Free Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson Page A

culture worship their king and their father
god, and so on. Or the ego ideal might shift again, to abstract ideas, or to
the brotherhood of men. There are names and full descriptions for all these
complexes—the Dionysian, the Persean, the Apollonian, the Heraclean. They all
exist, and they are all neurotic, in that they all lead to misogyny, except for
the Dionysian complex.”
    “This is one of your semantic rectangles?” Sax asked
apprehensively.
    “Yes. The Apollonian and the Heraclean complexes might describe
Terran industrial societies. The Persean its earlier cultures, with strong
remnants of course right up to this day. And they are all three patriarchal.
They all denied the maternal, which was connected in patriarchy with the body
and with nature. The feminine was instinct, the body, and nature; while the
masculine was reason, mind, and law. And the law ruled.”
    Sax, fascinated by so much throwing together, said only, “And on
Mars?”
    “Well, on Mars it may be that the ego ideal is shifting back to
the maternal. To the Dionysian again, or to some kind of postoedipal
reintegration with nature, which we are still in the process of inventing. Some
new complex that would not be so subject to neurotic overinvestment.”
    Sax shook his head. It was amazing how floridly elaborated a
pseudoscience could get. A compensation technique, perhaps; a desperate attempt
to be more like physics. But what they did not understand was that physics,
while admittedly complicated, was always trying very hard to become simpler.
    Michel, however, was continuing to elaborate. Correlated to
patriarchy was capitalism, he was saying, a hierarchical system in which most
men had been exploited economically, also treated like animals, poisoned,
betrayed, shoved around, shot. And even in the best of circumstances under
constant threat of being tossed aside, out of a job, poor, unable to provide
for loved dependents, hungry, humiliated. Some trapped in this unfortunate
system took out their rage at their plight on whomever they could, even if that
turned out to be their loved ones, the people most likely to give them comfort.
It was illogical, and even stupid. Brutal and stupid. Yes. Michel shrugged; he
didn’t like where this train of reasoning had led him. It sounded to Sax like
the implication was that many men’s actions indicated that they were, alas,
fairly stupid. And the limbic array got all twisted in some minds, Michel was
going on, trying to veer away from that, to make a decent explanation.
Adrenaline and testosterone were always pushing for a fight-or-flight response,
and in some dismal situations a satisfaction circuit got established in the get
hurt/hurt back axis, and then the men involved were lost, not only to fellow
feeling but to rational self-interest. Sick, in fact.
    Sax felt a litle sick himself. Michel had explained away male evil
in several different ways in no more than a quarter of an hour, and still the
men of Earth had a lot to answer for. Marsmen were different. Although there
had been torturers in Kasei Vallis, as he well knew. But they had been settlers
from Earth. Sick. Yes, he felt sick. The young natives were not like that, were
they? A Marsman who hit a woman or molested a child would be ostracized,
excoriated, perhaps beaten up, he would lose his home, he would be exiled to
the asteroids and never allowed back. Wouldn’t he?
    Something to look into.
    Now he thought again of Ann. Of how she was: her manner, so
obdurate; her focus on science, on rock. A kind of Apollonian response,
perhaps. Concentration on the abstract, denial of the body and therefore of all
its pain. Perhaps.
    “What would help Ann now, do you think?” Sax said.
    Michel shrugged again. “I have wondered that for years. I think
Mars has helped her. I think Simon helped her, and Peter. But they have all
been at some kind of distance. They don’t change that fundamental no in her.”
    “But she—she loves all this,” Sax said,