"Stanislaw Lem - One Human Minute" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

separate those who are killed deliberately by electric shock while under torture from those killed
inadvertently when a little too much current is used.
There are also statistics on the means by which the living dispose of the dead, from
funerals with cosmetic corpses, choirs, flowers, and religious pomp, to simpler and cheaper
methods. We have many headings here, because, as it turns out, in the highly civilized countries
more corpses are stuffed into bags with a stone -- or cemented by their feet into old buckets, or
cut up naked into pieces -- and thrown into clay pits and lakes than in the Third World countries;
more, too (another heading), are wrapped up in old newspapers or bloody rags and left in garbage
dumps. The less well off are unacquainted with some of the ways of disposing of remains.
Obviously, the information has yet to reach them, along with financial aid from the developed
nations.
On the other hand, in poor countries more newborns are eaten by rats. These data appear
on another page, but the reader will find a footnote directing him to the place, lest he miss them.
And if he wants to take the book in small doses, he will find everything in the alphabetical index.
One cannot maintain for long that these are dry, boring figures that say nothing. One
begins to wonder morbidly how many other ways people are dying every minute one reads, and
the fingers turning the pages become moist. It is sweat, of course; it can hardly be blood.
Death by starvation (there had to be a separate table for it, with a breakdown by age; most
who starve to death are children) carries a footnote telling us that it is only valid for the year of
publication, since the numbers increase rapidly and in arithmetical progression. Death from
overeating happens, too, of course, but is 119,000 times rarer. These data contain an element of
exhibitionism and an element of blackmail.
I intended only to glance at this chapter, but then read as if compelled, like someone who
peels the bandage off his bleeding wound to look, or who probes the cavity in his aching tooth
with a toothpick: it hurts, but it is hard to stop. The figures are like a tasteless, odorless drug that
seeps into the brain. And yet I have not mentioned -- and have no intention of listing -- the data
on marasmus, senility, lameness, degeneration of organs, for then I would be quoting the book,
whereas my task is only to review it.
Actually, the columns of figures arranged in tabular form for all types of deaths -- those
bodies of children, old people, women, and newborns of all nations and races, bodies present in
spirit behind the numbers -- are not the most sensational part of the book. Having written that
sentence, I ask myself if I am being honest, and I repeat: no, they are not the most sensational.
The enormity of all this human dying is a little like one's own death: it is anticipated, but only
generally and vaguely, the way we comprehend the inevitability of our own end, though we do
not know the form that it will take.
The real immensity of flesh-and-blood life manifests itself on the very first page. The
facts are indisputable. One might indeed entertain doubts about the accuracy of the data in the
chapter on dying: they are based on averages, after all, and it is hard to believe that the taxonomy
and etiology of the deaths were rendered with complete exactitude. But the honest authors do not
conceal from us the possible statistical deviations. Their Introduction thoroughly describes the
methods of calculation and even includes references to the computer programs employed.
Though the methods allow for standard deviations, the latter have no importance for the reader --
what difference does it really make if 7,800 newborns die per minute or 8,100? Besides, these
deviations are insignificant because they tend to cancel one another out. The number of births is
indeed not uniform for all times of the year and day; but since on Earth all times of the day, night,
and year simultaneously coexist, the sum of stillbirths remains constant. Some columns, however,
contain data arrived at by indirect inference. For example, neither the police nor private
murderers -- whether professional or amateur (not counting the ideological variety) -- publish
statistics on the effectiveness of their work. The error in magnitude here can be considerable.
On the other hand, the statistics of Chapter One are beyond reproach. They tell how many