Stranger in a Strange Land

in Martian does work for both races. The logic is invariant . . . but the data are different. So the results are different."
                "I couldn't see why, if people were hungry, some of them didn't volunteer to be butchered so that the rest could eat . . . on Mars this is obvious-and an honor. I couldn't understand why babies were so prized. On Mars our two little girls in there would simply be dumped outdoors, to live or to die-and on Mars nine out of ten nymphs die their first season. My logic was right but I had misread the data: here babies do not compete but adults do; on Mars adults don't compete at all, they've been weeded out as babies. But one way or another, competing and weeding has to take place . . . or a race goes down hill.
                "But whether or not I was wrong in trying to take the competition out at both ends, I have lately begun to grok that the human race won't let me, no matter what."
                Duke stuck his head into the room. "Mike? Have you been watching outside? There is quite a crowd gathering around the hotel."
                "I know," agreed Mike. "Tell the others that waiting has not filled." He went on to Jubal, "'Thou art God.' It's not a message of cheer and hope, Jubal. It's a defiance-and an unafraid unabashed assumption of personal responsibility." He looked sad. "But I rarely put it over. A very few, so far just these few here with us today, our brothers, understood me and accepted the bitter half along with the sweet, stood up and drank it- grokked it. The others, the hundreds and thousands of others, either insisted on treating it as a prize without a contest-a 'conversion' . . . or ignored it entirely. No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that all the trouble they are in is of their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain."
                The Man from Mars shook his head. "And my failures are so much more numerous than my successes that I am beginning to wonder if full grokking will show that I am on the wrong track entirely-that this race must be split up, hating each other, fighting each other, constantly unhappy and at war even with their own individual selves . . . simply to have that weeding Out that every race must have. Tell me, Father? You must tell me."
                "Mike, what in hell ever led you to believe that I was infallible?"
                "Perhaps you are not. But every time I have needed to know something, you have always been able to tell me-and fullness always showed that you spoke rightly."
                "Damn it, I refuse this apotheosis! But I do see one thing, son. You are the one who has urged everyone else never to be in a hurry-'waiting will fill,' you say."
                "That is right."
                "And now you are violating your own prime rule. You have waited only a little while-a very short while by Martian standards, I take it-and already you want to throw in the towel. You've proved that your system can work for a small group-and I'm glad to confirm it; I've never seen such happy, healthy, cheerful people. That ought to be enough to suit you for the short time you've put in. Come back when you have a thousand times this number, all working and happy and unjealous, and we'll talk it over again. Fair enough?"
                "You speak rightly, Father."
                "But I ain't through. You've been fretting that maybe the fact that you failed to hook more than ninety-nine out of a hundred was because the race couldn't get along without its present evils, had to have them for weeding out. But damn it, lad, you've been doing the weeding out-or rather, the failures have been doing it to themselves by not listening to you. Had you planned to eliminate money and property?"
                "Oh, no! Inside the Nest we don't need it, but-"
                "Nor does any family that's working well. Yours is just bigger. But outside you need it in dealing with other people. Sam tells me that our brothers, instead of getting unworldly, are slicker with money than ever. Is that right?"
                "Oh, yes. Making money is a simple trick, once you grok."
                "You've just