NCEIV45 0-0815 Flashcards
Lesson 45
Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies
In man’s early
In man’s early days.
competition wit
competition with other creatures must have been critical.
But this phase
But this phase of our development is now finished.
Indeed, we lack
Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions.
I am sure that,
I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone.
The last creatu
The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito.
But even the mo
But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.
Competition bet
Competition between ourselves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.
But the competi
But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology.
It is not a sim
It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical.
Our environment
Our environment is chiefly conditioned by the things we believe.
Morocco and Cal
Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources.
Yet their prese
Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize.
The most import
The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.
It is well know
It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas.
Ideas are dange
Ideas are dangerous.
The Holy Office
The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by.
Indeed, the con
Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive.
It is only some
It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts.
I do not doubt
I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us.
I would like to
I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so.
Perhaps it will
Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb.
Of making the e
Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed.
Twenty or thirt
Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history.
It is a strange
It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it.
I have often tr
I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.