Politics
Parry envisions the Atlanteans as reverting to the habit of some of the early democracies of ancient Greece, in which some public offices were assigned to citizens by lot. (In Atlantis, in fact, all occupations are assigned by lot; one becomes a farmer, or an Inspector, or fills any other job or profession, purely by chance.)
Parry's American protagonist is astounded to find himself assigned to the Atlantean legislature, the Vorunk, apparently by this method of chance. It is a dreary job that nobody wants, and he amuses himself there by creating even more absurd laws. (He gets snoring declared a crime, punishable by death.) He quickly learns that the people who run Atlantis are corrupt and self-interested, and violate the basic tenets of Atlantean equality to feed their own hunger for power.
Read more about this topic: The Scarlet Empire
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“... privacy is ... connected to a politics of domination.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self- Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)