Now that I’ve finished reading it, I only regret not having read it earlier. It’s an amazing book, and telling in many ways. Not only is the spectre of humanity’s own inherent drive toward self-destruction examined in Walter Miller’s fantastic black comedy, so are questions of knowledge, wisdom and power.
I don’t want to do another review when there are quite a number of them already available. For a detailed account of the stories within the book, you can check out the wikipedia entry over here (not spoiler free!) Apart from questions about the wisdom of the quest for knowledge, this quote seems to sum up a large portion of the book:
“The government knows. The government must know. Several of them know. And yet we hear nothing. We are being protected from hysteria. Isn’t that what they call it? Maniacs! The word’s been in a habitual state of crisis for fifty years. Fifty? What am I saying? It’s been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning - but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And why, for the love of God? What is the funamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen experts, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother? If we’re born mad, where’s the hope of Heaven? Through Faith alone? Or isn’t there any?”
– Dom Zerchi to Brother Joshua, pg. 261, Fiat Voluntas Tua: Chapter 24
There are so many such insightful quotes. My favourite is the arguments between Dom Paulo, the abbot of the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz located somewhere in latter-day Utah and Thon Taddeo, a scholar whose half-brother is a power-hungry, cunning but illiterate ‘Mayor’ (actually, King) of a nearby state. Thon Taddeo is a composite of so many characters, from Galileo to Descartes to Francis Bacon - all educated and taught within the tradition of the present day Church, but characteristic of a proto-enlightenment resistance against Church dogmatism. One of my favourite exchanges is as follows:
“But you [Thon Taddeo] promise to begin restoring Man’s control over natural forces? Who will use it? To what end? How will you hold him in check? Such decisions can still be made. But if you and your group don’t make them now, others will make them for you. Mankind will profit, you say. By whose sufferance? The sufferance of a prince who signs his letters X?”
and,
“[...] Shall I name all the battles we have fought to keep these records intact? All the monks blinded in the copyroom? for your sake? Yet you say we did nothing with it, withheld it by silence.”
“Not intentionally,” the [Thon Taddeo] said, “but in effect ou did - and for the very motives you imply should be mine. If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.”
– Dom Paulo to Thon Taddeo, pg. 224-225, Fiat Lux: Chapter 21
It reminds me of old and recent arguments about remedies and poisons in relation to knowledge, if not wisdom. It’s a problem we’ve not solved, which makes the Genesis story of Man’s temptation by the fruit of the tree of knowledge so evocative. Eat the fruit and become as Gods. Be like unto the Creator and absolve yourselves of your responsibilities. Is the book on a moral high horse?
I think it is, but it’s not in a manner that is condescending, and neither does it brow-beat the reader. The book presents an interpretation of the inevitability of human fallibility and wisdom, it’s true, but in subtle ways, it pokes gentle fun at both sides of the ‘argument’, showing how even the desire to hoard wisdom from the eyes of the world is in itself a futile attempt at exercising a very human wisdom.
The question at the end of the book, one that I think will occur to anyone, would be if our own self-destruction is inevitable, somehow hardwired into our selves as human beings. That’s a scary question, and an important one in this day and age, I think.