"Reverence For Life"
Ruling through "toolmen" - human collaborators who are either computer controlled or who have been raised to accept the Shing as benign human lords, the only truth that the Shing seem to accept is the law of preservation of life. They appear as pathological liars, though Falk, the Alterran leading character of City of Illusions, comes to conclude that "the essence of their lying was a profound, irredemiable lack of understanding" of the peoples that they have conquered. Shing character, culture, architecture and even clothing is ambiguous and illusory.
Read more about this topic: Shing
Famous quotes containing the words reverence for, reverence and/or life:
“Our press is certainly bankrupt in the “thrill of awe”Motherwise reverence: reverence for nickel plate and brummagem. Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever; for to my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“But though Heaven made him poor, with reverence speaking,
He never was a poet of God’s making;
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing—Be thou dull;”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)