On a somewhat
lighter note, I was reading a criminal novel this past weekend that was based
on someone searching for eternal life – not something I am expecting or would
necessarily look forward to. One
of the novel’s characters (‘Character #1) at one point asked “How many of you
have heard or read the old French Curse: May your fondest wish (eternal life)
come true. If this (eternal life)
treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth with
overpopulation. If it is dear and
available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the
social contract. Either way, it
will lead directly to human misery.
What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and
unhappiness?”
Character #1 responded:
“What about the immeasurable increase in wisdom that this discovery will bring,
when you consider the one, maybe two hundred years, of additional learning and
study it will afford the brilliant mind?”
Whereupon Character #1
said: “The wise and good are
outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid. When you give an Einstein two centuries
to perfect his science, you give a thousand others two centuries to perfect
their brutality.”
In the context of this exchange between characters in a novel, you might
want to consider where we are in 2011 (1) 7 billion world population and
growing, and (2) increasingly disparate differences in developed countries
(read in particular the U.S.) between the wealthy, and those who live on Main
Street or worse. The interactions
between the two Characters strike me as being entirely consistent with much of
what I say in these e-mails, although I don’t happen to think the difference
between the ‘wise and the good’ and ‘the brutal and stupid’ is as clearly
defined as the novelist would have one believe.