Doris Lessing - The Sirian Experiments

My recall to Sirius was by the Four, who wanted to know “what Canopus thought it was doing”—allowing such carnage on Rohanda. They believed I had been meeting Klorathy and that for some reason connected with my inclination towards Canopus, was not telling them so. I could only repeat that I had not met Klorathy, nor had “instructions” from him; but that for my part I was disposed to trust in the long-term purposes of Canopus. This was not a happy meeting; and I was relieved to get an urgent message from Rohanda. The Shammat war on the planet’s planet was at an end; the faction that had won on Shammat imposed itself there, too: it was a matter of indifference to us—for nastiness and baseness there was nothing to choose between the factions. Tafta, the Shammat representative on Rohanda, had been compromised by the civil war in such a way that his personal position on Rohanda was weakened. It was known to us that on his return home he might face arrest or assassination. This was possibly not known to him.

The destructive processes on Rohanda were hastening to a conclusion. The second global war was in progress. Again, this had originated in the Northwest fringes, as an expression of national rivalries, but had spread everywhere, affected every of the planet. It this war that weakened, finally, the position of the white races; they had dominated the planet from end to end, destroying every local variation of culture and civilisation as their technological needs dictated.

The changes in the balances of power made by the second war are fully documented; but the details of these local struggles—which after all was all they were, looked at from any reasonable perspective—did not concern me nearly so much as the lessons that could be drawn from them and that could be applied to our own problems.

I was watching the changes in mindsets throughout our own Empire, on our Mother Planet and on the Colonised Planets. Every planet had different attitudes and ideas, which were stubbornly defended, always passionately, often violently. And each took in new facts and ideas at a different rate. I did not at first understand that this was my prime preoccupation: it was one thing to have seen that to cause changes in the Sirian Empire was a long-term aim of Canopus, and that I was their instrument—I have done my best to chronicle the slow, difficult growth of my understanding—but to comprehend a process fully, it is often essential to see the results of it. And this is true even for skilled administrators like the Five.

What I was doing during this period, which turned out to be a short one, was to stay quietly in my quarters thinking. It occurred to me that it was very long time since I had done anything of the kind. I have been almost permanently on the move, or stationed on another planet. But it was not only my remaining at home that was unusual: I understood that the state of my mind was one I did not remember.

It was when the other members of the Five had been to see me, and almost furtively, and with that apologetic air caused by not understanding fully why one is doing something, that I began to comprehend. For one thing, I have only too often observed that this type of apology easily becomes irritation and then, very quickly, worse…

We had seldom visited each other in this way. Our formal meetings were necessary for the records, and so that citizens’ groups could have reassurance for their anxieties by actually watching us at work in the council chambers. We had known what we were all thinking, were likely to think, had formed something like a collective mind… The uneasiness of my visitors was partly because they did not like the necessity they found themselves in, to come to my quarters so as to find out—but to find out what? They did not know!

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.”