"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The Final Circle of Paradise (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

understands this as yet, but ninety-nine percent of my fellow
citizens are already living in a world where, for all practical
purposes, a man can have all he can think of. O, Science! You
have finally freed mankind. You have given us and will
henceforth provide for us everything - food - wonderful food
- clothing of the best quality and in any quantity, and to
suit any taste! - shelter - magnificent shelter. Love, joy,
satisfaction, and for those desiring it, for those who are
fatigued by happiness - tears, sweet tears, little saving
sorrows, pleasant consoling worries which lend us significance
in our own eyes.... Yes, we philosophers have maligned science
long and angrily. We called forth Luddites, to break up
machines, we cursed Einstein, who changed our whole universe,
we vilified Wiener, who impugned our godlike essence. Well, so
we really lost that godlike substance. Science robbed us of it.
But in return! In return, it launched men to the feasting
tables of Olympus. Aha! Here is the potato soup, that heavenly
porridge. No, no, do as I do... take this spoon, a touch of
vinegar... a dash of pepper... with the other spoon, this one
here, dip some sour cream and... no, no... gently, gently mix
it.... This too is a science, one of the most ancient, older in
any cue than the ubiquitous synthetic.... By the way, don't
fail to visit our synthesizers, Amalthea's Horn, Inc. You
wouldn't be a chemist? Oh yes, you are a litterateur! You
should write about it, the greatest mystery of our times,
beefsteaks out of thin air, asparagus from clay, truffles from
sawdust.... What a pity that Malthus is dead'! The whole world
would be laughing at him! Of course, he had certain reasons for
his pessimism. I am prepared to agree with those who consider
him a genius. But he was too ill-informed, he completely missed
the possibilities in the natural sciences. He was one of those
unlucky geniuses who discover laws of social development
precisely at that moment when these laws cease to operate. I am
genuinely sorry for him. The whole of humanity was but billions
of hungrily gaping mouths to him. He must have lost sleep from
the sheer horror of it. It is a truly monstrous nightmare - a
billion gaping maws and not one head. I turned back and see
with bitterness how blind they were, the shakers of souls and
the masters of the minds of the recent past. Their awareness
was dimmed by unbroken horror. Social Darwinists! They saw only
the press of the struggle for survival: mobs of hunger-crazed
people, tearing each other to pieces for a place in the sun, as
though there was only that one single place, as though the sun
wasn't sufficient for all! And Nietzsche... maybe he was
suitable for the hungry slaves of the Pharaohs' times, with his
ominous sermons about the master race, with his supermen beyond
good and evil... who needs to be beyond now? It's not so bad on
this side, don't you suppose? There were, of course, Marx and
Freud. Marx, for example, was the first to understand that it
all depended on economics. He understood that to rip the