Reflexivity

Oliver Morton is referring to galactic history, but the sentiment explains my desire for ceremony concerning the annual return of light. Over the last five years, I have intentionally cultivated this religious impulse into a celebration of human diversity: the need for solar nurturance is universal, encompassing all modes of spiritual practice and transcending every form of social and institutional division.
We human beings alive today live on the verge of the future – as this wonderful video demonstrates, “we live in exponential times.” What we accomplish, and what we fail to accomplish, will set the limits for succeeding generations. A verge is “something that borders, limits, or bounds.” The verge is a measurement in time.

The iconicity of the Earthrise photograph, taken by astronaut Bill Anders in 1968 (when I was five) as a proof of technological prowess and singular human interconnectedness, competes in the modern age with old, established ideologies. Our visual and visceral senses are immersed in strategic and incidental ways to inspire the gamut of human emotion. Mundane hopes, grand visions, and primal fears are inspired to motivate daily participation in the increasingly complex structures of interconnected global societies. The contemporary class values of intellectual and creative freedom require deep investment in the construction of social infrastructures that enable strong human ties across the many diversities which compose human experience and inform human wisdom.
The trick is how to institutionalize systems that enact the precious balance between control (by which I mean reliability of the system actually doing what it is directly intended to do) and democracy (by which I mean the actual freedom of individuals to pursue activities they value – see Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom).
The crucial tension, it seems to me, is a certain level of unlearning our confidence in prediction so that we develop a few more risk-taking skills. In Wouter’s words from earlier today:

In everyday life, we generally do know what will happen if we turn left – we arrive at our intended destination – unless something happens, and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of an adventure we never intended and do not necessarily want. Institutions are designed to eliminate – or at least minimize – such unexpected happenings. But by ruling out the spontaneous and sporadic, institutions also instill modes of conformity that threaten to mold us into compliant complacency. Then we – taken in aggregate as masses of indistinguishable people – are easily provoked into outrageous mobilizations including the co-production of horrifying violence – be it formal war or stealth co-optation of resources driving others to despair.
As Tumbleweed explained it the other day, we have the accumulated knowledge to predict how discourses play out over time if they are not interrupted immediately:

“First people say, ‘They own the bakeries and the banks.’ Then you have Kristallnacht and next thing you know we’re liberating the Jews from Auschwitz.”

But how does one intervene in such discourses without falling into another kind of fascism?


Merely regulating what people can/cannot say is hardly an answer; the repressed attitudes simply work themselves out in another way. Rather, we need a few mechanisms which routinely, habitually embrace the discrepancies of our differences as a matter of course. Olivia Judson argues playfully for “The Ten Days of Newton” to “embrace the discrepancy” of Newton’s actual birthdate (which is different pending which calendar one uses), posing this as a new holiday to encompass all the variations currently celebrated at this time of year around the globe. She names Newton’s foundational role in terms of the way we now understand our place in the universe, highlighting (among other achievements) his work with prisms. Newton proved that

The point is that we have the incredible decision-making power to invent systems composed from the vast array of imaginative potential in combination with increasing predictive competence. The question is whether we deal deeply with revealed knowledge or insist on creating new prisms (or keeping old ones) to distract us from what we already know is there. The desire for security binds the individual to institutional control, but safety (perceived and real) constantly fluxes with the organic compulsion to grow.
How many times can a person reinvent themselves? As often as necessary – if

• confidence in the relative security of life is guaranteed, the
• skills of reading the immediate for future implications are cultivated, and
• responding inter/co/pro-actively is modeled and implemented.

(I’m not promising its gonna be easy!)

