).
Consider these scenarios:
You show up to some remote island, build a bunch of cell towers, hand out mobile phones, and leave, never to be seen again.
vs.
You show up to the neighboring town, build a bunch of cell towers, which you connect to your own cell network, hand out mobile phones, and continue to administer and maintain said towers, and provide support for said phones.
In the latter case, yeah, this community now has cell phone technology. But only because they’re a part of you now. If you cut them off from yourself — by ceasing to provide maintenance and support for the technology you just gave them — they no longer have any technology, just a bunch of artifacts which work (for a while, anyway), but are as magic.
Semantics aside, I agree with the particulars of what providing cell phones (in a functional sense) to a town that can’t manufacture them itself comprises.
And I’m willing to use that definition of “part of my community” in this conversation if you like, though of course there are many implications of that phrase which don’t apply to the scenario in question, so we should be careful about connotations.
I’m not sure why it matters, though. Does something additional follow from that town now being part of my community (in this sense)? If so, perhaps it would be useful to state that consequence explicitly, because I’m not seeing it.
Sure. The reason I made this distinction is this: we were discussing whether it’s possible to have an advanced and well-meaning society give a technology to a sadly benighted, less-advanced society, and not thereby cause more suffering.
Well, I think that question depends on what exactly is entailed by causing the less-advanced society to have a technology they didn’t previously have. I think to do that, the more-advanced society has to intervene in the less-advanced society to a greater degree than just showing up, saying “here, take this”, and leaving.
The thing is, essentially enveloping an inferior culture in your own has other ethical issues. I do not think that saying “Hi, here is this amazing thing, and now you are dependent on our society and culture forever (or at least until such time as you have transformed your society and culture to essentially be copies of ours)” is ethically neutral. (Although you should by no means take this to be an expression of cultural relativism.)
Whether doing this actually causes suffering in a straightforward, unambiguous sense, I am not sure. Maybe. Maybe not.
So, just to echo this back to make sure I understand… your position is that if I effectively intervene in a culture to provide technology (such that they actually have it), this means I am also providing a certain level of ongoing maintenance and support of that technology, which in turn necessarily means I’m enveloping that culture in my own until such time as it becomes essentially a copy of mine, which is at best not ethically neutral and might result in suffering, and might even result in net suffering, although then again it might not.
Yes?
If so, OK… thanks for clarifying.
For my own part, while I certainly agree that this sort of thing can happen, and some technologies lean that way more than others, I also suspect that there’s a nontrivial excluded middle between “don’t provide technology at all” and “essentially envelop an inferior culture in your own.”
For example, I think trade relations often exist in that middle ground.
(It’s actually a bit worse than that: ”… becomes essentially a copy of mine” is often more like ”… becomes a distorted copy of mine, without the counterbalancing influences that result from gradual acceptance of, and adaptation to, the new technologies and cultural practices which I am now dumping on the client culture all at once”. But the core point is the same.)
I agree that there might be an excluded middle. I am skeptical of any claim that it’s common, though. Truly equitable, consensual (in a democratic sense) trade relations between grossly technologically unequal societies seem to be rare at best. Trade relations as a middle ground between the two extremes we’re discussing occur, I think, between societies that are not as different, in technological and social development.
For the most part, the historical examples of relations between “grossly technologically unequal societies” I can think of were deliberately exploitative.
So, no, no examples of “truly equitable, consensual (in a democratic sense) trade relations” between such societies come to mind.
For that matter, no examples of failed attempts at such relations that just end up causing net suffering despite the sincere best efforts of the principals involved come to mind, either.
It’s only very recently, historically speaking, that the balance between helping a less advanced culture and exploiting a less advanced culture has been so tilted in the direction of helping. (Except for meme plagues that come packaged with a message of “spreading this meme constitutes help”, which we’ve always had, and which often end up as exploitation anyway.).
