Should Safeholdians say NO to Gbaba war?

Evilauthor, you are correct that the Writ tries to explain everything, and has done a good job so far. But that has not stopped the inevitable progress of technology.

The Brethren did not influence the development of gunpowder--they didn't even have the formula for gunpowder, or designs for guns. And yet, as you say, Safehold had already developed fairly advanced blackpowder weapons before Merlin showed up. And this is less than 800 years since the Archangels left.

The Church had become corrupted, twisting the Writ to their own purposes. What would happen in another 1000 years? 2000? Eventually, in hundreds of years or tens of thousands of years, something would give. Either there would be a revolt against the Church and its teachings, or the Church would have changed enough that the Writ and Proscriptions are interpreted differently, or some cataclysm would destroy Safehold civilization, or the human race would become mindless drones. Each of those results represents a failure of the Langhorne plan.

Pretty much this. Gunpowder is a major game changer, and it's said it was allowed simply due to a bribe. Father Paityr implies this sort of bribe is _COMMON_.

Safehold would slowly hit space. Struggling. With lots of religious wars. It wouldn't be a Safehold that Merlin would be fond of most likely, as it'd have the legacy of hundreds or thousands of years of crusades in its history. But it would.

As for the bombardment, it drops rocks on the planet. It /has/ to have a limit of ammunition. Even nanotech needs raw material. Even if it did have 'Destroy burgeoning electricity!' or other things, it'd run out of ammo after a few shots - how many is open to question, but I doubt it has more than a few bombardements in it. Weber is good about that sort of thing, and bombardments require material. Remember, the reason that Merlin doesn't simply do high tech crap on the other side of the planet is he's afraid it might wake something up under the temple. Otherwise, well, he'd just drain its ammo dry.

Now, the theoretical person under the temple, if he existed, could extend things to a degree. But eventually, after thousands of years, Safehold would advance technologically.

Icarium wrote:Pretty much this. Gunpowder is a major game changer, and it's said it was allowed simply due to a bribe. Father Paityr implies this sort of bribe is _COMMON_.

Safehold would slowly hit space. Struggling. With lots of religious wars. It wouldn't be a Safehold that Merlin would be fond of most likely, as it'd have the legacy of hundreds or thousands of years of crusades in its history. But it would.

As for the bombardment, it drops rocks on the planet. It /has/ to have a limit of ammunition. Even nanotech needs raw material. Even if it did have 'Destroy burgeoning electricity!' or other things, it'd run out of ammo after a few shots - how many is open to question, but I doubt it has more than a few bombardements in it. Weber is good about that sort of thing, and bombardments require material. Remember, the reason that Merlin doesn't simply do high tech crap on the other side of the planet is he's afraid it might wake something up under the temple. Otherwise, well, he'd just drain its ammo dry.

Now, the theoretical person under the temple, if he existed, could extend things to a degree. But eventually, after thousands of years, Safehold would advance technologically.

I agree that tech would eventually catch on for Safehold. Without Merlin it would be much slower. But even prior to Merlin, corruption was eating away at the church and eroding its credibility and authority. Charis was already starting to crowd the envelop. Eventually the COGA would face Safehold's version of the Enlightenment. Out of that the scientific method would to birth.

Don

Icarium wrote:Pretty much this. Gunpowder is a major game changer, and it's said it was allowed simply due to a bribe. Father Paityr implies this sort of bribe is _COMMON_.

Right but gunpowder by itself, or even primitive guns, isn't really a game changer. It isn't a power source, it doesn't really lead to much else. Gunpowder was an anomaly on Earth too, and it took centuries -- and a much more scientific mindset than Safehold would ever be likely to develop -- before it outcompeted other

Safehold would slowly hit space. Struggling. With lots of religious wars. It wouldn't be a Safehold that Merlin would be fond of most likely, as it'd have the legacy of hundreds or thousands of years of crusades in its history. But it would.

