Comparing Sealand and Waknuk in "The Chrysalids"by John Wyndham
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samwang255gmailcom (student)
Sealand is what humanity can achieve
Sealand
"But who are you? What is this Sealand?' ' We are the New People — your kind of people. The people who can think-together. We're the people who are going to build a new kind of world — different from the Old People's world, and from the savages'.' 'The kind of people that God intended, perhaps?' I inquired, with a feeling of being on familiar ground again. 'I don't know about that. Who does? But we do know that we can make a better world than the Old People did. They were only ingenious half-humans, little better than savages; all living shut off from one another, with only clumsy words to link them. Often they were shut off still more by different languages, and different beliefs. Some of them could think individually, but they had to remain individuals. Emotions they could sometimes share, but they could not think collectively. When their conditions were primitive they could get along all right, as the animals can; but the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith. There was, you see, no real communication, no understanding between them. They could, at their best, be near-sublime animals, but not more" (166)
