Windward Substinative

Natural vs. Unnatural

Unlike Tim I was not a huge fan of look to windward. I can't place my finger on anything specific--I just felt like the weapons pornesque descriptions of people things places (people that are places and things occasionally) could go on forever--and I tend to forget those parts of books pretty quickly anyway.

Back to my post. I hinted at this idea in my last post (below), but there is a certain unnatural assumption made about humanity--we, for some reason or another, view our selves as supernatural, able to manipulate and destroy that as it should be. This is a trait we seem to uniquely identify with ourselves and tend to remove from the other (even, often, when the other is human). Look to Windward had, to me, the most reasonable others because his others seemed capable of this same act of a supernatural nature. Yes, they are also unique in both their culture and physiological makeup (I will admit a giant living aware plant dirigible is pretty unique other), but unlike so many other examples of alien species we have explored the species of the Culture's universe are uniquely unnatural--they manipulate the world around them, ostracize members of their society, and have a knack for being destructive towards one another.

Again, I will grant that it was still the humans role to interfere in everything (as we love to do when serving as a hegemonic power), and the culture seemed (in a very human way) to suggest that they were solely responsible for the problems caused by this interference (you can read my previous post to see where I lay the blame for civil wars and revolutions supposedly caused by outside forces). This self as the only truly aware peoples is something we do even with other humans though, so I would not read much into it (Columbus describing the aboriginal americans along with the plants and birds--although after reading this novel you never know maybe the plants had names).

No, Bank's others are so oddly believable because they are so...well human...in that we use human to describe that odd woman folly we love to praise. They are human--disconnected with their environment, manipulative of the afterlife, destructive towards each other in a way the aliens of Alien, The Sparrow, Enders Game, and Just about anything else we covered this semester were not.