Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"

galt_57 at hotmail.com · 02 Jan 2006, 18:38 · from rec.arts.sf.written.2006.mbox

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From: "galt_57 at hotmail.com" <galt_57 at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Blish's "Conscience" vs. Wolfe's "Fifth Head"
Date: 2 Jan 2006 10:38:24 -0800
Message-ID: <1136227104.069393.207880 at z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
References: <1135781723.546189.19520 at g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1136128612.366330.128000 at f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <Xns973F5BACDAC2Bidtoken at 204.153.244.170>

Omixochitl wrote:
>
> > Also when you consider the likely (or at least predictable) decline of
> > Western civilization simply due to the differential birth rates, the
> > hidden religious morality in this story further annoys me. Considering
> > that the least educated (and perhaps least intelligent) of the worlds
> > population are vastly out-reproducing those who probably are more
> > intellectually capable. How many children did Einstein have? Two? How
> > many children per typical welfare mom? What does this lead to by
>
> From what I've heard, the typical welfare mom actually has about as many
> kids as the typical middle-class educated couple has (in both cases, the
> ones who have 7 or 8 instead of 1 or 2 are atypical).  Perhaps you're
> confusing the typical welfare mom with the typical housewife of a
> subsistence farmer?

Perhaps the statistics don't actually support the concern I voiced
above -- I don't know. Urban legend would suggest that NBA stars tend
to father far more children than any intellectual, but this again could
be bogus. My central claim however is that humankind is not getting any
more intelligent, may be getting less intelligent, and really isn't
very intelligent. I just don't believe we are going anywhere. SF tends
to posit a grand future, or at least an interesting one, but humankind
seems to me to be too stupid to make anything happen. Heck, half the US
population thinks that Noah's Ark really happened and that we need to
wait patiently for the return of Jesus. I don't believe that this is an
encouraging sign. Going forward I question whether we will have the
"grey matter" to make the grand technological breakthroughs that would
be necessary. In fact we have found that physics has become
incomprehensible. We aren't smart enough to grasp it. As a result the
general population has become increasingly Luddite. What good is
rational thinking if it only leads to incomprehensible topics such as
String Theory? Might as well believe in New Age pseudo-science or
mystical junk such as holistic healing or Feng Shui. The only hope
might be to utilize genetic engineering advancements to improve our
mental capabilities before humankind self-destructs over some idiocy,
but any move in the direction of genetic engineering is very much
opposed by fundamentalist religion. Eugenics is a very ugly word
because it was applied in some very ignorant and evil ways. Still that
doesn't change the fact that we are here and that we got here through a
very slow process.

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