The Lotus Eaters

Chapter Eleven

The closed system problem, itself, consists of two related parts, belief in the practicality of social and technological stasis, even while insisting on material and / or moral betterment, and the unwillingness to accept that there are exterior issues beyond the control of the millennialist, which issues are beyond control precisely because they are exterior.

The easy assumption of social and technological stasis, of course, fails, again precisely, because it is merely an easy and thoughtless assumption. And once it begins to fail, the millennialists, who cannot admit that their sophomoric fantasies are just that, turn to the secret police, the propaganda ministry, and thought control to enforce stasis.

Millennialists also, be they Ayn Rand, from Old Earth, or the Red Tsar, from New, or the Cosmopolitan Progressives, from both, also live under the implicit delusion that the universe stops at the end of their reach. Where was Rand's answer to the problem of national defense or of public health (by which we mean plague prevention, not socialized medicine)? She had none but wishful thinking. How did the Red Tsars imagine they would keep out the ephemeral information that led to the downfall of the Volgan Empire? Oh, yes, they could keep people from leaving the empire, with barbed wire, walls, mines, machine guns, and dogs. But they could not keep information out, however hard they tried. The latter fact, acting on people imprisoned behind those walls and machine guns, was sure to cause an explosion. As for the Kosmos, even leaving aside the majority who appear to be nothing but unutterably corrupt and sanctimonious hypocrites, what is their answer to those who do not accept Cosmopolitan Progressivism and are aggressive about it? They have none. Or none they will admit to.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,

Historia y Filosofia Moral,

Legionary Press, Balboa,

Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468