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One of my post-sailing-adventure musings is, what if I had read Longitude shipboard instead of The Telling?
There’s no way to know, of course, what would have changed or whether those changes might have mattered, in the end. Captain explained how sailors use the variety of sounds from gongs and bells to triangulate position in fog. “Can you really tell what direction the sound is coming from?” I wondered. “In general,” she replied. So there you would be, unable to see sky or shore, listening. Moving (because how can you stop?), and listening. Straining to hear a hint of familiar sound, constructing a mental map against remembered ephemera, calculating where you must be (the reckoning?), and committing yourself to being there – fixed (dead?) – in that moment. Then, you would begin to move the boat in the direction your imagined memory suggests, calculating speed and direction by wind and current with no other reference point except a longed-for next sound.
Fog is an extreme version. (Definitions of “dead reckoning” describe the process of “estimating one’s current position” and then “advancing … based upon [other] known [facts of] speed, elapsed time, and course.”) In lieu of clear vision, i.e., when one must estimate location, not only might audition take prominence, some neuroimaging research shows emotional perception is also affected.
Ok, yes, you caught me – I am making a big metaphorical leap: from the literal to the representational, from the physical to the symbolic. Loss of clear sight from conditions in the external visual environment or due to perturbations in the internal affective state are not exactly the same thing: but the physicality of impaired vision on knowledge of one’s geometrical position in relation to other physical objects can have (I propose!) similar effects as an internal confusion about one’s status, role, or relationship (to name a few social scientific categories) in relation to comparable “position(s)” of others.
Dava Sobel details instances in which, “Too often, the technique of dead reckoning marked [any random sea captain, pre-chronometer] for a dead man” (1995, p. 14). No one died on our journey (Thank god! I hear the Captain exclaim), but we definitely mis-fixed a few crucial reference points along the way, keeping corrective navigation in turmoil.
Discouraging as Anonymous’ judgment is (a pal wrote, “hey, that “anonymous” poster was way outta line! What was that all about??!!), the solution presented by “Rocks and Shoals” (Articles for the Government of the United States Navy, 1930) imposes a severe lack of ambiguity on relative social position/status. While Captain Donald I. Thomas USN (Ret.) defends the justice meted out under the original document as “speedy and fair, with the rights of the accused properly safeguarded,” he ultimately celebrates the code’s demise. Presumably not only because he no longer had to listen to it being read out loud once a month, but because it was a source of abuse:

“We got the message loud and clear that we were expected to throw the book at the accused and leave leniency, if any, to [a particular Base Commander]. This well-understood command influence remained until 1951, when the Uniform Code of Military Justice came into being. One of its provisions was that “no Convening authority or commanding officer could censor, reprimand or admonish any court or member with respect to findings and sentence adjudged by the Court and may not attempt to coerce or influence action of a court in reaching its finding or sentence.”

Under the Uniform Code, continues Capt. Thomas: “The administration of justice took on more of the characteristics of civil law; not surprising since it was drafted by members of Congress, many of them lawyers who had served in the Armed Forces during the War. Under the Uniform Code, greater latitude was given to peremptory challenges, and the finding of guilt required a two-thirds majority in all but capital cases.” (There may be hope for me, yet!) I have no idea what Anonymous’ invocation of the Rocks and Shoals was “all about,” but the thought that someone I met wrote so starkly is a bit disturbing – I enjoyed everyone I met. And, still, I appreciate the food-for-thought. For instance (in combination with other sources of inspiration and some creative sentence-splicing),

“The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature; [while] the placement of the prime meridian [for fixing longitude] is a purely political decision” (Dava Sobel, Longitude, 1995, p. 4).

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the eighties feminist slogan, “the personal is political.” I absorbed this ethos, and attempt to live its significance. After twenty-some years of practice I sometimes feel as if I’m close (the perception never lasts for long!) I triangulate my reference points broadly: from the interpersonal sphere of my friends, to the international relations such friendships draw me into, and this blog in-between. The third axis is time; that curious dialectic between the present and the future. More often than I prefer to acknowledge, my close-up aim fails because of interference from the past.
What obscured the facts? I think it must, at least in part, be how I look – not my generic appearance, but the particular expressions that cross my face, the movements my body makes when I am feeling awkward, uncomfortable, insecure. Or, conversely, when I’m confident, psyched, exuberant! Whatever internal emotion, mood or attitude inspires the viscera, despite whatever skills or talents I’ve nurtured, whichever socialized or conditioned awful habits I’ve tried to reconfigure – I must still be appear visibly only within a certain range of possibility. And that range is associated with every previous time I “looked” that way, and potentially even with other people who appear/have appeared similarly – whether for the same or different reasons, under alternative or familiar conditions.
Despite my ambition, I am a follower. I “follow” what I perceive, reacting when caught off guard, responding when my act has a little more room to maneuver into a way to fit together. It’s impossible to establish a temporally causal relationship (first this, then that) – I am not attempting such linearity. I am trying to explicate how I get caught playing into roles (behaviors, actions, attitudes) that diverge from intention and desire. How is it, in other words, that I keep appearing in certain ways that invite responses which lead me to feeling unseen?
‘Tis a puzzle, no?

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Ah, I’ve been divesting myself of things: all those things that accumulate in living space and cause a need for storage.
But I like things; I even want them. For instance, this work of art: A Dream World Glimmers in the Background of the Soul, by Carrie Marrill.