That's far from inevitable and I'd say even unlikely; at the timescale it would take to accumulate that much knowledge without a real scientific mindset, there are far too many opportunities for collapses/falls of the empire/dark ages and the attendant loss of knowledge and infrastructure: even without the OBS there are climate changes, running out of forests, etc etc.

Plus that kind of knowledge could just be lost over thousands of years without a strong reason to preserve it. To go from pre-Merlin OAR levels to space travel without a scientific method - gunpowder style "accidental" inventions only - would probably take several thousand years at least, probably much longer (it took us centuries, and 10x slower would be very, very optimistic IMO), and I'm skeptical of knowledge being preserved that long.

As for the bombardment, it drops rocks on the planet. It /has/ to have a limit of ammunition.

Not if it reloads from the asteroids in the system.

Also, it wouldn't need to fire more than once -- one incident is a giant sign (to their knowledge) that God doesn't want technology to be developed.

It would take thousands and thousands of years for that to be forgotten, if ever.

SWM wrote:The Brethren did not influence the development of gunpowder--they didn't even have the formula for gunpowder, or designs for guns.

Oh, sure they didn't invent it. I find it hard to believe they didn't have a hand in Charisian naval gun development though. Not "we have blueprints" just "this is a new development and should be studied to see how useful it is".

And yet, as you say, Safehold had already developed fairly advanced blackpowder weapons before Merlin showed up.

Well, not that advanced, better than the very first stuff (fire lances/fire arrows etc) though.

But they're still probably 300 years of (Earth) development from say the American revolution. Probably much longer on Safehold.

And good muskets and cannon don't really get you much closer to space travel.

The Church had become corrupted, twisting the Writ to their own purposes. What would happen in another 1000 years? 2000?

Probably increases in corruption leading to an eventual decadence. Some nations might break away for a while but without any real tech advantage, Charis-style, they would probably be reconquered sooner or later (when the CoGA had a 'revival' at the end of the decadent period.)

Either there would be a revolt against the Church and its teachings,

Against the Church as a central authority, quite possibly, but it wouldn't change much without Merlin and the Brethren there.

Against the teachings... I'm not sure I see the source for that. They're just too ironclad within the scope of what Safeholdians can find out.

or the Church would have changed enough that the Writ and Proscriptions are interpreted differently,

I'd think the Proscriptions would be worded unambiguously; Langhorne et al. don't otherwise seem incompetent.

some cataclysm would destroy Safehold civilization,

Possible eventually, yeah, but if we can use Earth as an example mass extinctions are RARE - tens of millions of years rare. I don't think a mere ice age would destroy a planetwide civilization, the equatorial belt would remain habitable (Safehold is colder than Earth, yes, but its native life is complex enough that it probably hasn't had a "Snowball Earth" event in several hundred million years).

That timescale is a whole other question.

or the human race would become mindless drones.

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Why would that happen? Most humans through most of history have lived in pretty non-innovative societies (at least scientifically/technologically; cultural/artistic innovation is something totally different). The Western world in the last five hundred years or so is very much the exception.

cralkhi wrote:Right but gunpowder by itself, or even primitive guns, isn't really a game changer. It isn't a power source, it doesn't really lead to much else. Gunpowder was an anomaly on Earth too, and it took centuries -- and a much more scientific mindset than Safehold would ever be likely to develop ...

Interesting analysis and logical conclusions from your basic premise. I do think your basic premise that Safehold would never develop a 'scientific mindset' is flawed.

Gunpowder did lead to a lot of change not associated with guns. It had as much (or more) impact as an explosive for mining and civil engineering as it did on weaponry.

As for a "scientific mindset," it might take bribes to get anything approved by an inquisitor, but it took innovative thinking to come up with something that requires a bribe to start with. The whole system isn't a great deal different than the Catholic Church's stranglehold on progress in medieval Europe. Just as corruption in the Catholic Church led Martin Luther and other protestants to religious revolt, the same pressures were building on Safehold and Merlin made use of them in his campaign against the CoGA.

Without those internal pressures to revolt against corruption, and the corruption itself, Merlin would never have been able to foment the changes he's feeding in both Charis and the Church lands.

