As he climbed the mountain of slag, he was amused (at first) at how difficult the climb

was, how the pebbles of rock slid beneath his feet, how one step up seemed almost like the
same step down, within a matter of minutes he was out of breath and yet had made so little
progress. Had he really grown this old, this fast? Wasnt there a day, no not so long ago,
when he and others as kids would race up the sides of these hills, climb them with ease like
some kind of lizard or monkey, grappling with foot and hands to get quickly to the top, able
to climb faster than the sheets of pebbles and stone could roll beneath them? He decided no,
he had not aged that much, and he put more force into his steps, he bent over and felt for
the side of the hill which immediately disappeared between his fingers and fell away as he
clawed at its crumbling face. He stopped again. Not even halfway. His lungs were burning,
his heart and head pounding. He fell down against the side of the mound and felt himself
carried down several more feet as the noise of the tumbling slag clapped away like laugher.
He was about to give up, relax, slide his way back down to the bottom, which was only
feet away, when suddenly he heard the sound of the rock moving, he looked over and saw the
shadow of a man climbing the pile of sludge a little ways away, his silhouette, though poised
in the awkward position of climbing this slippery sheets of stone, look familiar and then he
heard the voice, a voice he had not heard in decades. It was old man McGuire, Dr. McGuire,
all 90 years of him, climbing the rock with a bent and awkward crawl, but making the climb
all the same.

Hey Stefan, McGuire called out, get your ass in motion. Going to let an old man beat
you to the top? Get moving, dont fight it, be one with the stone, one with the gravel, let the
gravel carry you up, let the gravel do the work, like this you see, its effortless if you do it
right.
Indeed the old man had made it to the top and stood up as straight as he could with
his ninety year old vertebrae and ninety year old legs.
Stefan, he shouted, move it!
McGuire had been one of the leading research psychiatrists in the 1970s, 80s and 90s,
one of the early proponents of sociobiological theories for human behavior and he utilized an
amazing medical/research/educational machine that he had put together over the years of
his tenure as directior of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, to get the word out, create support,
and guide research dollars into this new and not uncontroversial field. As a young student,
Stefan did not have the experience or wherewithal to doubt the theories, and surrounded as
he was by the giants in this field which McGuire brought often to the NPI, he felt the same
excitement as the other students that he was part of something big, something world
changing. But at the same time, he was bothered by the lack of design, the limited questions
of methods, the need there seemed to be for speed in creating and designing the
experiments, as if the experiments themselves were trivial, that the data was all that was
mattered, that the hypotheses had already been decided, all that was needed to was to fill
certain research journals with studies of this and that, kinship this and kinship that, genetic
models of this and genetic models of that. Stefan himself was the one who carried out some
of these experiments and he knew for a fact that the data he collected was at best
meaningless if not bogus. There was no care taken in the methods, no controls, no stringent
thought. He began to distrust the data that all these revolutionary thinkers said was so
2

important to their theories, they lined up the graduate students as if they were soldiers and
commanded that they march out onto the field and gather up the data that everyone needed,
it was there, find it, pick it up, bring it back. Data! Data! Data!
Until one morning while meeting with several of the leading scientists in this field,
Stefan raised his hand as they talked about their data, their glorious data, and he asked, Why
do you care so much about data?
The scientists all fell silent around him. The silence forced him to continue. Theories
are not made by data, he said as if he had the authority to make such a remark, theories are
made with thought, they are derived from something else, Maxwell had no data for his
equations, Einstein had no data for his theories. Why do we talk about data and mothering
but (and here his voice broke and he emitted an embarrassing squeak that seemed to
question his bold statement to the old men in the room) data?
No one said a word. No one looked at him. One of the old men seemed to be looking
down at his shoes not for an answer but for the kindest way possible to tell this young student
to shut the fuck up. Stefan was not told to shut up, he was saved by Dr. McGuire, who
cleared his throat, and said, Yes, well, as my collage here said, we need data, we need more
data and we need this data now. So lets put our efforts together and find that data. Back
here on Thursday, right?
Stefan quit the medical school shortly after that. Partly because he had embarrassed
himself beyond redemption, but also because he was flunking his biochemistry and physiology
classes. He often woke up from a dream in which he had not gone to a single one of this
classes all semester and now the term was over and it was the day for the final tests. He
could not toss off the fear he felt just because it was a dream, he had in fact never gone to
any of the classes. He never even bothered to take the finals and he flunked out. But he was
3

already gone before then. He told no one, not his professor, not even his mentor, Dr.
McGuire. He had bought a ticket to New York, folded three twenties into his front pocket
because he was told that was the best way to protect money from the pickpockets that
swarmed New York and this was all the money he had, and off he went to New York to be
writer (although all he would do in New York would be to work as a clerk in a dry cleaners
seven days a week from 7 in the morning to 7 at night for $3 dollars an hour).
Yet here on this night, all that was in his mind was the old, aged, yet still maniacally
energetic McGuire standing at the top of the slagheap, ridiculing Stefan one last time it
seemed.
Whats the matter, Stefan? McGuire shouted, cant keep up with an old man?
That memory of that moment in the morning meeting where Stefan had blurted out his
statement about data, rose up in his throat and he attacked the side of the slagheap with a
fury. In fact, he found that McGuire was right, that you could not fight the pebbles, you had
to make them work for you, and suddenly he was gilding up the side of the hill with almost no
effort at all, until he was at the top and standing next to the smiling Dr. McGuire.
See how easy things are if you would just listen to me? McGuire said.
Yes, Stefan said, a bit out of breath still, I am sure my life would have been quite
different had I listened to you.
Indeed, McGuire said, you would be unhappy, lonely and wondering if you were sane.
Is that how you feel?
That is how the genius feels, McGuire said, it is the same everywhere, across the
board. Doesnt matter what you decide to do, what you decide to believe in, how you decide
4

to make your living, it all comes down to who will stand there by your side? Not your wife,
that is for sure. Not your parents, they have run out of money. Not your kids, you have
fucked them up and they are burdened with the legacy you gave them which makes them
hate you of course. And you friends and colleagues? Oh, they came and they went, didnt
they? Here today and gone tomorrow.
The only thing you have left is all this right here, McGuire said lifting up his arms and
stretching them out to the stars, the lights of the refineries down below, the dark mounds
that other, more distant mountains formed at the horizon. The world is still here for you, it
still exists and it still wants to be explained. And the funny thing about the world, is that it
does not care what you come up with, it simply wants to be the object of your thoughts. You
dont have to be right or wrong or even close. As long as you are thinking about it, the world
is your friend, the best friend you will ever have.
Youve died havent you, Stefan finally thought to ask.
Of course, McGuire said, if I was alive do you really think I would be climbing up this
fucking dusty hill of coal shit? Thats what this reminds me of, a pile of shit. I am standing on
a huge, no, a gigantic pile of shit. Hey I have a joke for you: A lady goes into the doctor and
tells him, Hey doc, my farts dont smell? Could there be something wrong with me? And this
lady was a pretty good looker, so the doctor decides it wont harm anyone if he takes a look.
So he has her undress and then has her lie down on the examination table while he looks up
here rectum. While he is scouting around the lady passes gas, a real stinker. The doctor
jumps up and goes over and begins gathering up his instruments. The lady says, what are you
going to do doctor, operate on my ass? No, he said, I am going to operate on your nose.
Were you really a doctor once??

