The leader of the Overlords states, “All political problems can be solved through the correct application of power […] for it’s the application of the power, not its amount, that matters.” Through the Overlords, Clarke envisions an ideal use of power to govern a stable, efficient society that provides for all of its people. Such a power is empathetic, non-invasive, and nurturing, becoming largely invisible in everyday life and maintaining order from a distance. However, an efficient government cannot also be a collaborative government with multiple perspectives and dissenting opinions, and the Overlords rule effectively as benevolent dictators. Although this benevolent dictatorship has created a utopian global society and although the individual citizens have a wide degree of autonomy, they are still not truly free, as they are unable to decide their own fates nor to find new frontiers to conquer. This paradox between an efficient, effective government and the freedom of its people creates a constant tension throughout the story, causing the reader to ponder whether such an ideal benevolent dictatorship is worth the limiting of humanity’s freedom and pioneering spirit.
The Overlords rule through their potential for power, which they almost never have to actually use. Yet however seemingly passive, this power is still antithetical to human beings’ autonomy and self-determination. Initially, humanity lives in fear of the Overlords’ assumed power and are kept in line by the unspoken threat of it. When a provincial government tries and fails to destroy an Overlord ship, for instance, they are so fearful of retribution that Karellen, the Overlord leader, decides that their own self-recrimination is a more suitable punishment than anything he could dole out. In the same vein, when South Africa neglects to award full human rights to all of its citizens, the Overlords demonstrate their power by blocking the sun’s heat for thirty minutes, which terrifies the country into quickly solving their civil rights problems.
Consequently, although the Overlords have the power to do great harm and rule with an iron fist, they never need to nor seem to want to, as they despise cruelty and suffering in all of its forms. Indeed, after the first few months, they exert very little direct control at all, becoming a governing force that is always present, though nearly invisible in day to day life. Though their example, Clarke seems to idealize a benevolent form of diplomacy, wherein a ruling power achieves their goals and maintains order with the unspoken threat of retributive action, with the hope that that action is never required.
Importantly, although the Overlords were not elected by humanity, they are a nurturing force that seemingly operates with humanity’s best interests in mind and are far more efficient than any elected government could ever be. The Overlords came uninvited, but they came to protect humanity from destroying itself. Following the Overlords’ arrival, civil rights become universal, war and poverty and animal cruelty are ended, and crime plummets. A utopian era is initiated. The Overlords are singular in their intent and uncontested, yet the fact that they rule as (benevolent) dictators enables them to achieve all of these benefits for humanity within a few years—far faster than any representative form of government could. Democracies and republics are hamstringed by dissenting voices and varied opinions, obstacles that the Overlords never face. The Overlords thus seem to represent the most efficient and effective form of governing power for the provision of mankind’s physical needs.
Yet despite the Overlords’ benevolence, humanity is not actually free. Early on, the Freedom League, led by the clergyman Alexander Wainwright, resents the rule of the Overlords. Even though members do not feel their oppression in day to day life, they are existentially threatened by the Overlords’ presence (as well as their substantiated fear that the Overlords will eventually make their religions obsolete), feeling that they are no longer free to chart their own course. Their ultimate autonomy has been stripped.
The construction of the island colony of New Athens is born out of the same fundamental desire for self-governance and control over one’s own future as the Freedom League. However, rather than petitioning for the Overlords to leave, the residents of New Athens reestablish democracy and ensure that the colony’s population remains low enough that every person’s vote and action truly matters, and that everyone can be a “citizen in the truest sense of the word.” Although this is not a permanent solution, it does serve to restore some sense of autonomy and spirit of self-determination to its participants, which they lacked under the governance of the Overlords.
As such, the novel suggests that benevolent dictators are still dictators. Although this model of government is presented as the most efficient for providing for humanity’s physical needs and safety, humanity’s potential for growth and progress are effectively crippled, causing one character to question whether the Overlords are misguided: “Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized they were destroying the soul of man?”
The Overlords are easily the most effective government in earth’s history: every citizen is well-fed, well-cared for, and safe. This is something that has never before been achieved, and so complicates the question of whether the Overlords’ benevolent dictatorship is the ideal form of government. Most of humanity seems fine with the Overlords’ position of authority, and yet Clarke suggests that perhaps, due to the loss of freedom and the growth that that freedom fosters, such benevolence is not worth it in the end. Perhaps freedom, and the struggle and suffering inherent to liberty, is an invaluable asset in humanity’s growth and progress.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Benevolent Dictatorship and Freedom ThemeTracker
Benevolent Dictatorship and Freedom Quotes in Childhood’s End
He felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and now the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him.
“Can you deny that the Overlords have brought security, peace, and prosperity to the world?”
“That is true, but they have taken our liberty. Man does not live—”
“—by bread alone. Yes, I know—but this is the first age in which every man was sure of getting even that.”
With the arrival of the Overlords, nations knew that they need no longer fear each other, and they guessed—even before the experiment was made—that their existing weapons were certainly impotent against a civilization that could bridge the stars. So at once the greatest single obstacle to the happiness of mankind had been removed.
“I can understand your fear that the traditions and cultures of little countries will be overwhelmed when the world state arrives. But you are wrong: it is useless to cling to the past. Even before the Overlords came to Earth, the sovereign state was dying. They have merely hastened its end.”
Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal—and power.
Man was, therefore, still a prisoner on his own planet. It was a much fairer, but a much smaller, planet than it had been a century before. When the Overlords had abolished war and hunger and disease, they had also abolished adventure.
The human race continued to bask in the long, cloudless summer afternoon of peace and prosperity. Would there ever be a winter again? It was unthinkable. The age of reason, prematurely welcomed by the leaders of the French Revolution two and a half centuries before, had now really arrived. This time, there was no mistake.
“It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.”
The universe was vast, but that fact terrified him less than its mystery. George was not a person who thought deeply on such matters, yet it sometimes seemed to him that men were like children amusing themselves in some secluded playground, protected from the fierce realities of the outer world.
Twenty years ago, the Overlords had announced that they had discontinued all use of their surveillance devices, so that humanity no longer need consider itself spied upon. However, the fact that such devices still existed meant that nothing could be hidden form the Overlords if they really wanted to see it.
Nothing in [New] Athens was done without a committee, that ultimate hallmark of the democratic method […] Because the community was not too large, everyone in it could take some part in its running and could be a citizen in the truest sense of the word.
“Everybody on the island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world, the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”
This was a thought that had never occurred to [George]. He had subconsciously assumed that the Overlords possessed all knowledge and all power—that they understood, and were probably responsible for, the things that had been happening to Jeff.
In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.
“All of our sojourn here has been based on a vast deception, a concealment of truths which you were not ready to face.”
For all their achievements, thought Karellen, for all their mastery of the physical universe, his people were no better than a tribe that has passed its whole existence upon some flat and dusty plain. Far off were the mountains, where power and beauty dwelt […] And they could only watch and wonder; they could never scale those heights.