I struggle most to let go of items having strong associations – values, memories, ambitions, affections . . . it is less the thing and more what it invokes that I hesitate to let go. Will that ineffable quality come back? Can I find this particular inspiration again? Do I need the peculiar juxtapositions of that unique object in immediate or future moments?
One can never know for sure.

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Captain got me a room at the Haddie Pierce House while I waited on my hero to pick me up on Saturday afternoon. He collected me from the Beach Rose Cafe, where I spent several hours – over three days – ensconced online.

Carleigh is great: “We’ll miss you at that table! You’re like furniture now!” (Hey – follow that dream – get on a boat and go!) Swell Andyman is also awesome, from plugging the food, “Chef Mike doesn’t mess around,” to keeping the place spotless. Both of them impressed me the most interacting with a local man who doesn’t get around so good. Carleigh leapt up from eating lunch on her well-deserved break when Bob entered, got him settled at the table he wanted with his beverage of choice. Andyman kept up a running banter with Bob while tending to his diverse duties. I ate three excellent meals: Jamie’s Favorite Salad, Habanero Chili Chicken Wings, and perfectly-prepared, barely-battered Fried Bay Sea Scallops (sans roll).

Speaking of food, Daria, the Innkeeper at the Haddie Pierce House, provides a mighty fine spread!

After fresh fruit (watermelon, strawberries, and canteloupe), cranberry coffee cake, coffee, tea, apple juice and water, Daria served up a delectable peach french toast with peach sauce for the main course, along with precisely crisp bacon. One doesn’t need to eat for a long time after such a feast! The company was neat, too. I wasn’t sure, at first, if there was going to be space for me in the conversation but eventually I found a way in. Rose began with a story about touring mansions the previous day. While they were in the entry waiting for one tour to begin, one of the jets practicing for the upcoming airshow boomed overhead. Someone either looked puzzled or concerned (or might have said something), and Rose announced, “The sound of freedom! Isn’t it wonderful?”
All four at the table were retired military, reservists, mostly, and one is out but still doing work as a contractor. I learned a lot in a short while! For instance, I know a fair amount about how gays and lesbians are treated, but I’d not considered that heterosexuals also have to date within restrictive rules or be punished. I also hadn’t thought deeply about what it’s like for reservists who establish careers, get called up, and then return to careers that need to be rebuilt. Apparently, reservists weren’t really called up for active duty before 1990 (Desert Storm), but if you were in during the late Eighties and paying attention you could see the signs of preparation. And the ambivalence of not wanting to fight/kill/die but also wanting to be called up if others are, instead of being left behind. Because Gayle, Mike and Judy, and Rose had so much in common, I gleaned more insight into some personal elements of a military career than I’ve previously had opportunity.
Who knew, for instance, that “the silly stuff matters most” in care packages sent to soldiers? (Of course it makes sense, but you have to think about it.) They can get most everything these days, it seems, except good coffee and current magazines. Popular Mechanics is a favorite.
“Most military people, if you talk with them,” Gayle explained at one point, “don’t really want to go to war.” “You lose too many people,” someone (Rose?) said. “But you have to be ready,” Mike offered (if I remember correctly). I wanted to know if they thought it could ever be different, if the system could be changed. Being in communication, I explained how the theories show over and over that if you prepare for something, it’s almost as if you invite it, so “if we’re ‘ready for war,’ then others ‘get ready for war’ and if everyone’s getting ready then eventually there will be a war!”
I wish I could say they offered some concrete hope, but – although they acknowledged the point (Gayle, especially) . . . Mike said its about power. I agree that’s how it has been, but haven’t enough people now achieved a certain level of middle-class comfort we could figure out how to do power differently? This was the most interesting part of the conversation for me. I suggested that most people around the world want the same things we have. “What if they don’t?” Mike challenged. Judy wasn’t sure if they really do (want the same things). “Culturally it might look different,” I said, “but at base, people want to eat good food, like we are; live in solid houses, like this one; be able to travel safely; educate their kids; have decent healthcare….how they go about achieving these things might not be the same way we do, they may not look the same in the end, but at base these are roughly the same things.”
We did not exactly arrive at an impasse, but we couldn’t seem to push that topic much further. There was some talk of development in Dubai, the incredibly-disparate wealth of the royal family and hiring of immigrant labor while the vast populace of the country remains in poverty. I wondered if – knowing that they were basically doing similar things to what our ancestors had done (I had the trailer from Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North in mind, a long with all the Indian names along the course of our voyage: Napatree Point, Weekapaug Point, Misquamicut Beach, and Connecticut itself) – instead of perpetuating those habits, those systems…. or looking the other way . . . or taking advantage . . . when Rose labeled the jet engine’s roar as the sound of freedom, I remembered the jet that buzzed us the previous day in Brewer’s Harbor, so low and close to us that the volume was literally painful. I had wondered, then, about the psychological element of warfare, the intention to cause “Shock and Awe.” Do they design those engines on purpose to be so loud? Or just choose not to do the mechanical things that could make them more quiet? Further, what would it be like to anticipate after this sound, another – if one survived the explosion long enough to even hear it? Ultimately, why do we (humans in general, Americans – “my people” – in particular) feel so justified in subjecting other human beings to that experience?
We ended up talking about camels. Recommending that we watch Weeping Camel, Gayle mused that if she “ever stayed overnight with a camel” it would probably break her of the sentiment that “there’s nothing about a camel I don’t like.” I, for one, want a full report!