I think that the comparison between the COGA and the Medieval Catholic Church is a good analogy, but there are some severe limitations to it.

The first one is that the COGA is a truly world-wide church with no competing expressions of religious faith allowed. At the height of its influence, Rome controlled only Western Europe with orthodoxy developing in Russia and huge portions of Eastern Europe. This says nothing about Islam, the far eastern religions, animism, etc.

The second thing that impresses me is the rise of the enlightenment roughly a hundred years prior to Protestantism. That focused around the recovery of the Greek classics largely imported through contact with the Islamic near east, in part due to trade and in part due to the crusades. Historically, the enlightenment drives in the wedge that opens the way for the Reformation with its father, John Guttenburg. Where is the outside ferment on Safehold to come from without Merlin, given the comparative uniformity of its culture, especially given Charis being destroyed without Merlin's intervention?

I don't know. I do suspect they get there. But it takes a lot longer for Safehold than it did for Earth. South Harchong with its more merchantile mentality might eventually have become a source of ferment. But I suspect that the process would be very different than what we remember from our own past.

Don

n7axw wrote:I think that the comparison between the COGA and the Medieval Catholic Church is a good analogy, but there are some severe limitations to it.

That's true of just about any analogy.

n7axw wrote:Historically, the enlightenment drives in the wedge that opens the way for the Reformation with its father, John Guttenburg. Where is the outside ferment on Safehold to come from without Merlin, given the comparative uniformity of its culture, especially given Charis being destroyed without Merlin's intervention?

Safehold does have printing presses, IIRC. The destruction of Charis without Merlin's intervention might have provided the spark, or it might have suppressed any spark of innovation, but the existence of printing presses means dissenting viewpoints can be spread fairly quickly.

n7axw wrote:I don't know. I do suspect they get there. But it takes a lot longer for Safehold than it did for Earth. South Harchong with its more merchantile mentality might eventually have become a source of ferment. But I suspect that the process would be very different than what we remember from our own past.

It might take a bit longer to get started on its own, but once it starts -- whether on its own or fomented by Merlin -- it's a bit like a wildfire; once it reaches a certain size, you can't extinguish it, you can only contain it.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think that the comparison between the COGA and the Medieval Catholic Church is a good analogy, but there are some severe limitations to it.

That's true of just about any analogy.

n7axw wrote:Historically, the enlightenment drives in the wedge that opens the way for the Reformation with its father, John Guttenburg. Where is the outside ferment on Safehold to come from without Merlin, given the comparative uniformity of its culture, especially given Charis being destroyed without Merlin's intervention?

Safehold does have printing presses, IIRC. The destruction of Charis without Merlin's intervention might have provided the spark, or it might have suppressed any spark of innovation, but the existence of printing presses means dissenting viewpoints can be spread fairly quickly.

n7axw wrote:I don't know. I do suspect they get there. But it takes a lot longer for Safehold than it did for Earth. South Harchong with its more merchantile mentality might eventually have become a source of ferment. But I suspect that the process would be very different than what we remember from our own past.

It might take a bit longer to get started on its own, but once it starts -- whether on its own or fomented by Merlin -- it's a bit like a wildfire; once it reaches a certain size, you can't extinguish it, you can only contain it.

I'm not sure about the wildfire analogy... More like rust on a car in South Dakota...slow but inevitable.

Don

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure about the wildfire analogy... More like rust on a car in South Dakota...slow but inevitable.

Rust can be stopped. Wildfires can only be contained and then only if they choose to be contained. Almost anyone who has ever worked a fireline would tell you the same.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure about the wildfire analogy... More like rust on a car in South Dakota...slow but inevitable.

Rust can be stopped. Wildfires can only be contained and then only if they choose to be contained. Almost anyone who has ever worked a fireline would tell you the same.

Judging by canon events, the Church isn't really containing the current fire too well either... not to mention drying out so many of their rear areas to fight the current fire that more flashing up seems inevitable.