Yes of course. And a damn good one at that. So Stefan, whats bugging you these days?
The doctor was now picking up pieces of slag and throwing them out as if skipping
them across the waves of the night. The small projectiles left his hand and burned a light
orange tracer out into the darkness.
Well, Stefan said, it is funny that you should ask. He picked up a piece of slag and
tossed it too, but it simply plunged immediately into the dark sea around them. What has
been bugging me a good deal lately is how we fail to see things in the proper temporal
perspective: if we shorten our observations with respect to time, in other words shorten the
window of time over which we frame our observations, we may not see the patterns that take
much longer periods of time. If we allow time to extend we see different patterns, but do we
reveal different truths? We try to fit all truths into the windows and hallways of time that
matter to us, ones that we can see, ones that we can traverse without much effort, signs that
matter to us now, distances that we want to defeat. Perhaps the way of life is to destroy
itself and allow new life to arise from the smolder of the predecessors ruins. Perhaps the
ways of rocks and mountains is not unlike the ways of soft-bodied organisms. Perhaps time
has its own selection process, perhaps not unlike all selection processes, and time too must
bend and sway, rise up in glory and then eventually die away like fish, like rocks.
I see, McGuire said throwing out another piece of slag, this time with a side arm
motion which sent the tracer up into the sky where it stopped, seemed to vanish , then burst
into an orgasm of dull shivering, quivering points of light.
Shorter periods of time allow us to see ourselves as different than Stefan continued,
different than savages, different than dogs, different than fish or worms, different than
trees, different than cliffs or seaswe are locked into this time just as we are locked into this

atmosphere of oxygen, just as we are locked into this distance from the sun, just as we are
locked into this
Is that right?
Another thing is I have been thinking about how the forces we fear most are the most
cataclysmic, the volcanoes, the earthquakes, the ruptures and shudderings of the earth, the
things that actually make us possible, made us possible, are part of the cycle, the stabilizing
sink that recycles, returns, creates and takes away, that allows us to play the sum zero game
to go on, to continue on, to live on
Okay
And how we think the answer is always in ourselves, to be found in and by our
intelligence, our ingenuity. We forget that these are the very things that got us in this mess
in the first place, the same arrogance, the same know-it-all-ness that we take for granted
when we think of new ways to salt the seas and pepper the skies so that we, the ones that
created this mess, can live a little longer.
I can see where you are headed
And that we are in fact nature, but that does not mean that we are part of the
solution, no we are simply that, part of Nature and as such we will do what we have to do and
the consequences will be what they will be. Whether the end result is good or bad for us is
no matter. Nature, as part of us, does not care.
The sky suddenly opened as if the lid of an eye was slowly breaking upon the blue of
the perfect sky, slowly, so that as it opened and when it opened it would then begin to take in
the closing darkness of night.
7

But tell me Stefan, Dr. McGuire asked, what really bugs you?
Yes, well, what really bugs me to be honest are scientists who write philosophy, who
profess to think they know something of the meaning of life. Perhaps they do so because they
see themselves sitting at the edge of knowledge, on an abyss perhaps, profoundly amazed at
what we dont know. Or perhaps they see themselves at the edge of discovery, the edge of
opportunity, that all that lies ahead is more knowing and a closer and ever closer
approximation to the truth.
Seems natural to me
Or perhaps it is an apology for all that science has neglected from the human sphere.
How science has made its way into corporations and governments and forgotten about the
people and cultures and the human lives that are claimed at the sake of progress,
experimentation or simply by willful misuse of scientific tools. Perhaps these attempts by
scientists to write a book on the humanities is similar to the atheist who finally prays a small
prayer for God, just in case in that final moment finds out he is wrong. Or maybe they write
because they feel the need to inject hope into our collective thoughts, into our approach,
into our attitudes. Not knowledge, not truth, but hope. Because we seem to do so little that
is purely good with our knowledge and our truths, that we need to hold on to hope.
Do you have some examples to share?
Ackerman writes that as vast our ignorance has been and vast the damage we have
created, ever more vast is our promise and our intelligence to seek a new way. How does one
live with such an attitude in the light of the history of man and woman, society and
corporation? Is it not this very attitude, this very arrogance that goes along without
evolutionarily given abilities that created our mass failure? Isnt it clear that at every step in
8

our thought process we believe in ourselves while at the same time condemn those who came
before us? Is it not true that we see knowledge as a series of steps that we are compelled to
climb and not as a series of explosions hat create a hole in the earthy that we then strive to
fill only to find a new explosive to tear out another hole, perhaps a larger one? We drive
ourselves shown and only imaging that we are climbing above our predecessors.
Diane is a tough cookie
Well then there is old E.O. Wilson, your old friend, your mentor, he is set to
revolutionize the biological sciences yet again. You read me his earlier book as if it were the
Bible. He did it forty year ago as a young man, when you were a young man, and he stands
prepared to do it again, this time as an old man. He has angered all of you, I bet you feel
betrayed right?
Those who take him seriously
For how can you? Your reputation, all your work, it could be all at risk.
You give the old man a lot of credit.
I think he gave you the credit you needed to build your not so little empire. Well, now
it looks like he is coming at you hard. He covers his argument from every possible angle,
probably a mistake, but he shows no fear of the expanse his theory reaches out to.
That is his way. Either he explains it all or nothing.
But to be honest you bother me more than any of these others.
Of course, McGuire said, now we are getting to the point.

