Today I led discussion on The Fate of the Forest. That was kinda good. I started off with a quote from one of my favorite fantasy author’s books. The quote has alot of issues, but I thought it was a useful counterpoint to Hardin’s view that selling off the land as private property would result in the optimal outcome.
Here’s the quote. I bolded the bits I included. I kinda wish I’d included Alice’s bit about William the Conqueror, but only so much space on the slide.
“Thargvale is Beautiful,” Exeter said. “Naturally. It’s very fertile, the climate is moderate and it’s ruled by an aristocracy.”
“What has aristocracy got to do with beauty?” Smedley asked drowsily.
Mrs. Bodgley had shepherded her guests indoors to the drawing room and settled them in chairs. A single oil lamp cast a soft light on the four faces, while two moths held races around the glass chimney. Fortunately the chairs were excessively uncomfortable, or Smedley would not have been able to stay awake at all. Alice had reluctantly consented to play, insisting she was hopelessly out of pracice. She then executed a couple of Chopin etudes from memory. Very well, too, so far as he could tell. And now they were back on Nextdoor again.
“Oh, really, Captain!” His hostess’s tone suggested that he was showing himself to be excessively ill informed. “It’s a matter of tender loving care. The only people who can look after land properly are those who plan to hand it on to their children and grandchildren. Gilbert’s father planted an avenue of oak trees knowing he would never live to see their majesty. That was fifty years ago and they need another hundred at least. Gilbert himself absolutely refused to countenance mining operations on our place in the Midlands. That sort of thing. Men who think only of their own lifetimes exploit the land. Those who think of their families nurture it. Do help yourself to another cigar if you wish,” she added, as though regretting her scolding.
Smedley thanked her and heaved himselfgout of the lumpy chair even more gratefully. He went to the humidor. No Bodgleys would admire the oak trees in their prime. The Bodgley line had died out when Timothy was murdered. There was no one left to smoke the cigars, even.
Alice’s eyes were twinkling in the lamp’s gentle glow. “You can carry it too far, of course, like anything else. William the Conqueror depopulated whole counties to make royal deer forests. People have rights, too.”
Mrs. Bodgley considered the point and seemed to decide that it was a dangerous heresy. “Not necessarily. People come and go, but land is forever.”
Exeter flickered a wink at Smedley as he returned to his chair. “Do you suppose that aristocrats’ tendencies to make war all the time is a form of population control, weeding out the peasants?”
The lady saw the hook at once and bit it off. “Probably! Lancing a few of the men would be kinder than letting women and babies starve, wouldn’t it?”
“Depends on which end of the lance you’re on, I expect. But land and war do seem to go together. The Thargian military caste is just as bad as Prussian Junkers.”
“Present Tense”, David Duncan 1996