I don’t know if it’s in recent editions, but the 1970-something edition I had tried to make the case that we evolved brains because without them animals were too stupid not to run into things.
Basically it went something like this:
Pain causes charge. Nerve cells like charge, and clump together. When we didn’t have brains, we ran our heads into stuff a lot, so caused a lot of pain. So we eventually got a lot of nerve cells clumped up there. Voila, a brain!
I suppose that explains why people smack their forheads with their palm when they do something stupid. It’s an instinctual reaction to make you smarter
I’ll have a stab (metaphorically), though I’m not a scientologist.
Happiness can be reached through self-denial.
Giving up smoking, not eating that last chocolate biscuit, not watching East Enders, that sort of thing.
Murdering your family cannot generate this form of virtuous aura of smugness, because it isn’t habit forming, and so you can’t feel good about breaking the habit.
Therefore murdering your family does not lead to long-term happiness. QED
I must admit that I enjoyed The Worlds of Null A and the rest when I was in high school. I was very disappointed with the quality of writing when I tried to re-read it a few years back. Actually, though, that’s happened with several sci-fi books. One problem is that I now have some vague understanding of science.
It also made him a paranoid who put himself in self-imposed exile from most of the rest of humanity, because he felt the government was out to get him…first out to sea, and then later hiding in a ranch unknown to most everyone. Not the way I’d like to spend my last years, rich or not.
Hard to be sure. His science fiction already had a bit of a paranoid quality to it. He might have already been well on his way. Maybe being paranoid contributed to his “religious” ideas?
Yeah…even explains our prefrontal cortex. After we got little brains, we were smart enough to get on 2 feet, but still kept banging our foreheads into low-lying branches or somesuch (still too dumb to duck, I guess), and voila…
Susan! Getting better, I think. Feel like I’ve been living under a rock this summer. Really. Baby (six month old, two toothed, chubby, roll around get into everything and shove it in his mouth boy) and the rest are all doing well. Finally back online, took so much longer than I thought it would. Good to be back though. Will e-mail you soon as I can get to it, taking a chunk at a time, trying to play catch-up now. Good to “see” you!
(Okay… We now return you to your regularly scheduled posting.)
Sara (who is a little psycho sometimes, but not a serially)
Sara