I mean, are you any different? Did you have any smaller designs? You took his theories
and you expanded them into pharmacology, medicine, psychiatry, even politics, education and
sociology. You took his theories not for their explanatory value, but because with these ideas
you could create an empire. And now he, the man who gave you life, threatens to knock
down all you have built.
He is wrong, you know.
He is not wrong. You are wrong. Yet, what is most interesting about all this is that he
will ultimately fail. He will take you out and then he will fail.
And so how is that?
He fails in one major and condemning way: His argument like yours is propped up
merely by his argument. Lacking a factual way to approach the topic of the Meaning of Life,
he does what we all do, reaches for a metaphor. Life is a bowl of cherries. Life is shit. For
EO, life is a mountain of ants. And ants is what will explain it all: science, evolution,
progress, politics, religion, aliens, even the human brain. He demonstrates that metaphor is
not always a way we choose to explain something new, or something that cannot be
understood in a factual way. What he demonstrates is that metaphor is often a way we use to
make the mysterious fit more into our wheelhouse of beliefs, it brings the strange and
incomprehensible into our already existing comfort. It comforts rather than explains. It
flattens rather than plumps up with meaning. It deadens rather than creates a marvel of
greater insight, clarity or understanding. Metaphor in this way simply brings all the outliers in
our world under the same umbrella we are most comfortable with. And by doing so, it is selfvalidating: we use it to explain and by explaining we make it understandable to us. While at
the same time we do not understand it in any more depth or clarity than before. Ants and

10

anthills do not explain how the brain works no better than computers, no better than humors,
no better than the soul. It merely makes us feel better about our ignorance.
No one will listen to a narrative that begins with ants?
Why not? We have believed in narratives that start with lesser things than ants, we
allow our world to be propped up by stores of genes and enzymes, with molecules and
quantum particles, strings of energy. We have no problem believing what we cant
understand as long as it makes everything else understandable or at least feel that way.
How do you sleep at night, with all this garbage swirling through your mind?
We still believe in the words of Nietzsche, we still seek out the meaning in Kierkegaard
and Martin Luther King and Buddy Holly, but not the Hegels or the Shaws or the Chomskys or
the Dylans, not the old men who continue to tell us what they thought we needed to know all
the way to the end. In youth are unfinished ideas, things that still tie themselves to promise.
With old men there is calcification, senescence, words become rigid, we fail to hint at any
uncertainty. It is the gaps in our knowledge that intrigue us, keep us feeling alive. Old men
who seek to close those gaps bore us. It is the uncertainty that compels us, draws us in. The
unknown that youth is willing to face and face it straight on. No answer? No problem. Loose
ends? Let them dangle, let them trip me up, I am young enough to fall and fall hard. The
young see their folly and are not embarrassed by it. The old see the same folly and try to will
it away, they try to strong-arm their way past the contradictions, past the absurdities but
their arms are weak and flaccid, their lungs weak. Old men blow, but they cant blow it
down.
You hold on to your grudges dont you boy?

11

The study of genetics, which is the study of things like plants, animals and people, was
floundering, no one had any idea what this thing called a gene was, they couldnt see it,
could describe it, the theory did not have much of a chance until it gained some intellectual
power from none other than the new field of quantum physics which many scientists and
mathematicians did not understand but understood enough to boldly cast forth their new
ideas about heredity and the mechanisms for passing on gratis. Cant any one see that this is
the trail a blind man creates for another blind men? These blind men are not excited by the
truths they discover, they are exited that there is a trail to follow at all! Put a man in a dark
tunnel and he will be ecstatic to find the faintest trail to follow, he will not ask if this the
true trail or the only trail, he will be only glad that there is any trail at all. Genetic theory
never needed proof to propel it, it needed an epoch that depended on speculation and
scientists with the guts to speak prophetically - not scientifically, it began with the men who
resurrected Mendels ideas, who had no evidence, no data, who had only a vision, a towering
and propelling speculation, but even with their lack of facts, lack of things to point at, they
ran into troubles, they needed further speculative struts to buttress their already towering
theories, they were vindicated by the Watsons, Cricks and the poor unrecognized woman who
did all their work for them, but they were still far from done. From this base of little
knowledge, from this bold and darkly brewed theory they fashioned theories of human
society, they created programs to cleanse and strengthen the human race, programs that
began, no not in Europe, but in the United States, programs that were fashioned not by Nazis
or environmentalists, but by the Carnegies and Rockefellers, the CEOS of GM and IBM, the
pillars of American life, programs that they gladly passed on to the Germans, given in
exchange for Der Fuhrers chest pins. They grasped the brass ring that was handed to them in
the late 20th century to the base of human life, all animal life, its behavior and motivations,
intentions, desires, instincts on selfish and marauding genes. It had no mechanism, but it had
12

a theory, and even without a mechanism they are eager to guide breeding, they were able to
retool psychology, they were able to turn psychiatry into brainwashing, they were able to
sway government, they were able to categorize people just as they categorized animal life
I remember you used to have a girlfriend who suffered from constipation, so just let it
out, easy, easy
Well as you might imagine, the study of the brain is no less enlightening. Early 1900s
saw us probing for personality and intelligence on the bumps and dents in the skull. We were
not even close to the soft grey stuff that probably accounts for most of our thinking and
feelings, yet that was as close as we could get and we felt comfortable not only writing all
sorts of books about this in an authoritative fashion but we also created rules, laws and racial
guidelines based on these findings. Fates of criminals were decided not by their behavior but
by their skull features. Shortly thereafter the world wars came along and showed us we could
blow off skullcaps and look inside those brains and see new things and even remove chunks
and pieces of the brain and voila the patients lived. This progressed into a process of
systematically removing or decoupling parts of the patient's brain from the rest of him or her
so as to treat everything from epilepsy to boredom in housewives. This wasnt quackery, No!
These methods, the creators of the lobotomy were awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine.
Psychiatrists believed they were being more precise and judicious by ablating and removing
smaller sections instead of larger sections of the brain and developed all kinds of -ectomies
for aggression, depression, schizophrenia, and many other maladies. Institutes were
established at major universities and patients were wheeled in and out of medical hospitals
for these experiments. One psychiatrist, your colleague, Frank Irvin, wrote that he could
cure all the racial violence in the US inner cities if someone would allow him to remove the
amygdalas from the brains of these black troublemakers. This was written at the same time
13

