Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (snow like ashes .txt) 📗

The Achievement of Liberty

That evening Scott and Hella join a group attracted by the panorama seen through a transparent wall fifty feet under water. They are immersed in a living symphony of fish and plant life. As they soak up the details of this brilliantly lit section of the reef, they have deeper insights into their cultural heritage. They watch the wanderings of a small shrimp as it scans its environment for food. Suddenly a snapper darts past, opens its jaws—and whack! The shrimp is no more. One’s attention is arrested by the graceful coordination of the eight arms of a small squid. Suddenly a jack comes along and grabs it in the middle. The arms flail helplessly around the mouth of the jack. Then the jack is attacked by a barracuda, and the squid is immediately dropped as the jack flees for its life. The barracuda reaches down and grabs the now-injured squid with its sharp teeth. In three shakes it is devoured. Scott and Hella are impressed by the ferocity of life in the marine jungle—the cruel workings of the survival of the fittest, the inevitable conflict that is brought on by scarcity.

“Blessed are the meek,” Scott quotes. “But the meek may not survive in the jungle. If animals or people have to fight each other to get what they need, they become brutal. They have to be callous and heartless—it would tear them apart if they empathized with the pain of others.”

“How indebted we are to our ancestors for working through those primitive stages so we can at last live as human beings,” remarks Hella as she watches a playful sergeant major darting around a lavender-tinted lettuce coral. “They had the illusion of freedom—we have real freedom.”

“Only recently have we been really free of the age-old ruts and routines,” Scott continues. “Free from economic struggle, from aggressiveness in a million forms, from constant ego attack, and from always being told what to do. Even when our ancestors had enough food in their stomachs and had a roof over their heads, there was still a scarcity of love, affection, and emotional security to meet their ego needs.”

“Yes,” adds Hella, “and previous societies had intricate ways of giving status to people that enabled them to one-up the other fellow—to try to get a feeling of worth by showing that they were better in some ways than other fellow humans.”

“I suppose most of the problem revolved around scarcity,” says Scott. “People must feel secure to give deeply to others.”

“They tried to get security by passing laws,” Hella smiles. “I understand that in previous centuries thousands of laws were passed each year telling people what they could and could not do.”

“It’s been years since taboos or laws were forced by society on the individual,” Scott says. “Previous cultures used to label various things as right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral, lawful or unlawful. These things sometimes changed from one state to another, from one country to another, and certainly from one culture to another.”

“We shouldn’t be too proud,” admonishes Hella. “It was only two decades ago that we were able to dispense with the last law, the last lawyer, and the last courtroom. Only in our age could we be sure that human beings could be fully trusted if they are reared in ways that avoid hostile conditioning. Happy, fulfilled people never commit crimes!”

“I’m not sure that it’s all a matter of trusting people,” counters Scott. “I’m not sure I could be trusted not to harm myself or someone else if I were put into one of the automobiles of the last century. We’ve used technology to avoid hurting ourselves or others. Try to imagine, Hella. They had no automatic controls. They sped along those narrow highways. The death rate was horrible, the injuries even worse. In the United States auto accidents killed more people each year than their wars! This slaughter was so unnecessary. It’s been decades since one of our surface transportation units injured anyone.”

“The availability of the medium-range aircraft that we used to come here was shelved for four years until proximity control devices were perfected,” says Hella. “This safety system reduces the probability of a crash to less than one chance in six trillion miles. The danger of a crash is more remote than being hit by lightning.”

“Yes, I remember reading about the probabilities of a crash on the nameplate as we entered the craft,” answers Scott. “There’s no ‘Big Brother’ making decisions for us. We’re given the facts and probabilities, and we make our own choices.”

“Watching those fish out there,” says Hella, “makes me realize how far man has come. We can truly be ourselves—think what we want, feel what we want, experience what we want—without hurting other people.”

Trip to an Underwater Park

The next morning Scott and Hella take one of the submobiles and navigate to an underwater park about twenty miles away. On the way they see the forms of many wrecked ships, now deeply encrusted with coral. They play tag with a dolphin for a while. In their large bubble enclosure in the forward part of the submobile, they have full visibility. Built-in televised binoculars with microviewers enables them to examine marine life in detail. They call the Correlation Center via relay satellite and request a summary of the scientific work now being done in oceanography. A briefing keyed to their intermediate level of understanding is given to them as they near the underwater park.

In the park they find other submobiles. Scott and Hella having their underwater breathing membrane on, slip their feet into self-propelled fins, adjust their voice communicators, and exit through the air lock. For hours they explore the marine gardens and make three dimensional teleprojections with their laser cameras. They stay together so that they can help each other in case of emergency. Trained porpoises are there to assist if needed.

On the way back from the park, Scott and Hella direct their submobile to navigate automatically. He