So you’re not going to see either many successful attempts at advancing the other culture, or many failed attempts—until now, there haven’t been attempts at all.
There are some, but mostly they are cases of “local situation deteriorated to the point of piles of skulls” prior to the intervention, so foreigners stomping around were welcomed instead of shot at.
I agree, shminux. By “pessimistic” I didn’t mean to imply “unrealistically pessimistic”. The Strugatskys’ views were well-informed by both history and contemporary events (Russian/Soviet policies in the Caucasus and Central Asia, to name one example relevant to this case).
I believe that Yvain cited an example of such on his blog, but I think that it was on the older one whose contents have been recently deleted. It was a recent one, and the “liberators” were the French, but I don’t recall enough relevant info to google it.
He did recently mention the British conquest of Afghanistan vs. the American conquest of Afghanistan, but that was mostly the question of how quickly and successfully the country was pacified, not liberated.
Seems rather realistic to me, actually. Do you know of many examples where “well-meaning liberators” did not end up causing more suffering shortly after their intervention (or forced withdrawal)?
Does technological development count as well-meaning intervention?
I am not sure what you mean here. Is it introducing new technologies as a part of a conquest, like the British did in India?
No, I just mean developing new technologies. That is, at time T this community doesn’t have the technology, then someone intervenes, and at time T+1 the community does have the technology.
If that’s out of scope for the kind of interventions you’re asking about, that’s fine, but if it isn’t, then I suspect there are plenty of examples where well-meaning folk end up not causing more suffering after their intervention in a community.
I agree that organic technological development is beneficial on the whole, with some exceptions. It’s the “prime directive violations” which backfire nearly uniformly. And that’s what the story is about, if I recall (been many years since I read it).
I think to answer that, we’d need to be clear about what we mean by saying that a community “has” a technology.
If I go to a tribe of hunter-gatherers, hand them a bunch of solar-powered toasters, and leave… do they now “have toaster technology”?
I think not. I’d have to think a bit harder to define exactly what I would consider to be “having technology”, but my intuition says that being able to build the thing, and/or having people in your society who understand how it works, is a requirement.
To our hypothetical hunter-gatherers, the toasters are outright magic. They haven’t the first clue of the most basic scientific or technological principles behind the artifacts that are in their physical possession.
So I’d have to ask what you think is an example of an intervention that causes a community to have a technology, where previously they did not.
In the present day, the average third world country doesn’t “have” cell phones, by this definition. In fact, the average first world inner city doesn’t have them either.
I think this is perfectly reasonable, though it could be argued that the first world inner city does not really constitute a fully separate culture.
Jiro’s example of making mobile phones available to a town that lacks the facilities for building its own mobile phones (factories, etc) seems to me a good enough example of an intervention that causes a community to have a technology they previously lacked.
Sure. Note, though, that what you’re doing there is effectively making said town part of your community (in the context of who “has” what technology, in any case).
Consider these scenarios:
You show up to some remote island, build a bunch of cell towers, hand out mobile phones, and leave, never to be seen again.
vs.
You show up to the neighboring town, build a bunch of cell towers, which you connect to your own cell network, hand out mobile phones, and continue to administer and maintain said towers, and provide support for said phones.
In the latter case, yeah, this community now has cell phone technology. But only because they’re a part of you now. If you cut them off from yourself — by ceasing to provide maintenance and support for the technology you just gave them — they no longer have any technology, just a bunch of artifacts which work (for a while, anyway), but are as magic.
Semantics aside, I agree with the particulars of what providing cell phones (in a functional sense) to a town that can’t manufacture them itself comprises.
And I’m willing to use that definition of “part of my community” in this conversation if you like, though of course there are many implications of that phrase which don’t apply to the scenario in question, so we should be careful about connotations.
I’m not sure why it matters, though. Does something additional follow from that town now being part of my community (in this sense)? If so, perhaps it would be useful to state that consequence explicitly, because I’m not seeing it.
