Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

No: the dispassionate, disinterested eye we use for other peoples, other histories, we do not easily turn on ourselves—past or present! Yet most societies—cultures—empires—can be described by an underlying fact or truth, and this is nearly always physical, geographical. Is it possible that our reluctance to regard ourselves as we do others is because we do not like to categorise our own existence as physical … merely physical?

The Sirian Empire has been preoccupied by one basic physical fact and the questions caused thereby since its inception: technology: our technical achievements that no other empire has ever approached… I write that statement without the benefit of “hindsight.” That is how we have seen it until very recently. It is because of how we define (and many of us still do) technology. The subtle, infinitely varied, hard-to-see technology of Canopus was invisible to us, and therefore for all these millennia, these long ages, we have counted ourselves supreme.

We now mark the end of our Dark Age at the point where “we got rid of our excess populations.” As I saw it expressed in a somewhat robustly worded history. At the point, then, when “population balanced necessity.” Ah yes, there are a hundred ways of putting our basic dilemma! And each one of these formulations, evasive or frank, can only mask something we have never come to terms with! To sum up our culture, then, as we so arbitrarily encapsulate others: “The Sirian Empire, with its fifty-three colonies, almost infinitely rich, well-endowed, fruitful, variegated, and with its exemplary technology has never been able to decide how many people should be allowed to live in it.”

There you have it. I touched on this before: how could I not? There is no way of even mentioning Sirius without bringing up this our basic, our burning, problem…

The Dark Age over, we saw to it that our populations everywhere were reduced to the minimum necessary for… for what? In our enthusiasm over our new concept, our new capacities of control, we set fairly arbitrary limits to population on our fifty-three colonies. Very low numbers were permitted to be.

What happened to those teeming millions upon millions upon millions? Well, they were not exterminated. They were not ill treated. On the contrary, as I have hinted—to do more than lightly sketch these developments would come outside my scope—all kinds of special schemes and projects were set up to soften their tragic fate. They died, it is generally agreed now—now that so much time has passed and we can look at those days more calmly—of broken hearts, broken will. They died because they had no purpose, of illnesses, of epidemics that seemed to have other causes, and during mass outbreaks of madness. But they died. It took fifty thousand of our bad—our very bad—time, but at the end of it, we were left with empty planets, with everything open for us—ready for a magnificent purpose, a new plan.

But, in fact, nothing changed: we still did not know how to look at ourselves. Our technology was such that our entire Empire could be run with something like ten million people. That was what was needed. If to run our Empire was our purpose, and nothing else…

I shall not go on. Some people will say I have already said enough about this; others that, if I were to pay proper and due respect to our terrible basic dilemma, I should devote not a few paragraphs but several volumes to it.

Well, myriads of volumes and whole ages been devoted to it—when our stage was, as it were, swept empty, waiting for its appropriate dramas. What happened was that schools of philosophy sprang up everywhere, and nothing was heard but their debates, their arguments… What was our purpose? they enquired of themselves, of us, pursuing “the fundamental Sirian existential problem.”

So violent, lowering, unpleasant, became these debates that it made illegal to even mention this “existential problem”—and that epoch lasted for millennia. Of course, there were all kinds of underground movements and subversive sects devoted to “maintaining knowledge of the truth.”

Then, as these became so powerful and influential they could not be ignored, public expression of our preoccupation was made legal again. At one time several of our planets were set aside as universities and colleges, for the sole purpose of discussions of our existential problems. This is how “the Thinkers” of 23 originated.

Meanwhile, sometimes our populations grew larger and sometimes smaller, and these fluctuations did not relate to individuals needed in order to operate our technologies, but according to how tides of opinion flowed… if we wanted to, we could have crammed our planets with billions of genera, species, races—as they once had been. When we wanted, they could be left empty. We could—and did—maintain some planets, for special purposes, at high levels of population, and leave others virtually unpopulated.

While all these variations on our basic problem were attempted, our space drive had been stabilised. We had discovered that no matter how forcefully we swept out into space, gathering in suitable planets as we found them, incorporating them into our general plan, we took our problems—or rather, our problem —with us. What did we need all these new colonies for? What was their purpose? If they had special conditions of climate, then we could tell ourselves they were useful—for something or other; if they had new minerals, or large deposits of those already known to us—they were used. But suppose we went on acquiring colonies and reached the number of a hundred… a thousand… what then?

As our philosophers asked, and argued.

We, the administrators, had been watching Canopus: she was not acquiring ever more colonies. She was stabilised on what she had. She had far fewer than we… she was developing and advancing them… But that was not how we saw it then: I have to record that we despised Canopus, that great neighbour of ours, our competitor, our rival, for being satisfied with such a low level of material development and acquisition.

I now return to our preoccupation with Canopus.

At the time of the ending of our Dark Age, which was not long after the Rohandan Disaster, Canopus had as large a population as we—proportional to the fact that they had fewer planets. That was one fact: and they showed no disquiet at all about it. Yet their technology, though apparently inferior to ours, was certainly near enough to ours to pose the questions that beset us. When we raised these questions, our “existential problem,” they were simply not interested. But at the time we saw this—as usual—as an example of their deviousness. When they were asked how they adjusted their population levels, the reply always was: “according to need” or “according to necessity,” and it was a very long time—only recently—that we were able to hear “according to the Need. According to the Necessity.”

Sirius knew far less about Canopus—and this on a purely material level—than Canopus did us. I had noticed this long before: mentioning any one of our planets, Canopus always seemed informed about it: and we accordingly admired their espionage system.

We were always waiting for the time when we could catch one of their spies and say: “Look, you have broken your agreement, now we demand information in return.” But we never did catch any of their spies. For the good reason that they did not have any.

And when we asked for information, it was given, and we did not trust in it… did not believe what we were told.

Shortly after the Conference on Colony 10, the one to consider the results of the Catastrophe, I was called by my Head of Department and was asked to develop my relationship with Klorathy: our liking for each other had been noted.