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00100 EXERCISES IN TWO CULTURES
00200
00205 C, P. Snow has stated that modern intellectuals are divided
00210 into two cultures, literary and scientific. The following story and
00300 Suspend your natural skepticism and imagine the following
00400 miracle to have occurred: A young doctor working in a hospital
00500 discovers that he has the power to cure anyone under the age of
00600 seventy of any sickness or injury simply by touching the patient.
00700 Any contact, however brief, between any part of his skin and the skin
00800 of the patient will cure the disease.
00900
01000 He has always been devoted to his work, and he wants to use
01100 his gift to benefit humanity as much as possible. However, he knows
01200 that he gift is absolutely non-transferable (This was explained by
01300 the angel or flying saucerite who gave it to him.), will last for his
01400 lifetime only, and will not persist in tissue separated from his
01500 body.
01600
01700 What will happen if he uses his gift?
01800
01900 What should he try to do and how should he go about it?
02000
02100 What is the most favorable result that can be expected?
02200
02300 I consider myself a member of the scientific rather than the
02400 literary culture, and my idea of the correct answer to the above
02500 questions reflects this. However, in order to mislead the reader I
02600 shall give a number of pessimistic scenarios together with some
02700 related literary exercises.
00100 EXERCISES IN PESSIMISM AND PARANOIA
00200
00300 1. The doctor uses his gift, the other doctors are jealous
00400 and disbelieving and drive him from the hospital. He cures patients
00500 outside, they get him for quackery and put him in jail where he can't
00600 practice. Even in jail, he cures people, and the prison doctor has
00700 him put in solitary confinement. Even there he cures a guard of
00800 cancer and then the little daughter of the warden of the prison. This
00900 arouses the fears of the insecure, narrow minded, brutalized and
01000 bureaucratized prison doctors to the extent that they have him sent
01100 to a hospital for the criminally insane to be cured of his delusion.
01200 There, they lobotomize him. Write scenes in which doctors disbelieve
01300 cures taking place before their eyes, self justifying speeches by
01400 people who decide to imprison him even though they know better, and
01500 the report justifying his commitment to the mental hospital.
01600
01700 2. His gift is judged sacreligious by the church of your
01800 choice. Fanatics are aroused by preachers and our hero is burned at
01900 the stake. Write a speech justifying burning the doctor as a lesser
02000 evil compared to letting him go on violating God's law that man must
02100 suffer disease and death.
02200
02300 3. His gift is judged holy by a religion that gets control of
02400 him, and its use is surrounded by so much ritual that hardly anyone
02500 gets cured. Describe the ritual.
02600
02700 4. People keep coming to him until he is exhausted, but there
02800 is always an emergency case more touching than all that have gone
02900 before and eventually he dies of exhaustion. Write his speech saying
03000 that he realizes he can cure more people if he gets some sleep, but
03100 true morality requires him to treat the immediate emergency.
03200
03300 5. He forms an organization for curing people and at first
03400 works very hard but gradually gets lazy, is corrupted by desire for
03500 money, power, fame and women, requires more and more flattery and
03600 obsequiousness, eventually strives single-mindedly for power,
03700 develops cruel tastes, comes to dominate the country, and is finally
03800 assassinated. Write speeches for him justifying his increased
03900 demands at various stages. Write the self-justifying speech of the
04000 assassin.
04100
04200 6. He is taken over by the U.S. government which either:
04250
04300 a. keeps him to cure members of the ruling
04400 military-industrial complex and to co-opt leaders of the people.
04500 Describe the subtle way in which a revolutionary is co-opted in the
04600 guise of being given a say in how the gift shall be used. Write the
04700 speech of a revolutionary refusing to be cured of his wounds after
04800 unsuccessfully trying to blow up the doctor.
04850
04900 b. devises a system of boards to allocate the use of his
05000 ability in the fairest possible way, but its operation is frustrated
05100 by injuctions and demonstrations by paranoid groups (your choice as
05200 to whether the groups are left, right or center) that cannot be
05300 convinced that his services are being allocated fairly. Write
05400 speeches charging that any of the following groups are not getting
05500 their fair share: Blacks, veterans, the poor, Southerners, policemen.
05600 Make up lists of demands on behalf of these groups.
05700
05800 c. creates a vast bureaucracy to administer that bungles
05900 hideously but amusingly. Write a description of the computer bungle
06000 that requires him to cure the same person 103 times and 102 people
06100 zero times each. Describe the questionnaire that has to be filled
06200 out even by the dying in order to be cured. Describe humorously how
06300 a dying man completes the form in the nick of time, but is prevented
06400 from being cured at the last minute because he has written "same as
06500 the above" in a space where he should have written his address for
06600 the third time.
06700
06800 d. gets into a dispute with the Russians who want the doctor
06900 to cure their leaders too. This leads to a nuclear war. Write the
07000 dialog at the final negotiating session casting the Russians as the
07100 villains rejecting a reasonable American offer. Rewrite it casting
07200 the Americans as villains trying to use their control of the doctor
07300 to rule the world. Write the dialog with neither side as villains
07400 but just as paranoid and stupid. Rewrite it so as to admit all
07500 three of the above interpretations. Describe a scene in which the sly
07600 and wicked Russians swindle the gullible Americans with the aid of a
07700 woolly-minded pinko homosexual American professor into letting the
07800 Russians get their hands on the doctor. Write the speech of the KGB
07900 chief sending the agent on his mission in the style of a James Bond
08000 novel and also in the style of Colonel Abel's memoirs. Describe a
08100 CIA attempt to use the doctor to blackmail a Cuban diplomat whose
08200 little daughter is dying of leukemia into assassinating Castro.