Sure. The reason I made this distinction is this: we were discussing whether it’s possible to have an advanced and well-meaning society give a technology to a sadly benighted, less-advanced society, and not thereby cause more suffering.
Well, I think that question depends on what exactly is entailed by causing the less-advanced society to have a technology they didn’t previously have. I think to do that, the more-advanced society has to intervene in the less-advanced society to a greater degree than just showing up, saying “here, take this”, and leaving.
The thing is, essentially enveloping an inferior culture in your own has other ethical issues. I do not think that saying “Hi, here is this amazing thing, and now you are dependent on our society and culture forever (or at least until such time as you have transformed your society and culture to essentially be copies of ours)” is ethically neutral. (Although you should by no means take this to be an expression of cultural relativism.)
Whether doing this actually causes suffering in a straightforward, unambiguous sense, I am not sure. Maybe. Maybe not.
So, just to echo this back to make sure I understand… your position is that if I effectively intervene in a culture to provide technology (such that they actually have it), this means I am also providing a certain level of ongoing maintenance and support of that technology, which in turn necessarily means I’m enveloping that culture in my own until such time as it becomes essentially a copy of mine, which is at best not ethically neutral and might result in suffering, and might even result in net suffering, although then again it might not.
Yes?
If so, OK… thanks for clarifying.
For my own part, while I certainly agree that this sort of thing can happen, and some technologies lean that way more than others, I also suspect that there’s a nontrivial excluded middle between “don’t provide technology at all” and “essentially envelop an inferior culture in your own.”
For example, I think trade relations often exist in that middle ground.
That is a reasonable summary of my position, yes.
(It’s actually a bit worse than that: ”… becomes essentially a copy of mine” is often more like ”… becomes a distorted copy of mine, without the counterbalancing influences that result from gradual acceptance of, and adaptation to, the new technologies and cultural practices which I am now dumping on the client culture all at once”. But the core point is the same.)
I agree that there might be an excluded middle. I am skeptical of any claim that it’s common, though. Truly equitable, consensual (in a democratic sense) trade relations between grossly technologically unequal societies seem to be rare at best. Trade relations as a middle ground between the two extremes we’re discussing occur, I think, between societies that are not as different, in technological and social development.
Are there examples you can think of?
For the most part, the historical examples of relations between “grossly technologically unequal societies” I can think of were deliberately exploitative.
So, no, no examples of “truly equitable, consensual (in a democratic sense) trade relations” between such societies come to mind.
For that matter, no examples of failed attempts at such relations that just end up causing net suffering despite the sincere best efforts of the principals involved come to mind, either.
Not that I’m any kind of expert.
It’s only very recently, historically speaking, that the balance between helping a less advanced culture and exploiting a less advanced culture has been so tilted in the direction of helping. (Except for meme plagues that come packaged with a message of “spreading this meme constitutes help”, which we’ve always had, and which often end up as exploitation anyway.).
So you’re not going to see either many successful attempts at advancing the other culture, or many failed attempts—until now, there haven’t been attempts at all.
There are some, but mostly they are cases of “local situation deteriorated to the point of piles of skulls” prior to the intervention, so foreigners stomping around were welcomed instead of shot at.
I agree, shminux. By “pessimistic” I didn’t mean to imply “unrealistically pessimistic”. The Strugatskys’ views were well-informed by both history and contemporary events (Russian/Soviet policies in the Caucasus and Central Asia, to name one example relevant to this case).
I believe that Yvain cited an example of such on his blog, but I think that it was on the older one whose contents have been recently deleted. It was a recent one, and the “liberators” were the French, but I don’t recall enough relevant info to google it.
He did recently mention the British conquest of Afghanistan vs. the American conquest of Afghanistan, but that was mostly the question of how quickly and successfully the country was pacified, not liberated.
This was definitely a different example than that, and drew on more recent history than the British conquest of Afghanistan.