Shikasta

He said, too, that this was not an old cat, but a young one, who was a stray, had fended for himself, and become rheumatic from sleeping out in the cold and the wet.

 JOHOR:

ADDITIONAL EXPLANATORY

INFORMATION. II.

[This is to be regarded as, in a sense, a continuation of Additional Explanatory Information. I. Archivists.]

It is a long time since Shikastans were able to bear their lives without drugs of some kind. I look back, back, and see that almost from when the flow of SOWF was cut down, they had to dull the pain of their condition. Of course there have always been individuals, a few, for whom this was not true.

Alcohol and the hallucinogens, the derivatives of opium, cocoa and tobacco, chemicals, caffeine - when have they not been used? By whom? I begin with the crude ones, the obvious comforters, and softeners of reality: but there is no need to infringe on areas of work done by colleagues and about which information is plentifully available in our archives.

Of the emotional props there have been no end...

But now, in this time, few retain their substance, their solidity. I can define what I mean exactly by saying that on this visit of mine now to Shikasta, I could use exactly the same words to describe - let us say - a religion, as I did: but that a major fact would be left out: this is a feeling, or atmosphere.

The religions of Shikasta are no less, even though they have lost their power to tyra

The nationalisms of Shikasta, that pernicious new creed which uses much of the energies that once fed religions, are strong, and new nations are born every day. And with each, a generation of its young men and women steps forward ready to die for the chimera. And, whereas so recently, not more than a generation, or two generations, it was possible for a Shikastan to spend a life thinking not much further than a village, or a town, only just able to grasp the concept of "nation" - now, while "nation" is strong, devouring, so is the idea of the whole world, as an interacting whole. To die for a country ca

Politics, political parties, which attract exactly the same emotions as religions did and do, as nations did and do, spawn new creeds every day. Not long ago it was possible for members of a political sect to believe that it was pristine and noble and best - but there have been so many betrayals and disappointments, lies, turnings-about, so much murdering and torturing and insanity, that even the most fanatic supporters know times of disbelief.

Science, the most recent of the religions, as bigoted and as inflexible as any, has created a way of life, a technology, attitudes of mind, increasingly loathed and distrusted. Not long ago, a "scientist" knew he was the great culminator and crown of all human thinking, knowledge, progress - and behaved with according arrogance. But now they begin to know their own smallness, and the fouled and spoiled earth itself rises up against them in witness.

Everywhere ideas, sets of mind, beliefs that have supported people for centuries are fraying away, dissolving, going.

What is there left?

It is true that the capacity of Shikastans to restore the breaches in the walls of their certainties is immense. The exposed and painful nature of their existence, subject to myriad chances beyond their control or influence, their helplessness as they toss in the cosmic storms, the violences and discordances of their damaged minds - all this being intolerable, they still hide their eyes and pray, or add to the formulas in their laboratories.

Each one of these alliances of an individual with some greater whole, the identification of an individual with a mental structure larger than himself, was a drug, a prop, a pacifier for children. These were greater even than alcohol and opium and the rest, but they are going, thi

What other ways have Shikastans used to ward off from themselves the knowledge about their situation which is always, always threatening to well up from their depths and overwhelm? What else can they clutch to them, like a blanket on a cold night?

There are the varieties of pleasure, implanted in them for the sake of their survival, the needs for food and sex which, as the whole species is threatened, rage in an instinctive effort to save and preserve.

There is something else, and stronger than anything: the well-being, the always renewing, regenerative, healing force of nature; feeling one with the other creatures of Shikasta and its soil, and its plants.

The lowest, the most downtrodden, the most miserable of Shikastans, will watch the wind moving a plant, and smile; will plant a seed and watch it grow; will stand to watch the life of the clouds. Or lie pleasurably awake in the dark, hearing wind howl that ca

Forced back and back upon herself, himself, bereft of comfort, security, knowing perhaps only hunger and cold; denuded of belief in "country," "religion," "progress" - stripped of certainties, there is no Shikastan who will not let his eyes rest on a patch of earth, perhaps no more than a patch of littered and soured soil between buildings in a slum, and think: Yes, but that will come to life, there is enough power there to tear down this dreadfulness and heal all our ugliness - a couple of seasons, and it would all be alive again... and in war, a soldier watching a tank rear up over a ridge to bear down on him, will see as he dies grass, tree, a bird swerving past, and know immortality.

It is here, precisely here, that I place my emphasis.

Now it is only for a few of the creatures of Shikasta, those with steadier sight, or nerves, but every day there are more - soon there will be multitudes... once where the deepest, most constant, steadiest support was, there is nothing: it is the nursery of life itself that is poisoned, the seeds of life, the springs that feed the well.

All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.