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“You believe that human beings are good animals, who will eventually solve all their problems and make earth into a Garden of Eden again.”
That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical
aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, “Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It’s just fun to think about.”
And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it—have slaves fight each other to the death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill peop...
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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862) And why was quiet desperation such a widespread malady back then, and especially among men? Yet again I trot onstage the only real villain in my story: the oversize human brain.
She had Mandarax there in bed with her. She and the furry Akiko, who was then only ten years old, were the only colonists who still found the instrument at all amusing. If it weren’t for them, the Captain or Selena or Hisako, feeling mocked by its useless advice or inane wisdom or ponderous efforts to be humorous, would have pitched it into the ocean long ago.
Do people still know that they are going to die sooner or later? No. Fortunately, in my humble opinion, they have forgotten that.
