An Interview with C.B. Williams
Part 5: Schmuckaphobia September 21, 2024
Q: The future people in The Book of Beaux-eaux live between 7 and 10 thousand years from now. Do they have huge heads to contain their huge brains, as they are portrayed in the old Superman comic books?
A: Also in one of the Planet of the Apes sequels….I think…
Q: Oh yeah. Right.
A: No.
Q” No? Just no?
A: That’s right. Just no.
Q: Would you care to elaborate?
A: The big head thing would be a distraction from the more important aspects of the human future.
Q: Such as….
A: Such as we are the first and only species complex enough for self contemplation. The more complex the structure, the less likely it will exist. That explains why there is only one of us. But even though more than one of us is unlikely, it is not impossible. After all, in the past there were also Neanderthals right over in the next village. And in the future? Branching is how all of us got here. Branching is why there are a gazillion different life forms.
Q: Gazillion?
A: Yeah. Gazillion. Theoretically we may actually branch one day.
Q: I am thinking “ Slan,” by A.E. Van Vogt. And of course “X-Men.” In both of those the new human life form is persecuted by the old one.
A: Well that sort of thing is necessary to sell books and movies. But still, we are barking up the right tree. Then add Socrates, Jesus, Wycliffe, etc., all the real folks that the schmucks got to.
Q: The schmucks?
A: Yeah.,,,all those individuals on the left side of the moral spectrum…unless you are writing in Yiddish. Then the schmucks are on the right side.
Q: From low to high?
A: No. From earlier to later. It drives me crazy when I hear people wax all goom-ba-ya about how we are all one. The hell we are. We are not all one. We are two. We are each either closer to where we came from, red of tooth and claw, tolerant of plunder, pillage and rape, (except, of course, when the victims are members of our immediate family) or we are closer to where we are going.
Q: Where are we going?
A: Well that depends on who has the survival advantage. Do the righteous have a survival advantage over the schmucks? [Psalm 92 says yes, fyi] Or vice versa?
Q: We are not one. We are two. Interviewer and interviewee. I ask. You answer.
A: OK, wise guy. I will answer my question. On the one hand, as the saying goes, nice guys finish last. On the other hand we have to assume that the nice guys win in the end, and the other kind, for instance those on the Vladimir Putin level of evolution, will lose. Otherwise we stay depressed and drink ourselves to death, unless, of course, the wife says “Don’t you dare!” Then we say “Yes Dear,” and plug on ahead.
Q: So you assume that the nice guys win in the end. Then you must also assume that they have a survival advantage. What might that be?
A: Self contemplation.
Q: But all humans have that ability. Why is that an advantage for one or the other side in the….um…
A: Moral class warfare.
Q: If you say so.
A: I say so. So. It may be the case that all humans, regardless of their moral class, have the ability for self contemplation, but they may not have the will to self contemplate, not equally. Remember, there is no equality in the Biosphere, Darwinian variation and all that. Will, like everything else, is unequally distributed, just like brains, beauty, talent….
Q: I remember. Like the talent for playing the violin, the talent for playing the stock market, or the talent for turning heads on a beach while wearing a bikini.
A: HAHAHA! Good memory!
Q: So you think the schmucks lack the will to self contemplate?
A: It is all a matter of degree. Think mathematically. We may have a metaphor for this in our popular culture. Remember Dracula?
Q: I never met him personally.
A: Well he was said to have no reflection in a mirror. That may be our intuitive sense that individuals in the lowest moral class cannot stand the sight of themselves. So they do not look at themselves, not closely. If they do not look into the mirror….duh…there is no reflection.
Q: So they do not self contemplate. So what?
A: So any information that might be discovered by way of self contemplation is inaccessible to them. This is the information age. Information is power. More information is more power. Less information is less power.
Q: You once said that it puts people to sleep to tell them the truth. You must be telling me the truth because I am falling asleep.
A: I tell you what. Ever hear the one about the fly in the raisin bread?
Q: Heard it.
A: How about the priest and the nun on the golf course?
Q: Heard it.
A: How about this one: “In 1492 Christopher Columbus landed on Long Island and met Pocahontas. It was love at first sight.”
Q: Heard that one too.