that the neuroscientists understanding of how brain cells communicated was limited by the
computers at the time to three cells! Three lousy cells in an organ that has billions! This was
during a time when indeed wars had given us much greater knowledge of how the various
parts of the brain impacts behavior and cognitive function, but we had no cohesive theory as
to how all these parts worked together or what parts in that gelatinous mass of grey and
white matter really mattered. Lobotomies were insanely popular, performed with ice picks in
the patients kitchen, until new drugs were discovered that did what knives and suction tubes
had done before. Thorazine and a host of other powerful drugs rendered patients as idiots
without the trauma of cutting thorough their skulls and removing things that no one knew
what they really were. We turned people into drooling, shuffling zombies, made them into
speechless idiots that chewed off their fingers and lips, but we all agreed this was better than
the alternative. We didn't even care at first how these drugs worked, we still dont really
want to know how aspirin works, so a mechanism of action is never really necessary, but we
tried. We started by claiming that these drugs inhibited certain chemicals in the brain and
altered the processing of thoughts, emotions. We worked through all the serotonin inhibitors
we could find, we tried dopamine simulators, we advanced drugs that blocked acetylcholine,
that strengthen the response of norepinephrine. We did this but never really knew why or
want we were doing. We then got into receptor inhibitors, We found ways to block chemical
production. We got better and better at doing things but had no real insight into how these
things work or understand what they theyre doing. We discovered opiate channels in the
brain. We found some effect if the cells that we thought were not part of the process were
simulated. We began believing the brain was a vast bowl of electromagnetic jelly that
created spontaneous and momentary waves of activity and that these were thoughts and that
these jello-blobules of activity were the things we needed to understand, perhaps because we
could at least measure them and so then we could change them. Years and decades and
14

millions of dead monkeys and rats and people have passed through our halls of study and still,
and I think all neuroscientists will say the same thing, they dont know or even think anything
about this thing called a mind, they may be neuroscientists, but the last thing they spend
time thinking about is how the brain works or discussing whether we know how it works,
because what do those questions mean any way, as a neuroscientist I am worried about how
this little protein unfolds under increasingly acidic conditions and that neuroscientist over
there is focused completely on how does this small patch of cell membrane change when it is
poked with a needle full of this or that chemical. We know next to nothing as to how we
think, how we feel. We can stop thinking and feeling, but we dont know how it works, how
the brain works. And yet here we are, today trying to make computers that work not like
computers but like brains! We can never exhaust enough metaphors, especially if those
metaphors are intangible and vague, they apparently explain the best.
I looked at McGuire and his eyes looked as if they had been cut from a mask, the slits
cut too small, and so the eyes, blood read to the pupil, swam in their insufficient wounds.
But what bothers you the most Stefan? Enough of these generalized rants. It is not
really me, who is it?
Yes, it is Wilson. E.O. Wilson bothers me, Stefan said.
Ha ha! Here I would have bet he was you hero! After all these years, you finally had
someone, someone with some credibility to fight back against me. All this time you had only
your youthful anger and your hatred of paternal figures to combat me, my ideas, my theories
and institutions. Now you had the best attack against me, you had the man who gave me my
place in science recanting all he had once proposed as mecca, you had the man to throw back
in my face. What happened? Why not?

15

It is his arrogance. His intellectual and academic self-centeredness. His species

narcissism. All couched in the mannerisms of a gentle old grandfather, the teacher we all
loved.
I love it, McGuire said, tell me about it.
He should be my hero, I know. He is bucking the system that I bucked, but I did so for
no real reason and no real purpose. And yet, I cannot help to think that he is making the
same mistake, that he is propagating the same wrong approach that all of you used before to
create our world. His view that there exists only one planet for life, and one chance of
immortality for the species. That we represent the highest level of accomplishment on our
planet. Big brains, culture, language, music, ability to build and manipulate are all
positives, examples of humans high evolutionary achievement. That science will grow but at
some point soon its rate of growth will slow, stabilize. It is his arrogance, his total
acceptance that we are superior, that we are exalted in this animal kingdom, that we are
deserving of something.
And you dont believe that?
On what grounds? On the fact that within 100,000 years we have destroyed not our
world but our chance to continue living in the world. We occupy the layer of paint on the top
of the Eiffel Tower and we have nearly stripped it bare. What kind of evolutionary
accomplishment is that? That is not success of any kind. It is the ultimate failure.
More, McGuire said, tell me more
Well, and then there is Wilsons Alien argument. He uses it to try to make some point,
I dont know what, except to say that we can only think of the universe as a manifestation of
ourselves.
Yes, I have heard it but tell me it again.

16

Wilson claims that he can describe what aliens would look like if they came here. He
says first of all, aliens would be terrestrial. Only then could they master fire and tools. Only
then could their hands be freed up so that they could take advantage of bigger brains.
Sounds reasonable.
But whales and dolphins have larger brains, by far. They also have developed ways to
avoid cancer and other diseases. True they do not have the ability to create fire or
manipulate objects the way we do, they cannot make things that would not be possible
underwater, such as computers and other things that evolved on land. But the abilities to
make those things are not simply a product of being on land, they are products of being
human. Nonhumans are just as fireless and nontechnological as the inhabitants of the sea.
He assumes that to be successful is to be like humans. And so the traits that we will find in
humans will be, well, like ours. That is not an argument. That is painting the pig so as to call
it a pig.
Youve been spending some time on the farm have ya?
Next, he says that aliens will be large animals. They have to be in order to carry the
large brains they need to be social, culturally advanced, to have language and create things.
But his own argument for social development/evolution is that it occurs not within a single
brain but through a network of many individual brains. Sure ants have brains one-billionth
the size of humans, but a billion ants have a collective brain the size of man. So why look at
individuals as models of dominance when your theory seeks collectives?
You got me on that one.
Then, these aliens would be biologically audiovisual. Pheromones and other chemical
forms of communication travel too slowly to make things like language and high levels of
thinking possible. Oops, but brain processes are chemical in nature are they not? Light hits
our retina, chemicals carry the signal to other cells through chemical processes, thought is a
17

series of chemical steps, communications between cells are all chemical, not electrical, etc.
Certainly chemical may travel more slowly than light or sound, but maybe not in the distance
between two ants. But visual organs need light to see. Audio organs need a medium to carry
sound. If the world was dark with clouds or windy with storms, or aliens lived underground,
then neither means of communication would be as effective.
The alien head is distinct, heavy and upfront. We like our heads to be both the
leaders of the human army as well as the lowly privates that are sacrificed in battle. This
argument by EOW makes no sense whatsoever and seems so unnecessary.
That aliens possess light to moderate jaws. Big jaws are for eating plants and I guess
vegetarians cannot possible be smart enough to be aliens. Sharp teeth belong to predators
and to fend off predators, but they do no befit a moral being who has words instead of teeth
to fight with oh yes, he also has guns and bombs and landmines and racks for torture.
And aliens will have very high social intelligence. Good he included this, as it was his
discovery and his insight into the evolution of life here on earth. So if it is, by his theory, the
highest level of accomplishment in us, it certainly must be found in those aliens abroad.
Aliens have locomotors appendages, at least one of which has digits with fleshy pads.
Of course, we all agree that there needs to be some way to work their cell phones.
Finally and this is the best, that aliens will be moral. And they are moral because if
they are like us then they must be moral. So we are moral and so are they. Good argument.
And so what do you think of all this?
That he has lived a life and will soon die, his entire life work based on a metaphor
what we cannot escape. Limitations that frame us, define us, cloud our ignorance for we are
so happy with our new metaphors, they make us feel so bright an sunny. EO even sees brain
organization in the same way (terms) of how superorganism (But not if you count all the
brains working in concert, in an organized fashion, then perhaps an ant colonys brain is in
18

