An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.
The majority of species, too, could scrape together some sort of metaphysical framework, a form of earlier speculation – semi-deranged or otherwise – regarding the way things worked at a fundamental level which could later be held up as a philosophy, life-rule system or genuine religion, especially if one used the excuse that it was really only a metaphor, no matter how literally true it had declared itself to be originally.
Ah, we’re the infection, Sma.’ He turned and sat down on the steps, looking back towards the city and the sea. ‘We’re the ones who’re different, we’re the self-mutilated, the self-mutated. This is the mainstream; we’re just like very smart kids; infants with a brilliant construction kit. They’re real because they live the way they have to. We aren’t because we live the way we want to.
Division was the only order.
The Culture gives us so much, but in fact it’s only taking things away from us, lobotimizings everybody in it, taking away their choices, their potential for being really good or even slightly bad.
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking’s immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.
The Empire wanted to survive; it was like an animal, a massive, powerful body that would only let certain cells or viruses survive within it and as a matter of course killed off any and all others, automatically and unthinkingly.
Somehow, later, exhausted and dismayed by these sapping, abrasive, attriting episodes, they came to a sort of truce; but it was at the expense of any closeness.
Holse wasn’t about to get involved in any theological arguments. He looked serious and nodded, hoping this would do.
So how many infants have to grow up under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, and just possibly die screaming inside the radioactive rubble, just for us to be sure we’re doing the right thing? How certain do we have to be? How long must we wait? How long must we make them wait? Who elected us God?
Oh no,” Ximenyr said, looking almost serious. “One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve.
The empire survives, the barbarians survive, but the empire is no more and the barbarians are nowhere to be found.
The Dwellers are not going to be happy. Only they’re allowed to let off nukes in the atmosphere. And it isn’t even fireworks season.
I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you’re supposed to argue about, come later. They’re the least important part of the belief. That’s why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place.
Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.
You judged your own attractiveness – physically, psychologically and in terms of status – then you knew your level and could either raise or lower your sights accordingly, risking rejection but with the possibility of advancement, or settling for a more reliably stable life but never knowing what you might have achieved.
Empire had a clutch of missiles which were generally reckoned to be inoperable, and probably were politically unusable anyway because they were supposed to be nuclear-tipped. Public opinion in the Cluster could tolerate the technologically enhanced continuation of a pointless war so long as men, women and children died in relatively small, regular batches, but the thought of a million or so being incinerated at once, nuked in a city, was not to be tolerated.
All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself.
A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.
The source of my name,” the vessel had replied, “The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: ‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.
The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.