Romanticization of the past, and distinguishing between change & progress: Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett
I am getting ready to delve back into some China Mieville, who requires some real commitment. I find that it helps to have lighthearted palate cleansers around such novelists, like Pratchett. When last we left off on Discworld, I revisited Sourcery. Let's not bother with Wyrd Sisters because I say so. We'll move right along to Pyramids. It was better. As a refresher, Discworld is a flat world resting on the backs of four giant elephants, standing on the back of an even bigger turtle, flying through space. It is a world of fantasy and whatever else Pratchett decided to throw into it for the purposes of humorous political/social/economic commentary. Pyramids takes us from Ankh-Morpork (the primary metropolis) to Djelibeybi (Egypt, which is what I will type, so that I do not have to continue typing Djelibeybi). The POV character is Teppic, the heir to the kingdom of Egypt. As a lad, he heads to Ankh-Morpork to train at the Assassin's Guild, but then returns when his father dies.
Egypt builds pyramids. It's what they do. They are obsessed with death and the afterlife, for which they build pyramids, pyramids and more pyramids within their shrunken kingdom along a river valley. Life, such as it is, within Egypt continues much as it has for the previous 7,000 years. Why? A variety of reasons. Indifference to life compared to death/the afterlife, belief in the value of the 7,000 year tradition... oh, and the real power in the kingdom is Dios, the head priest, who is actually 7,000 years old, and using the power of pyramids and shit to keep himself alive and dictate the rule of the kingdom. Regardless, Discworld's Egypt is basically what it was 7,000 years ago because. That's why.
When Teppic returns from the comparatively modern Ankh-Morpork, with such modern conveniences as plumbing, and mattresses, he recoils from his home kingdom's refusal to change, while struggling with the realization that the true power is Dios. Wackiness ensues when he tells a pyramid contractor to build the biggest, gaudiest, Trump-iest pyramid ever for his dead father. Why? Pyramids are magic, and their shape does weird shit, hence the plot. Which is as Pratchett-y as any plot, which is to say, irrelevant, and merely a vehicle for quips, absurdity, and social commentary, from which I will go far beyond Pratchett's intent here because fuck it, I'm doing Mieville next, and that dude is intense.
So Teppic leaves Egypt as a kid, grows up a bit in Ankh-Morpork, and gets some perspective on how backward Egypt is, having been kept from "progressing" mainly by Dios. Zooming out, one can interpret the novel through the lens of rigid adherence tradition versus progress, coming down clearly on the side of progress. Read the book, and it is difficult to defend much of anything about Pratchett's Egypt analog. I'll note that the novel was written in 1989, and to publish such a novel today would be impossible. Pratchett would be excoriated for colonialist attitudes, Eurocentrism, and such for giving such a negative portrayal of Djelibeybi, compared to the clearly Western Ankh-Morpork. Would there be any validity to the charge? No. Ankh-Morpork is nuts, and the whole thesis of the book is "progressive" in the truest etymology of the term, but this is just how sci-fi/fantasy fandom works these days.
Back on track. "Egypt" is backasswardsville, kept from the benefits of modernity, such as they are on Discworld, by the concept of traditionalism, and while one can find any number of reasons to say that Ankh-Morpork is a mess, Teppic is portrayed as a well-meaning guy who wants to help his home kingdom move forward. As we have a nationwide consideration of such travesties as Twitter, perhaps we should have some sympathy for the perspective that that which is new may not be good. As a music fanatic, I will not defend autotune, nor quantizing software, nor any of that, and these are mere trivialities. Consider Edmund Burke, and the tradition of philosophical conservatism. A system which has endured has worked, and to throw it away on that which is not tested is risky at best. In Pratchett's Egypt, the constrained river valley is running out of farmable land because that's where they keep putting the pyramids. It is a system that cannot sustain itself, mathematically, and one need not ask the Discworld's greatest mathematician to explain that. That mathematician being a camel named You Bastard.
Yet that is mathematical convergence towards inevitable failure. What is the cry of every modern revolutionary? The system is only working for some. It works for the rich/white people/whomever. The system doesn't work for ___/me.
There is this entity called "the system." It is akin to a living thing, and you have no agency. The question is not how much you work, but how much work this living thing called "the system" puts in for you. Your employee, "the system," has decided to favor someone else, so you want to fire this misbehaving employee and hire another "system," who will put in those hard hours for you.
A tad different from running out of farmable land in a river valley because your idiotic practice is to keep putting fucking pyramids there.
This is how we have always done it. That is the defense in Djelibeybi, and the only defense ever needed. To treat that as fully sufficient would be to entrench all of the worst evils in history, yet to treat change as "progress" is to invite many of those evils. Fascism and communism have each brought hell on earth. Both were changes, promising utopian visions to their followers. Mechanical rejection of change stops every good thing, but it likewise stops every mistake. The trick is to not be mechanical in either direction, while recognizing the value of caution amid uncertainty, and retaining a capacity to recognize a problem without burning down the whole fucking thing in an attempt to fix a problem on which one loses perspective.
None of this is to say that Dios isn't the villain. His cartoonish villainy, though, speaks to what happens when one portrays only one mechanistic view. Yes, mechanistic opposition to change will fail. But so will refusal to accept the limits of one's knowledge, the conclusion of which is a necessity for caution rather than barreling ahead.
Neither Discworld, nor Djelibeybi nor Teppic present a case for reckless revolution, yet the contrast is one that loses something in the distinction between static romanticization of a past that was never that great, and something we can call "progress." Nothing makes the pitch for evil more effectively than the promise of a better future. The more utopian the pitch, the faster you should run away.
Radim Zenkl, "Night in the Pyramid," from Strings & Wings. Mike Marshall is playing the mandocello on this track. This whole album is an amazing set of duets with the best of the best.
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