someway comparable to human?) -- he has simply found a new metaphor, one that has
meaning to him and breathes meaning and life into his studies, because it is so close and dear
to his observations and beliefs in the world. It is not a way to understand the world, it is a
way to ensure that world is understandable by extending what is already understood to those
areas that are still mysterious.
Stefan looked out at the community of light and shadow below him and exhaled
deeply.
What difference is there really between believing that God created us and believing
that we are the only beings that could have been created from this process called evolution?
He said. Is there really a difference between those two beliefs? Are we really any further
along now than we were three hundred years ago?
It was then that I could hear and indeed feel stirrings in the rock beneath my feet. In
the near darkness it was hard to distinguish what was happening but there appeared to be
first one, then two, then three areas where the rock was moving and small indentations
formed, which deepened into tunnels. Then out of those tunnels appeared the faces of men,
old men, dirty faced old men who had apparently clawed themselves to the surface of this
slag pile.
McGuire! Is that you? Shouted the first man to shake the gravel from his head, well Ill
be!
Chuck, well goddam you! Is that really you? Of all places! Here on a slagheap! And who
is this with you?
McGuire was referring to the other man who was struggling to pull himself out of the
slag, all that was visible was the man large pate and his long unruly beard.

19

This should be Kropotkin, the first man said, he was following me you know. For years
hes been my faithful little puppy. Peter, you going to make it or are we going to have to call
in the national guard to dig you out?
Aw, shut up Darwin! I got longer legs than you, they are harder to work through this
rocky stuff. But give me a hand will you.
Charles Darwin? Stefan said incredulously.
And who is this? McGuire said to the third man to emerge from the slag.
Its none other than Edward here, the third man answered breathlessly from his
position which exposed his head and shoulders. Came out to join a few dead friends in this
little journey through the waste of mans unending need to dig up and burn the life forms of
the past. But I have to tell you, you know what this slagheap reminds me? An anthill! Thats
right. Curiously enough, I can see the similarities despite the difference in scale. I must use
this in one of my books.
Edward O Wilson, McGuire said, son of a gun! Havent seen you since the Medical
Anthropology Meetings a few years back. I have been saving a joke for you. Are you ready?
Sure thing!
This Toyota executive goes to a proctologist, you see, tells the doctor that hes a
nervous wreck because every time he farts, it sounds like his ass is saying Honda. This is
blasphemy of course at Toyota and so the poor guy is sure hes going to get fired if he doesnt
take care of this some how. After the examination the proctologist says, well I see the
problem, you have an abscess between your butt cheeks. The Toyota executive says, yes and
so what does that mean? Well you see, the doctor says, abscess makes the fart go Honda.
Oh ho ho! Wilson woo-hooed, Good one McGuire.
What did I miss? Kropotkin said.
Never mind Peter, Darwin said, another one of McGuires jokes is all.
20

So it is you, Edward O. Wilson! Stefan exclaimed, I mean Dr. Wilson.

None other, he answered still brushing off his long, thin frame.
Well, we were just talking about you, Stefan started to say.
Yes, I know. Not the kindest words either. But I am used to criticism. In fact if I
wasnt being roundly criticized by someone and everyone, well I am not sure I would feel like
I was having much of an impact on anything. You know what I mean Chuck?
Oh, I sure do. Although I have to admit in my days we were called an idiot by letters
and in books. Sometimes it took a few months to find out someone didnt like you for this or
that reason. We didn't have anything of these newfangled things like Twitter and Facebook.
Oh my, say something today and it seems a million people can jump on you in a few minutes.
Yes, Chuck, even us old men have to be prepared to take on the world and its
electronic network of communications.
Well Dr. Wilson, Stefan said, I hope you dont take offence at what I said, I didnt
mean it in the context of demeaning you in any way.
Oh yes you did. But that is okay. That is why I came here. When Chuck notified me
via overseas mail last spring that he was coming here to see you tonight, I took that as a
chance to see some of these discrepancies out in the open with an intelligent and judicious
audience to receive them. Right Peter?
Last spring? Stefan asked.
Oh, yes, Kropotkin said, well you know I am a fan of Sir Charles here but am not
without my criticisms. I think you would have benefited by joining me in a few walks through
the Siberian wastelands, so that you could see the other side of the evolutionary process. All
the time you spent pitting animal against animal, I must admit that is a dreary vision that
could only come from a place as dreary as Manchester.

21

Well unfortunately my time for walking the hinterlands was up by then, Darwin
answered with a knowing chuckle. You should have reached out to old Wallace though. He
would have been the perfect companion for you. In fact, I had asked the old geyser to join
me in this little expedition but it is incredibly hard to get that man outside these days. Always
got a sance or some such thing going on.
Too bad, Kropotkin said, he would have added some spice to our conversation I am
sure.
Oh for sure, Darwin said, Wallace has got his fingers into just about everything it
seems. Spends much of his time I think with his collections of butterflies, the largest
collection I think in the world.
Well now that we have all of you here, McGuire cut in, we can have an old fashioned
discussion between us. The founding father of evolutionary theory, the currently reining
father of sociobiology, a neglected but respectable defender of alternative theories on
evolution which for reasons I dont understand are making a comeback, and a young whipper
snapper (relatively speaking) who thinks it is all bunk created by a bunch of old farts.
Since when did I say I thought that? Stefan asked.
This should be quite a lively and entertaining debate, McGuire said. I shall moderate.
OK?
Fine with me, Darwin said.
Me too, Kropotkin said.
Lets go, Wilson said with hand-clapping exuberance.
OK, well this is your night, Stefan, so why dont you begin this debate off. Give it you
best opening shot, McGuire said before stepping back into the darkness like an Irish ghost into
its drink.

