"Paul Levinson - The Way of Flesh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

The Way of Flesh
Paul Levinson
 Contents
The Way of Flesh

Biography
 The Way of Flesh
I walked up to the podium and blinked in the bright lights. The audience in front of me seemed as far
away as the larger audience on the thousand inhabited worlds in our net.

I cleared my throat and began.

One of the central mysteries that yet eludes our understanding is the sudden dissipation of seemingly
robust civilizations. On too many planets we find what looks like a thriving cultureтАФwith spires as high
and as intricate as those of our own worldsтАФabandoned with barely a trace of the intelligent life that built
them. It's almost as if everyone went home for lunch and never returned.

Our usual assumption in such cases is disease or some other physical culpritтАФa dramatic change in
climate, for instance, that might have rendered agriculture and aquaculture unproductive.

But recent evidence uncovered by my colleagues and me on a distant planet have suggested another
cause.

This was a planet which had achieved some global cooperation after centuries of bitter warfare. Its
scientists were on the way to comprehending and manipulating reality on a subatomic level.
Rearrangement of DNA in natural living patterns was just beginning to be used to literally improve the
quality of organic life. Artificial intelligence had yet to be implemented, but visionaries were well aware of
its benefits. Most sadly of all, this species had made the first groping efforts to propel itself beyond the
confines of its planet.

What went wrong?

Serious diseases were not the cause. This planet had more than its fair share of them, but its species also
had resilient immune systems, which were able sooner or later to come up with effective antibody
responses. And these of course were helped by the diligent work of their scientists.

Nor were shifting climate conditions the cause. Many people in this civilization were concerned about
climate shifts due to technological effects, but these proved far milder than feared.

What we did discover was something more insidiousтАФa quite deadly social attitude.

It first appeared, as best we could tell, some time near the end of what the civilization reckoned to be its
second millennium. Almost imperceptibly at first, but with astonishing pervasiveness, members of the
species in the most advanced precincts of the civilization were made to feel uncomfortable about relating
to members of the complementary sex in the workplace, in schools, everywhere.

Legal embodiments of these attitudes soon followed. On the eve of the second millennium, flirting was
declared in many municipalities to be a misdemeanor on a par with littering.

Then smiling in public was declared an obscene gestureтАФa statute that was taken up in the next national