Each of them arrived with this aggressive embarrassed manner, and then enquired most solicitously after my health, which I assured them was, as always, excellent. The visits were all the same. We all agreed that we were seeing Sirius in ferment, beliefs and ideas held for millennia being thrown out, new ones being adopted. When this upheaval was over—and as usual during a period of tumult it was hard to believe it could ever be over—there was no means of foreseeing what our Empire would have become.
Our talk then turned to Rohanda. “Paradox, contradiction, the anomalous—when a planet is in a period of transformation, these are evident. Well then, in your view, Ambien, what is the most important of these? Important from the point of view of illustrating mechanisms of social change?”
“First of all, I am not equipped to talk of the real, the deep, the really fundamental changes that are taking place.” I said this firmly, knowing it would exasperate. But looked my visitor calmly in the eyes insisting that I had to say this. And when it was accepted, with good grace or not, I said: “But as for the immediately evident and obvious paradoxes, I would say that it is that Rohanda has perfected techniques of communication so powerful that the remotest and most isolated individual anywhere can be informed of anything happening anywhere on Rohanda at once. There are millions of them engaged in these industries to do with communication. Through the senses of sight and sound and through ways they do not yet suspect, each Rohandan is subjected day and night to an assault of information. Of ‘news.’ And yet never has there been such a gap between what this individual is told, is allowed to know, and what is actually happening.”
“But Ambien, is this not always true, everywhere, to an extent at least?”
“Yes, it is. For instance, if a Sirian were to be told that our Empire is run by a Dictatorship of Five, he would run or call the doctors.”
“I am not talking about that, Ambien—and I don’t like how you put it. If we are dictators, then when have there been rulers so responsive to the needs of their subjects… so compassionate… so concerned for the general good… Very well, you look impatient, you look as if I am quite ridiculous—we all of us recognise that we no longer think as one. You have your own views… but I was not talking of any specific problem we may have. I was suggesting that what can be taken in by an ordinary individual is always behind the facts.”
“It is a question of degree. But are generalities useful at this point? This dangerous and crucial point? Very well then, let me put it like this. When what the populace believes falls too far behind what is really going on, then rulers do well to be afraid. It is because a mind, individual or collective, can be regarded as a machine. From this point of view. Feed in information too fast and it jams. This jam manifests in rage—riots, uprisings, rebellions.”
“Which we are seeing now throughout our Empire. All kinds of new ideas fight for acceptance.”
“But how many more are there that are not yet seen at all? But you don’t want to talk about the particular. Very well then, though in my view we—you—are making a mistake. We ought to be talking about the Sirian situation. And about our situation. We ought to be thinking of ways our populations can be told: you Sirians, you, the Sirian Empire, have been ruled by an Oligarchy of Five, and this fact does not fit in at all with what you have been taught… oh very well then, let us stick to Rohanda. I shall make a very general observation. We all know that the central fact in a situation is often, and in fact most usually, the one that is not seen. We may say even that there is always a tendency to look for distant or complicated explanations for something that is simple or at hand. I shall say that as a result of watching the mental processes on Rohanda, I have concluded that they do not understand an extremely simple and basic fact. It is that every person everywhere sees itself, thinks of itself, as a unique and extraordinary individual, and never suspects to what an extent it is a tiny unit that can exist only as part of a whole.”
“And that is a really new idea for you, Ambien? Ambien of the Five?”
“Wholes. A whole. It is not possible for an individual to think differently from the whole he or she is part of… no, wait. Let us take an example from Rohanda. There is a large ocean vessel of new and advanced design. It is struck by a lump of floating ice and sinks, though it has been advertised as unsinkable. They appoint a committee of experts—individuals, that is, of the highest probity and public admiration, with the longest and most efficient training possible in that field. This committee produces a report that whitewashes everyone concerned. But this same report, studied only a few years later strikes a new generation as either mendacious or incompetent… well?”
“You occupy your mind with the minuscule! It isn’t we expect of you!”
“It seems to me that the minuscule, the petty, the humble example is exactly where we can study best this particular problem. What happened in the interval between the first report and the reassessment of it?”
“Change of viewpoint.”
“Exactly. An assortment of individuals, identically trained, all members of a certain class, dame together on a problem. They were members of a group mind—together concentrated into a smaller one of the same kind. They produced a report that could not have been different, since they could not think differently. Not then. That is why one generation swears black, and the next white.”
“But you, Ambien, are surely proof that a group mind is hardly inviolable—or permanent!”
“Ah, but here is another mechanism… what we are seeing are only mechanisms, machineries, that is all… let us consider these group minds… these little individuals making up wholes. Sets of ideas making up a whole can be very large, for instance, when they are occupying a national area, and millions will go to war for opinions that may very well be different or even opposite only a decade later—and die in their millions. Each is part of this vast group mind and cannot think differently, not without risking madness, or exile, or…”
Here there was a moment of consciousness, discomfort, sorrow—which I dissipated at once by going on.
“Yes, you said I have been at odds with you and for a long time, and that this fact proves I am wrong. But what is the mechanism, the machinery, that creates a group, a whole, and then develops a dissident member—develops thoughts that are different from those of the whole?”
“Perhaps this individual may been suborned? Influenced by some alien and unfriendly power?”
“If we are going to allow ourselves to think like that, then—”
“Then what, Ambien? Tell me. Tell us. We are ready to understand, don’t you believe that?”
“It is a mechanism for social change. After a time… and it can be a very long time indeed; or after only a short time… as we see now on Rohanda, where everything is speeded up and sets of ideas that have been considered unchallengeable can be dispersed almost overnight—after a period of time, short or long, during which the group mind has held these sacred and right ideas, it is challenged. Often by an extremely small deviance of opinion. It is characteristic of these group minds, these wholes, to describe an individual thinking only slightly differently as quite remarkably and even dangerously different. Yet this difference may very shortly seem ludicrously minor…”
“And so we all hope, Ambien.”
“But there is a question here, it torments me, for we do not know how to answer it. This deviant individual in this group—he or she has been unquestioningly and happily and conformingly part of this group, and then new ideas creep in. Where do they come from?”