The Marching Morons
In Cyril Kornbluth's 1950's short story The Marching Morons1 John Barlow accidentally goes into suspended animation, to be revived centuries later in the year 7-B-936. He awakes in a very different world where the average IQ is 45 and the few intelligent humans remaining are struggling to deal with the morons. The human race has regressed - has evolution gone backwards?
Morons like their cars to go fast, so cars have devices to create the illusion of speed: "...the car pulled ... into the road with a great voo-ooo-ooom! A gale roared past Barlow’s head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific." This is not as silly as it sounds. Car manufacturers today do resort to trickery, for example, using "new car" fragrance, aerofoils that are purely cosmetic and car doors that close with an engineered clunk.
Kornbluth's amusing and shocking vision of the future is the antithesis of James Redfield's banal wishful thinking in The Celestine Prophecy2. Redfield tells us that "...mankind is on this planet to consciously evolve...". He believes there is some sort of transcendental plan for the evolution of homo sapiens and that the only direction is forward.
Primitive man had to rely on his intelligence to survive in a hostile environment. The evolution of homo sapiens was clearly a case of "survival of the smartest". But what happens if we don't need the smart gene anymore? There could be a shift away from logical and rational thinking back to the instinctive and intuitive thinking of our ancestors. Maybe this is happening right now! What need is there for reason and logic when we are told what to think, what to believe and how to behave?
Evolution has no plan or ultimate purpose, it just happens. Furthermore, we now know that Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck3 was right after all. It doesn't have to take millions of years for random hereditable mutations to produce a change in a species. Changes induced by environmental pressures can take place very much faster, even over a single generation. It has been demonstrated conclusively that epigenetic changes can be written back to the DNA and transferred from parent to immediate offspring. So wherever it is that homo sapiens is going, he's going a lot faster than originally thought.
1. Cyril Kornbluth, The Marching Morons, Galaxy April 1951
2. James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy, Bantam Melbourne 1994
3. Read more about Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck on Wikipedea
Morons like their cars to go fast, so cars have devices to create the illusion of speed: "...the car pulled ... into the road with a great voo-ooo-ooom! A gale roared past Barlow’s head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific." This is not as silly as it sounds. Car manufacturers today do resort to trickery, for example, using "new car" fragrance, aerofoils that are purely cosmetic and car doors that close with an engineered clunk.
Kornbluth's amusing and shocking vision of the future is the antithesis of James Redfield's banal wishful thinking in The Celestine Prophecy2. Redfield tells us that "...mankind is on this planet to consciously evolve...". He believes there is some sort of transcendental plan for the evolution of homo sapiens and that the only direction is forward.
Primitive man had to rely on his intelligence to survive in a hostile environment. The evolution of homo sapiens was clearly a case of "survival of the smartest". But what happens if we don't need the smart gene anymore? There could be a shift away from logical and rational thinking back to the instinctive and intuitive thinking of our ancestors. Maybe this is happening right now! What need is there for reason and logic when we are told what to think, what to believe and how to behave?
Evolution has no plan or ultimate purpose, it just happens. Furthermore, we now know that Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck3 was right after all. It doesn't have to take millions of years for random hereditable mutations to produce a change in a species. Changes induced by environmental pressures can take place very much faster, even over a single generation. It has been demonstrated conclusively that epigenetic changes can be written back to the DNA and transferred from parent to immediate offspring. So wherever it is that homo sapiens is going, he's going a lot faster than originally thought.
1. Cyril Kornbluth, The Marching Morons, Galaxy April 1951
2. James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy, Bantam Melbourne 1994
3. Read more about Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck on Wikipedea
posted by Robert Charroux at
6:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home