I very much enjoyed this story and only in part because I agree with its sentiments about the abrogation of responsibility in voting. Becoming involved is crucial; to walk away from that is to walk away -in my opinion- from the foundation of "culture".
In listening to "Resistance" I found myself wondering if a premise of the story -that creating a machine to estimate and take responsibility for your vote- was fundamentally flawed. The biggest problem with most tyrants is that they impose their will on their people while failing to reflect wants and needs. This is the model of the "bananna republic dictator". However, by making an artificial sapience out of the people's amalgamated beliefs, wouldn't this -by definition- be the closest you could come to an actual quorum ... the truest reflection of Democracy?
Also, in the end, isn't the action of Stanuel a form of coup? I mean, we know that it is from the opening sentences of the story, but how is his action (in EMP'ing the station) any different from what PAN was doing? Certainly, more people would be hurt and put in danger by Stanuel's deeds than would have happened under PAN's regime. Mind you, PAN created the resistance, so perhaps it's all right ... its just a reflection of the needs of the people. That aside, is Stanuel's executive decision any better because it acts on principle than the aggregate principles of those who made up PAN? In essence, isn't he acting on his own ideology over the the combined ideology of the society he claims to love?
In short, I believe that he is violating the very principles that the residents of the station were hoping to maintain.
Perhaps the real critique this story brings up is that being an ideologue -setting up your ivory towers in hopes of creating cohesion- is the biggest danger to civilization.
When 600south said
"98% of times, Stanuel would not have pressed the button."
I have to disagree. The monkey brains we all have inside our skulls tend to idolize heroes like this: people who will operate on principle and do "the right thing" when everyone else has been "led astray." As the story says, our minds look to leadership on a fundamental, primate level.
Look at how many people idolize Mal in "Firefly". Sure, it's easy to stare wistfully at the "living free" sentiment of his viewpoint and -yeah- we're given his positive point-of-view on the war of the Browncoats, but it's a "the strong survive" philosophy that eschews governance by the many; to do the most good for the most people.
I'm not saying that this belief is wrong, only that it's reflective of many heroes ("super" and otherwise) people create in their fiction. In that way, this story reflects the desire for an absolute right way of thinking -the "life in a gilded cage is still a prison", Captain Kirk attitude- that many of us idolize without really thinking about the ramifications of living with such a belief, applied on a universal, unyielding level.
I think that coyote247 said it best with
"When people give up their power they have the right to recall it without having to restart from scratch. Democracy is about tweaking the system, not about knocking it over in a cycle of dictator then revolution then dictator then revolution."
In essence, PAN is a "tyranny of the majority" forged in a selective, isolated community in which everyone founding it believed that they all thought alike sufficiently to believe that this would not be a problem. The station is the ultimate gated community. Perhaps this is my only problem with the tale: we never got to see any negativity coming from PAN. Stanuel never voiced any specific reason for his dislike of the system other than the ideological. There were no bad decisions coming out of PAN that we ever got a chance to witness. In the end Stanuel is a despot, a bananna republic dictator, acting to support his ideology while resenting the actions of an "enlightened" dictator who cannot -by definition- act against the will of the people.
It's an interesting dichotomy.
For myself, I know that I would have pushed the button; I just don't know if that would have been the
right thing to do.
Oh, as an unrelated note, I'm sorry I've not been participating on the forums as much as I used to. I'm finding it hard to be a part of any online community of late as I'm attempting to balance my physical world life with that of the digital. I'll really try to keep more in touch!
Yours,
Sylvan (Dave)