The Thanatos Syndrome

also the scourge and curse of life on this earth, the source of wars, insanities, perversions—in short, those very pathologies which are peculiar to Homo sapiens. As Vonnegut put it”—his arm is on the back of the seat; I feel his pointy, jokey finger sticking into my shoulder —“the only trouble with Homo sapiens is that parts of our brains are too fucking big. What do you say to that?”
    I don’t say anything. He has gone elegaic. We’re in the golden woods of old Vienna.
    â€œHomo sapiens sapiens” he murmurs, lilting. “Or Homo sap sap.” Reviving, he pokes me again. “We’re not zapping the big brain, Tom. To put it in your terms, what we’re doing is cooling the superego which, as you of all people know, can make you pretty miserable, and strengthening the ego by increasing endorphin production. No drugs, Tom—except our own—we’re talking natural highs. Energies are freed up instead of being inhibited!” Here comes another poke. “News item: L.S.U. has not lost a football game in three years, has not had a point scored against them, and get this, old Tom, has not given up a single first down this season. As you well know, nobody talks in Louisiana about anything else.” A final poke. “News item, Tom—not as well known but quite as significant: L.S.U. engineering students no longer use calculators. They’re as obsolete as slide rules. They’ve got their own built-in calculators.”
    I look at him. “Do you mean to tell me—”
    â€œAll I mean to tell you is that cortical control has unlimited possibilities, once cortical hang-ups are eliminated. Just imagine a team that is always psyched up but never psyched out.”
    When Bob Comeaux says “hang-ups,” there is just a faint echo of his Long Island City origins in “hang-gups.”
    â€œThat is remarkable.”
    â€œAny questions, Doctor?” He’s made his case and looks at his watch even as I’m looking at mine.
    â€œWhy don’t you use some?” I ask him.
    He looks right and left for eavesdroppers. “Between you and me I have—in my own family, Tom.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œYou got it, Doc?”
    â€œI was just wondering about the decline in teen pregnancies. The mechanism of that escapes me.”
    He lights up. “Tom, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s so simple. All great scientific breakthroughs are simple. One change and presto, all the old hassles, twelve-year-olds getting knocked up, contraceptives in school, abortion, child abuse—all the old political and religious hassles are simply bypassed, left behind. Did you ever notice that the great controversies in history are never settled, that they are simply left behind? Somebody has a new idea and the old quarrels become irrelevant.”
    â€œWhat’s the new idea?”
    â€œIt’s been under our nose, so close we couldn’t see it for looking. You’ll kick yourself for asking.”
    â€œTell me anyway.”
    â€œWe simply change cycles, Tom.”
    â€œChange cycles.”
    â€œSure, from menstrual to estrus. Look, Tom—”
    â€œYes?”
    He rattles off the answer like a talk-show guest who’s used to the question. “You know and I know the difference between a woman’s cycle and most of female mammals’.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe human female can conceive during twenty of the twenty-eight days of her cycle. Any other female mammal can only conceive during estrus—say, eight days out of a hundred and eighty.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œAs I like to say, our sister Homo saps, God bless them, are in heat seventy-five percent of the time, and what I say is hurray for them and hurray for us. But any other lady mammal is in heat, say, nine percent of the time. Tom, the numbers tell the story. All you have to do with the hypothalamus is lack it into the estrus cycle and you’ve got a marvelous built-in natural population control. Then it’s merely a matter of controlling a few days of estrus—hell, all you have to do is add one dose of progesterone twice a year to the school cafeteria diet and that’s the end of it—goodbye hassles, goodbye pills, rubbers, your friendly abortionist. Goodbye promiscuity, goodbye sex ed—who needs it? Mom and Dad love it, the kids love it, and the state saves millions. Family