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Over the past week, I had a couple of long text-message conversations with a friend across the country, trying to sort out how to navigate the intensity of dynamics that had developed so unexpectedly. I mean, I came to sail, not to do intense interpersonal processing! Which doesn’t mean I assumed that there would not be any, but I never doubted that we would work them out. As I grappled with the shock, my friend said, “You’re trying.” I replied, “That can be taken two different ways!” (I found a nautical application, too: “To “try” is when a vessel is hove to, to so trim her sails that she may gather headway and make something to the good.” A Manual of Boat and Yacht Sailing by Kemp and Smith.)
Captain has said it’s a matter of difference in the ways we show concern. I’ve thought it might be more in the ways we show gratitude. I have my “analysis,” as the Captain says. :-/ And she has hers. If we agreed on the nature of the problem we might have had more of a chance, but the initial upset has been ungraspable, or unspeakable, or otherwise uncomprehendable. Captain says crew/captain conflict is typical and common. Yes I’m sure but we are not! Neither of us is oridinary; my disappointment is keen. Which (true confessions) did not help her stress level, at all.

As I continue to puzzle over this development, it seems to me we’re talking two sides of the same coin: appreciation (i.e., the perceived lack thereof) ~ for what the other is going through and what we believe we give. (”Belief,” writes Ursula Le Guin in The Telling, “is the wound that knowledge heals” (p. 190).)
I have learned tons.

• I start to forget things and get spacey when my mind is full of thoughts unwritten.
• I’m easy unless/until a suspicion of being unwanted or not accepted gets going (not new info, just evidence that vein of pain still runs deep) and (!)
• I’ve got more bounce-back than I ever had before.
• My coping strategy of poking fun directly at the sore spots (in myself, primarily but also interactively) can be interpreted by others as oppositional, even combative.
• I really don’t need very much but that little bit is vital. :-/

Tracking my own emotional ride these past two weeks, I realize I’m a bit like that lighthousekeeper who really wanted a son. First, prudence (of course my needing to finish that paper onboard was going to rub the wrong way), patience (we have plenty of time to let things sort themselves out without getting too worked up about them), hope (”we had a major breakthrough,” I texted a friend after the Captain told me she was feeling better), then despair.
Still working on “the little fox way over there.” (Or was it Hog?)
I learned more about sailing too, and my attraction to it. I like the role of doing the manual labor without devoting hours of intellectual labor to the comprehensive tasks of outfitting the boat and the constant challenge of navigation.