22

Well, I must say, this is quite an intimidating gathering we have here. I am afraid that
when I started shooting my mouth off I didnt know I would have to answer to all of you.
Well you did invoke us, in one way or another, correct? Kropotkin asked.
Well, yes.
And you have read our works, correct? asked Darwin.
Yes I have, most of them.
And so we are in your brain, correct, Dr. Wilson said, those are our ideas that are
darting about between those synapses in your brain.
Yes, they are I suppose.
Well, as long as they are, then we are still alive. See? We just decided to give a little
substance to the thoughts in your head. So go right ahead.
Stefan, the opening statement is yours, McGuire reappeared to say and then sat back
on his haunches while he lit a cigarette.
Do you have another one of those, Kropotkin asked.
No, sorry, McGuire said. Anyway, you died of lung cancer.
It was pneumonia.
Bullshit. Your beard is stained with tar and nicotine.
Ok, Stefan began, well, first let me say how honored I am that you all could come out
tonight to be a part of this .. what is this a debate?
Of course, it is a debate. We arent here to gossip, said Edward.
Or tell jokes, said Charles.
Yes, yes of course, Stefan said. So Mr. Darwin.
Call me Chuck please.
Well my first question has to do with the seemingly tautological nature of your
arguments, your theories. In effect, more than 150 years ago you advanced a theory of
23

natural selection that some have said was only 1% formulated during your time and required
another 100 years to formulate the remaining 99%. Yet your theory has held up through all
the changes and developments, the findings in the fossil record, the discovery of the
mechanisms of genetic replication, even the broader implications of the impact of nature,
diet and other external factors on genetic expression.
Yes, good old Lamarck, Darwin chuckled, he never goes away does he? Like a dumb
dog. Follows you to the end.
Dr. Darwin, Stefan continued, what would you say to those critics who say that a
theory cannot possibly be as successful as yours without being based on some kind of
tautology? That there is no way with your lack of knowledge and lack of data that you could
have created a theory that would have withstood decades of scrutiny unless it was incapable
of being proven wrong?
Well, Darwin said, the only people who have accused me of setting forth a tautological
argument were the creationists, and well you can imagine how seriously I took their claims.
I might add, Wilson interjected, that science is indeed in the business of proving itself
wrong and while it is true that Sir Charles here only had 1% of the theory formulated in his
time, he got that 1% right. And that is what is important. Science does not evolve itself from
one form into another overnight, it changes gradually, but the basis of that change will be a
few principles that cannot be moved, that will not be challenged.
But that indeed sounds like religion more than science, Stefan said. What scientific
principles has survived intact over its lifetime?
They all do, Wilson said, until they are proven wrong or inadequate. I should know. I
have embraced certain principles and certain ideas, perhaps embraced them too tightly, only
to find out that over time the very pillars of our theories need to be requisitioned, recast.
And so you think the underpinnings of Darwinism will one day be replaced?
24

If I may say something, Kropotkin interrupted. You cannot ignore the political
institutions and social structures that play the roles of stabilizers, Kropotkin added. Malthus
can only take us so far. The man spoke of farms and factories, not forests. We have had 150
years of capitalism ruling the land, and so maybe it is a coincidence that we have 150 years of
Darwinism ruling our science? I dont know. I am just a man who likes to walk the with
nature.
That is an interesting point, Stefan said.
Marxist balderdash, McGuire shouted from the darkness. Marxism failed. Communism,
bolshevism, collectivism, all dead and buried. So lets drop those dreary ideas. Peter, what
are you smoking?
A pipe.
Can I have a toke?
Fuck off McGuire.
Well, I would like to come back to your comments, Mr. Wilson, Stefan said, because
while you have made a life out of challenging the status quo, the scientific elite and at times
have suffered the consequences of upsetting the entire scientific industrial complex, you too
have at times expressed what some would call a religious attitude towards your beliefs, in
other words, your select and defend your beliefs with insufficient facts or data, and seem to
challenge people to prove you are wrong, rather then prove yourself wrong. You did this once
in the 1980s with your program of Sociobiology, and you are doing it again now with your new
program of social evolution. Some would say that your success, in contrast to Darwins, is due
to the lack of understanding that we have of the evolutionary process, as evidenced by what
all we dont know about genes and genetic selections and environmental interactions and
temporal processes. In other words, that while not any theory will work, you are having a
game at it because you are smart enough and have enough political and industrial clout to
25

buck the system and be heard. In other words, history is replete with scientists who have
believed in and stood ready to defend their theories, theories we now find unbelievable and
frankly ludicrous. Why can you say that your theories will not be held in the same poor
esteem a century from now?
I do want to remind everyone hear that we do have a time limit, the moderator said,
and so I would appreciate if our host here would limit the length of his incredibly tortuous
questions.
Sorry Dr. McGuire.
Well, Stefan, my first response on any other day or any other night would probably
have been a staid and practiced silence as your question is in some ways idiotic. But since
this is your night and your hallucinations and your little game that we are playing, and
because I am generally a calm and congenial guy
Except when you drop acid, McGuire coughed.
Oh, yes, well LSD is not my drug of choice. But anyway, I feel the responsibility to
muster up some kind of response. Yes, of course you are right. If you look at the history of
scientific process, you will see many attempts to explain this or that and the grand thinkers
who feel the need to offer up the most complete and overarching theory that is both a
temptation and an impasse that comes from our beloved Western academic tradition.
Philosophy and history were all about these kind of grandiose schemas that answered
everything. That said, I am guessing that the source of your questions really comes from the
problem you have that a theory of everything, including humans, could come from
observations on ants. Isnt that really the problem here?
Well, in part
So lets stick with that for the moment. I understand your concern. It bothered me
too for decades. I have studied ants since I was a child, I saw the intricacies and
26

wonderments in ant behavior and ant societies for decades, but never could muster up the
courage to say to myself: maybe this points to something bigger than just ants! Because I
had the same doubts as you. But then you begin to realize that, unlike Mr. Darwin here, we
have the advantage of more than a century of work and studies of the mechanisms that are
truly at the root of life. These mechanisms take place on not only an individual basis, but
more importantly on a genetic basis and so therefore on a chemical basis. So when you are
looking at the unit of evolutionary change, we are certainly not looing at the individual
because the individual is the result of two opposing forces: the gene or chemical forces and
the social or organizational forces. This is the great chasm that exists in physics between
quantum and relativity theory. They seem like distant irreconcilable worlds that cannot
possibly be bridged by a simple theory or data sets. But what if we are simply clouding our
minds by trying to find the answers in humans, we cloud our minds because there are all
these other complicating factors: religion, thought, free will, etc. etc. which may all be
nothing but mirages for all that matters. But then look at ants. The level of complexity is
remarkable, yet the level of simplicity is sufficient that we can actually draw a line between
the chemical and organizational. And this opens up the possibility of doing this for humans as
well, of extrapolating from ants to human societies.
Well as you know, Sir Wilson, your earlier work was the foundation for McGuires
career and many others. In fact you may say they built entire research empires off your
theories and ideas in sociobiology, a discipline you defined. Yet here you are, forty years
later, saying basically that you were wrong. And so if you were wrong, arent then these men
wrong? And what of their work? More importantly what of the work they have done, and not
just the research papers, but the efforts and results that have taken place in pharmacology,
medicine, brain sciences, psychotherapy, child education what of all those ancillary
industries that were cored, created, influenced by your work. Are those all wrong too?
27

