Alien Clay

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

If that sounds like an absurd loss of investment, then you don’t know the history of people shipping other people against their will from place to place.

“Cognitive dissonance, yes. It’s not enough to be able to do a thing. People, human people, want to be able to believe it’s right to do so. The first thing those in authority do, after they’ve used main force and brutality to take over, is paper over everything with reasons why they were right to do it. Both because it helps you keep people in line if you can get them to believe it, and because it makes it easier to enjoy the spoils of your brutality if you convince yourself you’ve earned it. Human history is full of social conventions designed to salve the consciences of the mighty and curb the ambitions of the small. There’s something in the way humans are wired that means we want to be right by some external measure. So we invent philosophies to tell us we were right to do what we did and we’re allowed to do what we want. You find a god, basically, who tells you you’re okay. And maybe it’s actual God, because that’s an easy out. God says. Why? If you’re asking that question then you haven’t got faith and you’re out of the God club.”

We’re none of us angels in academia.

The greatest privilege of power is being able to overlook that you’re even wielding it.

Science, as a creed, should care about truth. It shouldn’t be bent for political aims.

And it is lies about science which cut most deeply, telling you that this or that group of people are naturally inferior, or another group has an innate ability to lead. That there is sufficient genetic distinction to make the call, when in actuality we share the vast bulk of our inheritance with mushrooms. Or else that, because of this kinship with mushrooms, our leaders are justified in keeping us in the dark and feeding us shit.

Because once you invest in automation, you have to take care of your junk. With labourer-class people, not so much. It’s cheaper to have a half-assed crew of expendables that you know you’re never going to have to return in good condition or risk losing your deposit.

Every revolutionary group I ever knew spent far longer clutching for how to describe what they were than talking about what they were going to do.