Lost in the Cosmos

paper-tube would make you feel better:
    (1) Charlie is dead.
    (2) Charlie has undergone a quadruple coronary bypass and may not make it.
    (3) Charlie does not have heart trouble but he did not get his promotion or his house in Greenwich.
    (4) Charlie does not have heart trouble and did get his promotion but can’t afford to move to Greenwich.
    (5) You, too, have received triple good news, so both of you can celebrate.
    (6) You have not received good news, but just after hearing Charlie’s triple good news, you catch sight of a garbage truck out of control and headed straight for Charlie—whose life you save by throwing a body block that knocks him behind a tree. (Why does it make you feel better to save Charlie’s life and thus turn his triple good news into quadruple good fortune?)
    (7) You have not received good news, but just after you hear Charlie’s triple good news, an earthquake levels Manhattan. There the two of you stand, gazing bemused at the ruins across the Hudson from Englewood Cliffs.
    ( CHECK ONE )

    In a word, how much good news about Charlie can you tolerate without compensatory catastrophes, heroic rescues, and such?
    (6) On the station platform, a fellow commuter, a stranger to you these past six years, approaches you and tells you of the news bulletin he has just picked up from his Sony Mystereo. Not Manhattan but San Francisco has at last suffered the long-awaited major earthquake, magnitude 8.3 Richter. Casualties are estimated at near two hundred thousand.
    (a) Unrelievedly bad news? How can there be anything good in such massive suffering and loss of life?
    (b) Putatively bad news? Else why is your fellow commuter so excited that, even as he shakes his head dolefully, his earphones come loose? Does he take comfort in what he does not say but perhaps thinks, that it is Gomorrah getting its due, what with the gays, creeps, and deviates who must comprise at least half the casualties?
    ( CHECK ONE )

    (7) You are an astronomer, starship designer, TV personality. You write about the Cosmos. You live next door to another astronomer, starship designer, TV personality. He also writes about the Cosmos. You both are employed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, not so much for your scientific abilities as for your PR value and your skill at popularizing science. You both have written best-sellers about space travel, ETIs (extraterrestrial intelligences), the necessity for nuclear disarmament, and so on. You are both aware that man might well destroy himself and the earth before he can explore the Cosmos and establish communication with other civilizations. There is a friendly rivalry between you. You two have different solutions to man’s problems with himself.
    You believe that wars are the consequences of sexually repressive societies, especially Christian. You have evidence that in more primitive societies, where sexual freedom is encouraged among both the young and adults, where there is an uninhibited display of affection and sexual contact, there are few if any wars. Your all-time favorite book is Coming of Age in Samoa. Your own latest book, Space and Sexuality, a best-seller, advances a proposal to create just such a society in miniature, a small community which is not only scientifically advanced but also loving and sexually unrepressed. Toward this end, you have designed a starship adapted from the Bussard fusion ramjet, which will accommodate a crew of ten (five men and five women), chosen not only for their technological skills but also for their freedom from sexual hang-ups, for a journey of several years to the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The starship has already been jokingly nicknamed the Love Boat by your colleagues. But in all seriousness, you propose that NASA initiate a crash program to launch the ship before what you are almost certain will be the last war on earth.
    You have been invited to appear tonight on the Tom Snyder Show to promote your new book, Space and Sexuality.
    Your neighbor and friend has also written a book and has been invited to appear on the Johnny Carson Show—which has a higher rating in the sweeps than Snyder. To tell the truth, his book sales exceed yours. You two do not disagree in your understanding of the Cosmos and in your assessment of man’s danger to himself. Yet your solutions are different. He believes that world peace can be achieved only by uniting the Western tradition of science and technology and the Eastern tradition of