I think I could grow into these skills, given favorable conditions to develop them at a natural, experiential pace. There’s just too much else going on in my mind/life with accumulated momentum and ambition for me to divert the kind of resources necessary to be assertive about sailing without tangible support and conducive opportunity.
The Captain told me, several days ago, that I sail better when I actually look at the sail – an activity she thinks I do (!) when the awning is down. If I did glance at the sail more often when it was easy to see, that didn’t mean I knew what I was looking at! Even when she would tell me what to look for, I still did not develop a sense of meaningfulness regarding what I saw. I have experienced this often in relation to the terminology and jargon of sailing (boatbuilders, types of boats, names of parts, etc) – I understand the words but do not comprehend their relevance. The evidence is in not making the connection between what’s been said and what’s happening or what one wants to make happen. I experience those moments (which occur in other, non-sailing contexts too) as if there’s a kind of fuzz between me and comprehension. I perceive something on the other side, but there is a lack of clarity, a welter of interference.
That I perceive the fuzziness at all is (actually!) an accomplishment to celebrate. In the past, either I would assume I did understand (and be wrong), or I would assume the other person didn’t know what they were talking about (and be wrong). Neither attitude led to satisfactory relational outcomes. The fact that I now realize when I’m not clear on something is a measure of significant growth. Next, I need to get better at developing a range of strategies for interacting with others while I am in this ambiguous condition. My primary tendency is to just accept that this is where I am – probably an overreaction of passivity to counter the myriad of instances in the past in which I would attempt to exert control over confusing situations.
However, I suspect that relaxed stance might lead to more confusion or misunderstanding in the relationship, as it interacts, communicatively, with the other person(s) perceptions and strategies.
My peak achievement, on my last sailing day, was to manage both the tiller and the main sheet simultaneously. The Captain and I had perfected a tandem routine in which she would work the tiller and tell me when to pull in or let out the sheet, including how much or how far. Coming in to harbor from Rome Point that day, she was just unwell enough to give both tasks over to me. Uh oh, I thought, another test! But this time – finally – I actually had a sense of what to do, how to combine the priority of keeping the sail full with adjustments in aim. Yippee!
Last but not least, I learned how to flemish the lines.

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The trilogy, billed first as Xenogenesis and then as Lilith’s Brood, closes with more insight on the human condition from the vantage point of maturity. (Am I a grown-up, now?)

“Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.” (p. 548)

Why are we so reluctant to be known? And what is the crime of understanding?

“…the ooloi perceived all that a living being said – all words, all gestures, and a vast array of other internal and external bodily responses. Ooloi absorbed everything and acted according to whatever consensus they discovered. Thus ooloi treated individuals as they treated groups of beings. They sought a consensus. If there was none, it meant the being was confused, ignorant, frightened, or in some other way not yet able to see its own best interests. The ooloi gave information and perhaps calmness until the could perceive a consensus. Then they acted.” (p. 553)

Jodahs is another child of Lilith, Tino and Nikanj, Dichaan and Ahajas. Jodahs has exceeded the limits of genetic engineering designed to ensure only male and female children, instead becoming ooloi, an ungendered being. “Not being able to go to anyone for comfort…can make you like the lightening – mindless and perhaps deadly” (p. 558).
I have acted “like the lightening” sometimes, in past events and instances I’d rather not remember. Quick anger and deep hurt spark words that leap unbidden from the tongue even before my mind has wrapped itself around them. Then come the rationalizations: the excuses and reasons why, the justifications. None suffice.
Some things, however, must be said.

Jodahs is afraid of causing harm. “Give yourself time. you’re a new kind of being. There’s never been anyone like you before. But there’s no flaw in you. You just need time to find out more about yourself.” (p. 571)
The hard things Nikanj had to say were about killing in self-defense – if absolutely necessary. Such an action is a horror to the Oankali, whose reverence for life exceeds all other imperatives. “Nothing is more tenacious than the life we are made of.” (p. 663)
That is the Oankali religion in a nutshell: “A world of life from apparent death, from dissolution.” (p. 663) I am reminded of Alvin the Maker and quantum physics.
If one accepts the fact of quantum indeterminacy, however unlikely the probability, there remains chance – for life, for change, for health, for happiness, for any good thing (just as equally as, to be fair, any bad thing). One can never predict when, where, how, or why one may discover – in themselves and others -

Note:
Book Two: Adulthood Rites
Book One: Dawn

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The second volume in Octavia E. Butler’s classic series on the Human Contradiction refers to coming-of-age. Everything about the series has been either nurturing or thought-provoking as I live an intervention within my family. Near the conclusion of the first book (Dawn), the human protagonist insists that the alien Oankali give her a taste (p. 226) of their expansive perception – what, she wants to know, is death to them?

It gave her . . . a new color. A totally alien, unique, nameless thing, half seen, half felt or . . . tasted. A blaze of something frightening, yet overwhelming, compelling.
Extinguished.
A half known mystery beautiful and complex. A deep, impossibly sensuous promise.
Broken.
Gone.
Dead.