Probably.
Hghgughg! McGuire said choking on a sparkblow of his cigarette butt.
Well, Im sorry McGuire. You never asked me anything.
And it was not as if here were others who pointed in Mr. Wilsons new directions,
Kropotkin said, I began this discussion long ago. I started it in my treatise against that racist
warmonger Galton. But I got pushed into the Bolshevik camp and that was a tough place to
make a living back then. Capitalism with all its smoke and fire was the way of the future. Yet
I am of the Russian landscape, the landscape of tundras and endless wastelands. So I am glad
to see someone has finally had the sense to bring back some values of creativity and
cooperation into the mix. By the way McGuire, I have a joke for you.
You do? Lets hear it!
There was this man in France who was famous for being able to sing with his ass. And
he approached this one proprietor of a small theater and convinced him to let him get on
stage that night. And so he got up on the stage, all dressed in these fancy clothes and after
he was introduced he stood with his butt to audience and let out a fart that knocked
everyones glasses to the floor, mens toupees off their heads and even burst some buttons on
the ladies' bustiers. Sorry, the young man said to his audience, I was just clearing my throat.
Yes, yes, McGuire said, the old French fart jokes. Have not heard them in a while.
Love it. Thank you Peter for that.
Kropotkin, I am in fact more indebted to you that I first indicated, Wilson said, while I
have not read your works in their entirety, the ideas came through. You are where I began,
only by seeing you now, in your unbelievable beard and heavy eyebrows, do I realize that.
Ok, Mr. Darwin, I have spent a good bit of time reading your early journals, Voyage of
the Beagle and then of course On the Origin of Species. You are best known it seems to me
for the phrase survival of the fittest and yet that phrase appears only once or twice in your
28

books. Mr. Kropotkin here has written a book called Mutual Aid, which takes aim at your
claim to this idea that animal species are in fierce and often violent competition with each
other. So my first position is that I do not think you were writing these books about animals
at all, and that they were just your way of avoiding public outcry over your dies about human
beings, the closeness of different human races and your alarm and dissatisfaction with how
one race treats another. Do you have a response to that?
Let me start if I may, Kropotkin interjected, the young man did invoke my name and
my book after all.
Well certainly go right ahead Sir Kropotkin.
First of all, what emerged quickly as Darwinism during our time was not simply the
pure and unadulterated work of our esteemed colleague here. His ideas and the hints that he
often laid out of the other implication of his theories were taken up by others, Spencer and
Huxley were two for example, who were really the ones who turned evolutionary theory into
a veritable bloodfest so to speak.
I never saw one drop of blood, one red stain on all this wilderness, even death in in
harmony here, Stefan said.
Sounds like a quote, Darwin quipped.
John Muir.
Dont know him, Darwin yipped.
One of the first tree huggers, McGuire inserted, now they are everywhere. Everywhere
there is a tree there is someone hugging it, trying to tap into the earth goddess, GAIA.
GAIA? Darwin asked.
The idea that the earth is a single organism that lives by evolutionary principles,
Stefan said.
Really, Darwin snipped, now that is something I never thought about.
29

Makes sense to me, Kropotkin puffed.

Gentlemen, McGuire interceded, we are spinning recklessly out of control
Gentlemen, Wilson interceded even more loudly, lets not get caught up in old feuds
fueled incessantly by a lack of data when really I think the original question is one of
theoretical relevance. While it is true that there was not much in the way of documented
evidence for the battle between species nor were there methods to collect such information.
We look for such behavior in the most dramatic of the species the lions and hyenas and what
not, when really you will see an abundance of this survival of the fittest behavior if you look
at things on a smaller scale, at the ants for example.
But if I understand the young gentlemans question, Darwin said, he is asking if I as a
naturalist was looking at humans but talking about animals? Is that correct?
Yes, I suppose so, Stefan said.
Well, he is right.
The other gentlemen gaffed.
He is right. I could have given a rats ass about collecting specimens and flowers or
birds or butterflies. Everywhere I went I saw the same savagery, the same abuse, the same
killing and subjugation in humans. No animals. Peter is right. Sir Edward is right. I did not
have the tools, but I did not have the desire either. Aside from my own family, I really didnt
care much for people. But I wanted to show that we were wrong to treat each other as we
did. That we were all the same. Not just of the same stock and of the same lineage, but that
we were the same and worthy of the same treatments and life. But I was a coward, and so I
buried myself and my thoughts in the insects and birds. It was a safe place to be while all
around me the abolitionists were being set on fire.
And so my book, are you saying Charles, that after all this time, my book, the one
nobody ever reads at all, my book is correct?
30

I dont know Peter, I have to admit, I have never read it either. You waited until I died
apparently to publish it.
Heaven has no kindles? McGuire said with a feigned look of incredulity.
You have never read it? Kropotkin croaked. Chuck is that true?
Sorry.
How about you Edward, surely
I only read about it on Wikipedia, I am sorry Peter. You are linked to me in an article
on sociobiology. I will read it when I get home.
Gentlemen, as the moderator, I need to interject. I dont believe that the question
raised by Stefan was about whether Darwin was right or Kropotkin was right. In fact, I see no
evidence to suggest that either was right or wrong. What Stefan was asking was whether
Darwins motivations for writing what he did was driven by his unique understanding of how
the animal kingdom was organized or was he primarily motivated by the injustices he saw in
the human, civilized world. Is that a proper characterization Stefan?
I guess so.
Well, Darwin said, it is hard to come back at this after nearly 150 years, I mean so
much has happened, so many validations of the theory, and they seem to keep coming in, I
dont know, how did I come up with this, why did I come up with this, it is hard to look back
and see it all. Fame has a way of distorting your perceptions of making up new stories about
the past when in fact, I would like to think I am the genius people think I am, they talk about
me as if I am still alive, still available for commentary and reference but yes, you are right.
That is why I wrote the bloody book. I wrote it to cut off the legs of those who believed we,
us white people, were superior and that others could be treated worse that animals. Yes,
that is why.