08300 Describe the death scene of the little girl who, even dying,
08400 understands why she must die in order to defeat imperialism. Write
08500 suitable speeches for the dying little girl and for the head of the
08600 CIA justifying the blackmail to a squeamish agent. Describe the
08700 scene after the bombs have fallen with the doctor running around
08800 curing a few radiation injuries in a scene of vast devastation. Also
08900 write a repentant speech for him refusing to cure any more or the
09000 reproachful speech of a dying person refusing to be cured.
09100
09200 7. The scientists insist on studying his gift to the
09300 exclusion of letting him use it. Ever more dangerous experiments are
09400 tried until he is killed. Describe how the scientist become more and
09500 more neurotic in the face of this miracle unexplainable by their puny
09600 materialistic minds. Describe some of their silly experiments.
09700 Describe one of their inhuman experiments in which people are killed
09800 in order to determine the exact moment when someone is dead and can
09900 no longer be revived by the doctor. Write a scene in which the
10000 doctor discovers what is being done and the chief scientist justifies
10100 it to him.
10200
10300 8. The Mafia or the Weathermen kidnap the doctor and threaten
10400 to kill him unless some outrageous demand is met. Write the
10500 threatening letters from the two groups.
10600
10700 9. The doctor is taken over by technocrats who drug him,
10800 confine him, and rule his life in order to get the last iota of
10900 productivity out of him. Describe a scene in which a high executive
11000 demands more productivity and threatens to replace the psychiatrist
11100 in charge of him. His many attempts to commit suicide are
11200 frustrated by the clever technocrats. Eventually, a nurse falls in
11300 love with him and helps him commit suicide. Give their dialog as
11400 they die in each others arms.
11500
11600 10. A wrangle about what to do goes on until he dies of old
11700 age. Write a speech saying, "Stop this endless debate and start some
11800 action." that has the effect of delaying action further.
11900
12000 11. The doctor has a visitation from a second angel who
12100 explains that the apparent first angel was really the devil who gave
12200 him this gift in order to bring him into sin. Expound the theology
12300 of this.
12400
12500 12. In order to destroy his gift the doctor tricks some
12600 scientists into skinning him alive. Explain why he does this.
12700
12800 13. He brings about universal health and the population
12900 explodes.
13000
13100 14. Universal health is achieved, but when he dies medicine
13200 has been neglected, immunities are gone and plague wipes us out.
13300
13400 15. Write a letter to him urging him to keep his gift secret.
13500
13600 I believe that all the above catastrophes can be avoided and
13700 the gift made into a great benefit. Those readers who consider
13800 themselves as members of C. P. Snow's scientific culture should try
13900 to work out the best solution for a day or so before turning to the
14000 next page.
00100 THE SOLUTION FROM COMMON SENSE AND TECHNOLOGY
00200
00300 Clearly the gift is finite. The doctor will eventually die,
00400 and his patients will face disease again as they will anyway when
00500 they reach seventy. This is no reason not to get the maximum
00600 benefit, however.
00700
00800 It turns out that he can cure everyone in the world whose
00900 disease or injury can be diagnosed in time to bring him to the
01000 doctor. The solution is technological.
01100
01200 Approximately 60,000,000 people under seventy die each year,
01300 i.e. two people die each second. We build a machine that can move 12
01400 people per second past him on each of ten moving belts. A mechanism
01500 should be provided to stop the motion of the finger of the patient
01600 momentarily so that it touches the doctor rather than brushes his
01700 skin.
01800
01900 On the basis of the arithmetic the doctor need only spend
02000 1/60 th of his time curing people, i.e. 24 minutes per day.
02100
02200 In order to reduce transportation costs it might be desirable
02300 to build a number of machines in different regions of the world and
02400 for the doctor to make trips to these machines, say once a month, to
02500 get the slow diseases, and to fly the emergency cases to wherever he
02600 happens to be.
02700
02800 It would not be very difficult for the doctor to get this
02900 solution adopted given a reasonable degree of persuasiveness either
03000 on his own part or on the part of some former patients he could
03100 recruit to help him. Doctors are often skeptical, but we have
03200 postulated a miracle that would convince almost all of them.
03300 Politicians are often shortsighted and bureaucrats bumbling, but what
03400 would be required in this case is simple enough so that they could do
03500 it. It is not possible to predict whether any important opposition
03600 to the use of the gift would develop. If so, it might be necessary
03700 to protect the doctor from assassination and the equipment from
03800 sabotage, and even then, there would be some risk of disaster.
03900
04000 I have not postulated any mental or physical side effects but
04100 it would be necessary to watch for them as well as for possible
04200 adverse social side effects.
04300
04400 The use of this gift would contribute to the population
04500 problem but not so much as one might think. In the U.S. 4,000,000
04600 people are born each year but less than 1,000,000 under 70 die each
04700 year and most of these are past the child-bearing age. Elimination
04800 of death under 70 would require for stabilising the population that
04900 couples limit themselves to an average of say 2.1 children rather
05000 than the 2.2 children that might be allowable otherwise.
05100
05200 In countries with larger death rates of young people the
05300 population effect would be larger, but ordinary medicine is already
05400 having a similar effect.
05500
05600 You flunk the exam if you propose not to cure people. Any
05700 attempt to cure as many as possible gets a B. To get an A you must
05800 do the arithmetic and see that it is possible to cure everyone.
05900
06000 Some people find the above solution repulsive because it
06100 involves a big machine with moving belts which would probably be
06200 noisy. Maybe they don't like a technological solution to what has
06300 been conceived as a moral problem.
06400
06500 Other people think that a law of nature is surely being
06600 violated - namely, a law that says that any apparently worthwhile
06700 innovation involving technology surely must have harmful side effects
06800 at least equal in magnitude to the apparent benefit.
06900
07000 John McCarthy