I was asked a few times over the past week and a half if I had a plan. No, not more than hopeful intention seeking openings. “My perception isn’t what it will be eventually.” (p. 501)
Even if Humans lack the extraordinary multidimensional perception of the Oankali, I still believe we are more connected, more collective, than we usually acknowledge. I can align myself with “Akin…[who] had learned an important lesson: he would share any pain he caused. Best, then, to be careful and not cause pain . . . . he shifted his attention from the frustration of what he could not perceive to the fascination of what he could find.” (p. 257)
What are the things I find, the things I perceive? I yearn for Akin’s Oankali perception: “[Akin] investigated the DNA that made up the genes, the nucleotides of the DNA. There was something beyond the nucleotides that he could not perceive – a world of smaller particles that he could not cross into. He did not understand why he could not make this final crossing – if it were the final one….he came to think of it as a horizon, always receding when he approached it.” (p. 257) But I also know my own horizon in/within/of communication – the ways we talk with, to, and about each other; the words and phrases of daily interaction; the patterns of meaning we weave together, reinforcing them with regular repetition and resisting the unknown new relationships that change might bring.
I suppose it is fantastic to imagine that I sense the ways we co-create each other – how your actions toward or against me invoke my actions about/involving you. My intellect (such as it is) could be reducible to the years of marijuana-induced sensory thought bleeding over, somehow, into the regular firing of neurons in the cognitive structure of my mind. My personal hypothesis is that the pot-smoking era of my youth showed my brain another way to function, but it has taken years of intensive effort to develop the particular pathways that constitute my contemporary mode of thinking. I had to, first, gain a window of perception onto myself from the outside; second, evaluate myself through the juxtaposition of my internal sense-of-self with the projections other people give back to me about myself; third, recognize the elements that could be changed; fourth, learn more about so many things …. the coursework in Communication has provided me with the conceptual tools to understand the ramifications of different skill sets and ethical commitments.
There is an intimacy humans share that we tend not to acknowledge beyond a recognizable preference for similarity and the politics of identity. We – each “one” of us – are inextricably bound to groups. Even if we are not with the people who compose these groups – be it the family who raised us, the friends who embrace us, or the demographic groups we align with and/or are stereotyped into by others. Even hermits are defined as such by their (lack of) relationship with others. Despite an adolescent embrace of Simon and Garfunkel, none of us is irrevocably alone.

“…just for an instant, they showed him, brought him into that incredible unity. He could not even manage terror until the moment had ended.
How did they not lose themselves? How was it possible to break apart again? It was as though two containers of water had been poured together, then separated – each molecule was returned to its original container.” (p. 454)

Emotions are treasure; and they are supremely dangerous. Akin’s terror at group merger is dismissed: “The Akjai responded. Even at your stage of growth, Eka, you can perceive molecules. We perceive subatomic particles. Making and breaking this contact is no more difficult for us than clasping and releasing hands is for Humans.” (p. 454) What if we accept the evidence of chemistry, biology, and especially physics – shaking hands is not only a moment of skin-to-skin contact: it is an instance of literal interaction. So many people discouraged me from this endeavor. So much fear that “it won’t work” or that “things could get worse” – so easily do we accept awful situations, convincing ourselves that slow, inexorable dying is preferable to bursts of engaged life and presence.
Is this a competition? I dearly hope not. I have been un-whole for so long, bereft of those most-loved. I want my family to take part in calling me and each other into new being. Still, Butler’s incisive insight cautions, because everywhere one looks, there it is:

“The Human Contradiction again. The Contradiction, it was more often called among the Oankali. Intelligence and hierarchical behavior. It was fascinating, seductive, and lethal. It had brought Humans to their final war.” (p. 442)

“[The Oankali say] that you can’t grow out of it, can’t resolve it in favor of intelligence. That hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not. That not even Mars will be enough of a challenge to change you.” He paused. “That to give you a new world and let you procreate again would . . . would be like breeding intelligent beings for the solve purpose of having them kill one another.”
“That wouldn’t be our purpose,” she protested.
He thought about that for a moment, wondered what he should say. The truth or nothing. The truth. “Yori, Human purpose isn’t what you say it is or what I say it is. It’s what your biology says it is – what your genes say it is.”
“Do you believe that?”
” . . . yes.”
“Then why – [help?]“
“Chance exists. Mutation. Unexpected effects of the new environment. Things no one has thought of.” (p. 501-502)

Note:
Book One: Dawn
Book Three: Imago

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Time to let the past go.

It has been forty-five years, after all. Given the average lifespan in my genealogy and contemporary conditions, I figure ninety years is a reasonable guestimate. Provides a frame for planning, anyway! I steal a sentiment from a Hallmark card: “I surrender my youth gladly; I have outgrown it.”

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