Systemic Shock Read Online Free PDF Page A

Committee regulated the churches and synagogues on the mainland; and those were in major cities where Judeo-Christian worship could be watched easily. The Buddhist and Neo-Confucianist ethics of Chinese intellectuals depended strongly, as they had for centuries, on the concept of shame—to the virtual exclusion of guilt. Proper behavior in China was reinforced not by one's internal fear of wrongdoing, but by one's fear of being caught at it. The Japanese found it easy to deal with the difference; Islamic countries found it almost as easy. On the other hand, most western Russians, particularly since their post-collapse rapprochment with the west, were still molded from the cradle by basically Christian traditions of Godhead, and of guilt. In this dichotomy of basic motives, the Russian Union of Soviets was like the western world, sharing an ethic that looked inward for strength.
    In China however, the individual was not the basic societal unit, but only apiece of one. China was hoping to exploit our notions of guilt as a weakness. RUS leaders were regaining tight control over Russian media, the better to exclude such disturbing ideas as the Chinese suggestion that God had taken two tankers in punishment for Gujarat. But Americans were free to choose their messages, and some would focus on the Chinese message in all honesty. Our President knew all too well that assumed guilt might be laid at the feet of his administration in the form of blame—especially by religious fundamentalists who had heard Senator Collier speak.
    "Damn the SPC," the President muttered aloud, " and our guilt-hoarding Christians."
    "Not for attribution," said the Secretary with quick humor.
    "Just those who aren't reasonable," said the President in irritation. "You know who I mean."
    They knew, and changed the topic to guess at reprisals the RUS might select for the loss of the P. Tuzhauliye . The ambassador and the Secretary quite properly stuck to the foreign issue; the domestic issue looked even bleaker. Every media survey pointed to the growing strength of the coalitions behind Senator Yale Collier of Utah.
    It was not that the President was, as Collier hinted, godless; it was just that Collier was so spectacularly Godly. The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints had no better exemplar of Mormonism than the best-known of its Council of Apostles, the organ-voiced Yale Collier. Educated at Brigham Young University, trained as a young missionary in Belgium, seasoned in argument on the Senate floor, Collier kept his farmboy accent and exuded a sense of destined greatness. He was also one of the best verbal counter-punchers on anybody's campaign trail.
    In June the President had made a passing reference to Collier as a fundamentalist. Collier had tickled millions of holo watchers by his droll objection. He presumed, with a shake of the great head, that the President knew the term 'fundamentalist', among Mormons, meant 'polygamist'. The Senator had taken only one wife, his handsome mate Eugenia. Perhaps, Collier added waggishly, a man without children found it difficult to believe that a single union could be blessed with eleven children, but such was the case. He, Yale Collier, humbly awaited an apology.
    By this stroke, Collier implied that the President was either ignorant of religious terms or casual about the truth; and stressed his own status as a virile family man; and left room for comparison between a once-married man who had eleven kids and a twice-married man who had none. The nation's holo pundits had played the potency jokes threadbare until July.
    For example: one satirist noted that the Collier union was in better shape than the national union. The current administration was cursed with two issues, while the Colliers were blessed with eleven.
    One major political issue revolved around relations with the Russian Union of Soviets. The liberal administration favored stronger ties with the RUS, still the largest geographic entity on the