@patreekotime4578

1 year ago

One of the things that Trisolaran mass cognition implies is that Listener was not a lone dissatisfied actor. If Trisolarans are truely incapable of individual thought to such an extreme degree, then the Listener must represent an aspect of Trisolaran group thought... an undercurrent that constantly runs counter to the mass desire. And there is good evolutionary reasoning for this. A truely singleminded group consciousness would be inflexible to change and not adaptable, and adaptability is the most important trait for a species on a planet in a three-body system. So the species has to have a mechanism to cultivate undercurrents of subversive thought, even while the totalitarian impulse remains the dominant force. So the Listener is then perhaps a focal point for a collective subversion, which is why he desires things like love and art that he cannot possibly really have personal references for. Its why he feels this strong empathy towards Earth culture, because of the subversive leanings of other individuals. He is then the Listener not just Earth signals, but of those kinds of thoughts within the collective. This also explains the need for extreme martial law. Deviants are then not lone bad actors in Trisolaran society, but focal points for mass anti-social thought. Which makes them far more dangerous to the totalitarian body than a lone actor. But it also explains how they were suddenly able to lie when we are told explicitly they are incapable of lies... the main body of totalitarian thought maintains the party line that all thought is known and contained, while the undetected undercurrents keep different forms of thought alive as resevoirs for survival. This in itself is subterfuge, lying is therefore part of the Trisolaran deep nature. Just one that they hide from themselves. This all reflects back on Chinese history and the need to purge intellectuals and provacateurs who were far more dangerous to the revolution than individual dissidents would be. Im reading Ai Weiwei's book One Thousand Years of Joy and Sorrow and it is actually a really excellent companion piece to the The Body Problem books for someone from the West to understand some of the background of the revolution and how the Chinese political body became so hyper-focused on stamping out reactionary thought.

429 |