>From: Matthew Hunter <matthew at infodancer.org> >On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 08:42:08AM +0800, Andrew Bailey <andrew at networkharmoni.com.au> wrote: >> Why? Well he is a well read, highly intelligent individual who >> understands social systems quite well, but for some reason is completely >> unable to see why his marxist revolution is doomed to failure. > >He's a well-read, highly-intelligent ideologue. This attitude >tends to breed an inability to consider the flaws in your own >ideas, while exacerbating the flaws in others. > I recently reread Teckla and Phoenix (in that order, skipping Taltos). Something really struck me this time. Kelly is, as a person, a real ass. He is egotistical and incredibly rude. He doesn't argue with you so much as batter you into insensibility. What I find fascinating about this is that he is the only character who espouses, in any great detail, the political philosophy of his movement (Natalia is actually a sympathetic characeter, despite all that she has gone through, but Vlad and her do not talk all that much). Now, as we all know, this philosophy is quite close to that of the author. I think it takes a certain amount guts to write a book where a complete twit is the closest voice to how one feels about an issue. The other intersting thing, to me, about Kelly is that Vlad's criticisms are correct. He really does not see people as individuals, but as parts of various the system or of the revolution. All philosophies, when taken to their extremes, see people this way. You could almost take the book as argument against Marxism but Kelly would be the same way regardless of what he was arguing for. Instead the books are more saying that for any group to succeed in changing the "system" they need to work with people as people, and not as classes. (To be honest, I have tried to find a less trite of saying this, and failed.) Of course, I might just be thinking a little much about all of this.... brad