Ro'Mallinson: you're right that the evidence of Riven and 37 is more immediately telling than my gut feeling about creativity. Like most people, I think, I select my beliefs, where certainty is not possible, based on a personal and often emotionally grounded preference, and in this way I choose to believe that while a very large number of universes are possible, only some are real, and that those real universes are unique in their reality. Thus there is one Myst, one Riven, one Atrus, one Gehn, one Catherine, one me, and so on. I find the alternative unbelievably messy and pointless.
But back to the points. I see what you're saying about power, and the argument is a lot clearer. However, once again the example of a stupid plot device such as the Magic Tablet of Fizzlypop (I'm sorry, I really hate that thing) doesn't really help us discuss the reality. Let's consider President Obama (I don't know what your politics are, so forgive me if he isn't your cup of tea). If there is anyone in the world who's just been handed a magic tablet of vast power, he's it: but how much power has he actually got? He's the head of the executive branch of a tripartite government, hedged about with checks and balances, limited by precedent and custom and very much aware of the possible consequences of his actions. So yes, you're right, it's going to be hard for him to know what the right thing is to do, and whatever he does will be seen by some as the wrong thing, including doing nothing at all.
So what should he do? According to Yeesha's absolutist views on power, he should step down, refuse the presidency, do nothing with it. Maybe, like the D'ni telling themselves that they were not really creating Ages, he should pretend that he isn't really the president at all, just someone who plays him on TV. I don't see either of those as valid alternatives. Power does not go away. It can't be ruled out of existence. Not using it does not relieve you of responsibility for it, especially if someone else gets hold of it and abuses it. There is no easy answer to the problem of power.
The key to the D'ni's treatment of their Ages lies in their assumption of their own moral superiority. A case could be made (and I'm surprised it isn't more often) that institutionalised religion is the cause of this, by establishing the model of a hierarchical universe in which every creature has its rank (and those who worship the god in question are, of course, directly underneath him and over everyone else). My lot travelled all over the world and made themselves obnoxious on the same basis; we were Top Nation and C. of E. and therefore a Good Thing. Undoubtedly our actions caused a great deal of suffering.
The question that remains, though, is: would fewer people have suffered, would they have suffered less, if we had not done what we did? Is it arguable that what we did was not so much to increase the net level of human suffering as to centralise the responsibility for what suffering there was, squarely upon our own heads?
We'll never know what would have happened if. For better or for worse, we had the power. Some of us used it for purely selfish motives (dealers in slaves and such), and the suffering they caused was avoidable and should have been avoided. Some of us used it for good, and the suffering they caused may have been offset by suffering alleviated elsewhere. The suffering caused by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima may have prevented other suffering that would have been caused by the continuation of the war.
This is an eye-wateringly long-distance view of things, of course, and on the individual level it's not easy to see one's own suffering as a good thing. The fact that someone else has a job, and therefore a regular income, is scant consolation to me who have none.
I'm starting to lose my thread. What I am saying is that yes, wielding power is difficult, and whatever evil may result is the responsibility of the wielder, but I do not believe that that is a sufficient reason not to strive to do the best one can with the power one has. After all, when Watson (or whoever) handed the Magic Tablet to the bahro, he was in fact wielding that power (in the sense of deciding what to do with it) and even though great evil resulted (in the form of the war), it was the "right" decision. If he had held on to it, other evil might have resulted, but that evil would not. And whatever evil did result, it would have been clear whose responsibility it was.
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