Aphorism #10 - Playing the Old Game
Change when the world changes
When the Brits first came to New Zealand with their gunpowder and muskets, you’d be forgiven for naively believing that this would culminate in a banding together of the warring Māori tribes. The same goes for the Europeans in America.
The Ngāpuhi tribe of the Māori went off and conquered their long-time rivals. A couple of other Māori tribes sailed to the Chatham Islands and wiped out the Moriori people — enslaving the survivors. When the Comanche got their hands on some Spanish horses they didn’t unite with their brothers and attack the invaders; they conquered their long-time rivals. They went from being an insignificant tribe to a powerhouse.
Le Guin gets inside the geopolitical psychology of this in The Left Hand of Darkness. In it we see the planet Gethen’s two great nations, the Orgoreyn and Karhide, use the arrival of an envoy from the interstellar alliance of civilisations “the Ekumen” as a prop in their tensions with each other and in the factional power struggles within their own societies.
These peoples: the Māori, the Comanche and the Gethens outlive the end of their worlds. All is changed yet they vie to be the winner of a game that is already a relic of history. I notice the same in many Catholic priests — so conservative in their old age. They reject change and thus condemn their religion but at least they maintain their fealty to the religion of their youths. They rob the future of their religion but maintain their integrity. How very Catonic.
When the world changes, stop playing the old game. Change your paradigm. Open your eyes to the new reality. Such a thing is possible for individuals. Societies however seem doomed to recapitulate Max Planck’s epigram that science progresses one funeral at a time.