ADAHGA 22 - AD / Transcript Of A Commissioning Address [...]

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Cord Hurn
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ADAHGA 22 - AD / Transcript Of A Commissioning Address [...]

Post by Cord Hurn »

A Dark And Hungry God Arises 22
Ancillary Documentation
Transcript Of A Commissioning Address Delivered By Warden Dios To Cadets Of The United Mining Companies Police Academy On The Occasion Of Their First Assignment


The chapter title is quite a mouthful to say aloud, certainly the longest chapter title of Stephen Donaldson's published career. The chapter itself comes at a critical time in the story, serving to bolster our faith in the integrity of Warden Dios after his confession of bargaining away Morn in the GCES conference chapter--and after the last chapter, where he tried to deflect Min Donner into thinking a group like the natives Earthers bypassed GCES Security to send a kaze to Sixten (when that group lacked the resources to do so), and after Warden admitted to Min he lied about ending the research into mutagen immunity drugs.

This chapter makes it clear to the reader that Warden Dios does indeed have integrity, is indeed one of the "good guys".
Men and women, cadets, we are responsible for all of human space.

That makes us unique in history. It makes us unique in our own time. In every other way, we're just cops. Like every other cop before us who ever put his heart into his job or her life on the line, we're here to serve and protect the people who gave us birth, the people who nurtured and educated us, the people who taught us inspiration and imagination, the people who invented our technologies and our arts, the people who made us who we are. In that way, we're no different than our predecessors. We're simply another link in the long chain of men and women who swore to defend what they called civilization against whatever they understood as external and internal threats.

But in this way, in the matter of "turf", we are without precedent, in our time or any other. Never before have the police been responsible for the continued existence of their entire species in the whole created universe.
While it's possible that Warden Dios is just a flowery, gifted speechmaker (or has a skilled speechwriter), I get the feeling that his concerns about efficiently serving humankind and about avoiding power for its own sake are sincere concerns of his. He emphasizes how important it is to protect "the care of what makes us human beings" from Amnion imperialism.
For that reason--and no other--we are utterly and essentially unique.

And because we are unique, we have--we must have--a unique relationship with the people we serve and protect. Precisely because we are uniquely responsible for the future existence of our kind, we must also be uniquely responsible to our kind. The sheer scale of the challenge we've undertaken requires of us a special integrity, a commensurate valor, a whole new kind of dedication. You know that. But it requires something more as well. It requires a special responsiveness to the will and spirit of humankind. In the purest terms, we must act for the people we serve. If we do not--if the barrier we erect between humanity and extinction in any way violates the trust or desire or the freedom of the people we serve--then we falsify ourselves as cops. We make ourselves, not the defenders of the future, but its arbiters. Rather than simply and cleanly enabling the future, we choose it for men, women, and children who didn't ask us to do that job.

Cadets of the United Mining Companies Police Academy, it is the nature of power to resist restrictions, to seek an unfettered expansion and expression of itself. And it is the function of ethics to impose restrictions on power, to weld and wield the potentialities of power so that they serve but do not control the people in whose name they exist. And we have power, never doubt it. That may seem slightly implausible to men and women who've suffered for years through what we blandly call "training," but of course I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about us. we, the cops, hold the future of humankind in our care. We must not misuse it. We must be as vigilant in how we exercise our power as we are diligent when we use it.
I think this speech demonstrates Warden's sincerity in not wanting the police to concentrate power for its own sake, because he compares such consolidation of power to a cancer that requires violent means for its eradication once it has taken root within the police organization.
If we are not antibodies, an expression of the humanity of the organism to which we belong, then we are cancer and humankind would be better off without us.
It would be an especially shocking thing for Warden Dios to say this to his cadets in light of his collusion with immunity drug knowledge suppression and in light of his selling off Morn to Nick, unless he felt that there was good reason for saying it, for warning them against the police accumulating power for its own sake. This makes me believe that Warden truly feels the police are "measured by the quality or our service," and Dios doesn't want his people to lose sight of that.
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Cord Hurn
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Post by Cord Hurn »

So, then, why is Warden risking being a cancer to humanity by suppressing knowledge of the immunity drug, and by acting like he doesn't care what happens to Morn?

Once explanation may be that he's playing a game to deceive the Amnion.

And another explanation may be found in Norna's blunt statement to her son Holt in this book's first chapter, "I think he's trying to get you in trouble."
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Post by Savor Dam »

Whatever game Warden is playing, it is indeed a deep game.

|W
Love prevails.
~ Tracie Mckinney-Hammon

Change is not a process for the impatient.
~ Barbara Reinhold

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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