#It's a soul deep claim with total freedom on both sides and they teach each other love and they're the same person

[warsofasoiaf]

Any chance you want to give us some analysis of the psychologist and chaplain on the Unity, Sister Miriam? Reynold did a pretty solid job making her more than some crazy protestant fundamentalist, and some of her "We Must Dissent" critiques on how technology is being applied have a tinge of your own cynicism, although filtered through the lens of an extreme evangelical.

Miriam is one controversial character. On the surface, she’s a Bible-thumping fundamentalist, her preferred government choice is even called “Fundamentalist,” her facial expression even seems to scream: “Jesus is watching you.” Yet this does the writers a deep disservice, as evidenced by the other factions, they are capable of writing fully-realized characters and philosophies.

We don’t get an actual declaration of what sect of Christianity Miriam, or even what ecumenical form Christianity took at the time the Unity took off, all we know is that apparently the United States transformed into a theocracy at some point, so it’s probably some sect of Protestantism. Truth be told, it doesn’t actually matter whether we do or not, Miriam expresses herself well enough through her own quotes. She tends to express herself primarily in two ways, fierce condemnation of reckless progress without regard to morality, and a softer, comforting tone likely given among her own flock. This is key for Miriam, she cares about her people in a way that faction heads do not. Morgan, Santiago, and Zakharov see the virtue of their progress as proof of its intrinsic morality, Yang is nihilistic, Deidre is rushing off so much with her plants and fungus that she’s losing touch with her humanity, and Lal is bureaucratic, impersonal, and more than a bit hypocritical, concerned with style over substance. Miriam wants to ensure that the spiritual wellbeing of her citizens is protected, and she truly practices what she preaches: “And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?” The fate of humanity is ever precarious and Miriam knows that people can be pushed close to the breaking point, and she is there with the balm of Gilead to get people to feel better. Her people believe in her too, they’re more than willing to support a large military before feeling discontent and fight hard to accomplish her goals. More than any other faction, Miriam expresses sympathy for the downtrodden. On the other side, she is strict and condemnatory toward others who refuse her message and her AI is fairly aggressive. In this sense she still has that sort of militant preacher vibe, but it’s to the credit of the writers that they took this archetype and fleshed it out. Like every other faction, Miriam has her strengths and her weaknesses, things she can be lauded for and criticized.

One of the big criticisms levelled at Miriam is that she is either a Luddite, a technophobe, or suspicious of science itself. She is none of these, her approach to research stems from a true sense of social conservatism. After all, she’s a psychologist and she understands the chemical states of matter, she is both clearly educated in multiple scientific disciplines and has no intrinsic distrust of science: “Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.” This quote suggests that she considers the datalinks evil in and of themselves, but other quotes give her a more complete picture. Look at this selection of quotes from her key work, “We Must Dissent,” her treatise castigating the technological development of the other factions: 

“Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these… things… these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need for us?”

“And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”

“Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.”

Miriam is clear, she wants others to think about what they’re doing. The pursuit of progress without being cognizant of the risks and costs arguably helped contribute to the catastrophe of Earth. What things have the labtechs at the University of Planet failed to take into account, what corners did Morgan cut in pursuit of the next great product, what happens to the mental state of people in Deidre’s psychic networks? She celebrates beneficial advances in technology, she even refers to the plasma accretion process creating “new miracles,” she’s afraid of it’s misuse. That’s why she doesn’t accumulate research points in the first couple years and that’s why her research is slow. Sure, there is less funding for laboratories over churches as well, but her greatest concern is to understand how these changes will effect the psychology of her people and of the society at large. The end-game techs are in no uncertain terms terrifying. Controlled singularities, self-aware colonies, molecular reassembly, all of these things improperly considered are an extinction level event on their own, but each faction continues to roll them out, eager for gain, not knowing what next they will unleash because they lack the wisdom of restraint. Her dichotomy is best summed up in two quotes: “Beware, you who seek first and final principles, for you are trampling the garden of an angry God, and He awaits you just beyond the last theorem.” This sounds like a fire-and-brimstone street preacher, but it’s the other quote that accompanies Quantum mechanics that is exceptional: “Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought.“ The proof is in the pudding there, while the former appears to be direct and so a bit of fiery language can be expected, this appears to be a reflection or philosophy. Mankind is flawed and refusal to accept it leads to catastrophe.

Protestantism doesn’t have a Pope or Patriarch and instead professes a universal priesthood, suggesting that Miriam’s administration is modeled with theological and secular components, influencing the other but not under the direction of a religious caste. A Democratic Miriam loosens the restrictions and military funding for greater promotion of the self through community and activity, while a Police State Miriam utilizes a state of emergency and herself as governmental head to act in preservation of her people and their souls. Miriam preserves fundamentalism, which likely strips funding from labs in the interests of devoting the majority of the social fabric to religious concerns and the totality of existence as universal believers, protecting them from foreign influence without becoming the paranoid police state of informants that a Bloodraven might promote.

Economically, Miriam forbids nothing. A Planned Economy probably is fashioned similar to Christian communialism through common ownership and shared industry, justified in sermons and enforced through a small army of bureaucratic clerks. A Free Market Miriam resembles the American South, with an emphasis on charitable giving and a strong sense of community. A Green Miriam acknowledges that resources are limited and so encourages thrift and voluntary deprivation for the sake of the community, using less so that others might have more as proscribed by Christian virtues.

Miriam forbids Knowledge as a value, and this makes sense given what is mentioned above, pursuit of knowledge for its own sake makes one heedless to its risks. If Miriam values power, she has probably come to accept the necessity of a holy war as the only way to save mankind from its own recklessness. Wealth Miriam likely focuses more upon the prosperity gospel, where good people gain money through goodness, build industry to employ others, and so on.

A Cybernetic Miriam probably has increasing automation to permit others freedom in their tasks and devote themselves more completely to other matters, but this doesn’t sound appealing to Miriam who fears the machine rising against the master. A Eudaimonic Miriam is almost certainly the one she would elect to pursue, finally creating the paradise on Planet and letting people live in goodness, good in word, good in thought, good in action, good in faith. Thought Control is again, a sinister one, the people finally rendered docile believers, where Shepherd Miriam finally has her flock, where sin is such an evil that it must be prevented at all costs, though if I had seen Miriam do this, the last thing I would say before I was invariably hauled off to the Punishment Sphere is: “And what of the immortal soul?”

Thanks for the question, TBH.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King