[Dragaera] Liberals

[Scott Schultz via Dragaera]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dragaera [mailto:dragaera-bounces at lists.dragaera.info] On Behalf Of
> Jerry Friedman via Dragaera

> The recent mentions of social justice at our author's blog have made me
> notice that there are no liberals in Dragaera.  Nobody renounces their
House
> and marches with the Teckla, we hear nothing about any wealthy
> sympathizers funding Kelly, there's no Eastern Martin Luther King, nobody
> says, "Though we must deplore the rioters' methods, the riots are a
clarion
> call for justice that the Empire cannot ignore."  Have I missed something?
> 

You have to remember that in Dragaera, there's a time for everything and
everything in its time. The time for such social revolution is when the
Teckla is ascendant on the Cycle. 

The Cycle isn't just a big stone wheel. It's a clock that marks out and to
large extent controls the temperament of the Empire. Are there wealthy
widows who run fundraisers to buy blankets and bread for the peasants during
times of famine and cold? Probably. Are there social renegades to disown
their own House to join House Teckla as a protest against the injustice of a
callous Imperial government that descries the rights of the individual and
keeps the lower classes downtrodden?  Sure, it's possible but the only time
it's going to be *effective*, producing the prototypical Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. or John Paul Jones or Che Guevera or Vladimir Lenin is when the
Cycle has turned or is about to turn and the metaphysical time for a Teckla
Republic has come. 

At any other time, such social unrest is doomed to failure. Verra doesn't
sabotage the budding Teckla Socialists in _Phoenix_ because she wants to
keep them down. She sabotages them because they are being driven by foreign
impulses, one could say "unnatural" impulses in terms of what's natural to
the Dragaeran Empire. (What is heavily implied is that it's a Marxist tract
that was brought by the original Terran colonists and somehow found by Kelly
or by someone who passed it to him. Though, come to think of it, it would be
interesting if "Brust the Author" was not the only contemporary Terran to be
communicating with Dragaera.) Because of their unnatural state of unrest,
they are distracting the Empire at a crucial time and putting it in danger.
If that danger was not real and present, Verra would likely have left well
enough alone and the Marxist Revolution would likely have been recorded as
nothing more than another hunger riot in the annals of Empire history. Those
darn Easterners, always making trouble.

Anyway - The point is that it's not a matter of Steve avoiding such social
lightning rods, it's that it is strictly speaking not possible for it to
occur in any meaningful way until the time is right for it to occur. This
isn't a world of free will. It's a world where Dragaerans are ruled by their
House and their heritage, where the Lords of Judgement rule over the course
of human events and where the Cycle rules over all. Except for the
Easterners. To them, Iluvatar gave strange gifts...

Along these lines, though, there's the question of what life is like in
Greenaire and Elde Island? It's been rather a long time since I read
_Phoenix_ but it seems that those people, living unattached to the Orb, are
not bound up in the fate of the Empire. The term "Dragaeran" as a word to
describe all "faerie" may be a misnomer. It isn't clear that the
"Dragaerans" who live apart from the Empire have Houses or even think of
themselves in such a fashion. What happens to a Teckla who runs away to
Greenaire? I think it would be interesting to find out.