31

And of course, that is not what happened is it Mr. Darwin? Stefan said. No, what
happened is that one of the first uses of your theory amongst the celebrated scientists of your
time was to create a program of eugenics, a proscription to create the Aryan race. Wasnt
that what happened?
I I am afraid so.
Sir Charles, Wilson interrupted, we are all victims of our success. We are equally
victims of our convictions. When we put out our ideas, the only thing we can sometimes be
sure of is that we will be persecuted for them, and perhaps even worse, others will be
persecuted based on wrongful interpretations of our ideas. Change takes times, knowledge
takes time. The truth is never readily available to us for causes good or bad.
Sounds like a wise statement to me, Darwin said. But you know, I have a joke too. Can
I tell?
Sure.
Well there was this elderly woman who was brought to a convalescent home where
they care for you right? And so she is sitting in her chair and she starts to lean over to one
side. Well tow very attentive nurses see this and come running over and help here straighten
back up. A little later she begins leaning again, this time to the other side. Well, once again,
two nurses rush over and bring her back upright. Just then the womans children come in and
ask her how was her first day in this home? Well, just fine, the old woman said, expect they
wont let you fart!
Oh yes, I do believe I have heard that one, McGuire said.
Well it was told to me by my Uncle Erasmus, that was about 200 years ago I suppose.
He used to fart and make the sound of the British anthem. Peters French joke reminded me
of that. Since all animals fart I suppose there is some value to it. Dont you think?
Stefan, McGuire said, do you have any more questions for the group?
32

Mr. Darwin, Stefan leaped immediately, what about the title of your book, On the
Origin of Species.
Yes, that is what it was, the title was, yes.
Well you chose this title but nowhere in the book do you ever talk about how a new
species comes about, how it originates.
Yes, Kropotkin chimed in, that is a problem old buddy.
Oh no you dont Stefan, McGuire groaned, we dont have time in the universe for this
discussion.
But it is one thing to discuss it amongst ourselves
No one cares Stefan, McGuire sighed.
But to finally have Charles Darwin himself answer it
Ok, five minutes the moderator said. And thats in earth time, not heaven or hell
time.
So. Mr. Darwin, why did you choose this title and then leave us readers so dissatisfied
by offering not a glimpse of how a new species could arise.
I was afraid this would be asked of me some day, Drain began.
This discussion has been going on for 150 years Chuck, McGuire pouted. Put a knife it
in for Christs sake. Do it now!
Well, I am afraid to disappoint you, but I really dont have an answer. You see my
whole theory was well.. how do you say it so self contained that I thought it answered
everything. I had all sorts of alternate tile sin mind.
Such as? Stefan asked.
Well such as The Third Chimpanzee, The Greatest Show on Earth, Beak of the Finch,
Its a Wonderful life, Why Do People Sing?, Your Inner Fish

33

He is simply listing titles of books that were published after his, Stefan whispered into
McGuires ear.
Let him be.
But my favorite title has to be: Endless Forms most Beautiful. My wife didnt like it
though. Too poetic she said, not manly enough. So I stuck with On the Origin of Species.
Well, come on guys, I come close to describing that
Not even, Stefan said.
Nope, not even lose, said Kropotkin.
In fact, Stefan interjected again, it has become painfully clear in the last decade or so
that species probably originated under forces that had little or nothing to do with natural
selection. That the effects of processes such as cataclysmic events, Lamarckian stressors,
interspecies symbiogenesis, impregnation from space, any and all of these may have had more
to do with the individualization of species than your natural selection. Evolutionary thought
is moving further and further away from the individual and being asked to think more in terms
of the tribe, the colony, the community the ecosystem, the earth itself. And why stop there,
why not include the universe in our discussion about selection and speciation? In fact now it
seems as if scientists have found physical principals that predict the self-organization of life
without Perhaps you were simply describing what seemed most obvious to your eyes, you
had to make sense of what you saw, but what really was was beyond anything you could have
imagined you simply created a theory that could not be wrong. Thats all. Your created a
theory that like religion answered all our questions but in the end gave us no bread to eat no
wine to drink!
Go kid, Kropotkin was marching around the group in a circle saluting the stars and the
planets as he passed them, gesticulating with such force that one could mistake his empty
gestures for tossing those planetoids into their very orbits.
34

More critically, Stefan continued, is that your concept of an individual, of a species for
that matter, is not just outdated, but wrong, you and I are not jut you and I, we are made of
many cells and organisms that do not have any shared DNA with us, yet without them we
could not live, without them we could not eat, or breathe or fuck or get drunk. And those are
simply the beasts that tag along in our intestine s and on our skin, but there are hosts of
others that surround us, that are part of the system that we take for granted, that we think is
separate form us but of which w are indeed dependent on for this thing we call life and for
this process we call reproduction. Furthermore, is that you dont seem to realize that your
theory is not just a scientific theory limited to a straightforward application to any portion of
the world. No, its very survivability, its very feasibility and its very meaning are derived from
the structures and institutions hat you and others have placed on this earth to support it. The
schools for one, the banks and the industries, the governments, the police states, the poor
pitted against the rich, the farmers against the wolves, the newspapers, the library systems,
these are not defined in terms of natural selection but we are quick to apply natural selection
theory to the and how they operate: law, morality, ethics, knowledge, mankind, the existence
of the universe, it is all one great big circle jyyyerrrkkkk!
And here Stefans voice squeaked making it sound again like a teenagers question.
Whoa, Wilson heaved, that was quite a display. So this is your student.
Used to be. Years ago. Before he hit his head or something. Dont blame me.
Stefan, Kropotkin said, dont listen to these old farts, stick with your gut. You got a
good head. Keep fighting.
Auk, your are the oldest fart amongst us, Kropotkin, and well, you did it again,
Stefan, McGuire with complete and utter dismay. You had your chance to say something
poignant, even profound. Yet you managed only a pitiful squeak. So forget about it. Its not
worth it. When you can come up with an idea that is still going strong after 150 years, then
35

you can challenge Old Chuck here. But not tonight. Ok well, there you have it then
gentleman, so let me end with this. Old guy goes in to the doctor and says Doc my hearing is
getting so bad I cant even hear myself fart. The doctor hand the guy some pills. The guy
says, will these make my hearing better. No the doctor said they will make your farts sound
louder. The guy says ?
What? Kropotkin asked.
They all laughed.
What? Kropotkin asked again, I dont understand.
They all laughed again and acknowledged that the night was indeed over. They shook
hands, gave each other a long dusty hug, and were about to climb back into the slag holes
form which they emerged, when suddenly in the midst of all four men another eruption of
spewing gravel took place and yet another man wriggled his way to the surface.
Who is this? Wilson cried out.
I have no idea, McGuire said. Who are you sir?
Oh, well, the plump elder gentleman said as he picked rocks from beneath his
outdated lapels and shook dust from his balding head, I heard you talking about butterfly
collections and .. well I got here as quickly as I could.
Well, I am afraid you are too late, McGuire said, the debate is well over.
Oh my god! Mr. Nabokov? Stefan exclaimed. Is this really you?
Who? Who? Who? asked Wilson, Darwin and Kropotkin.
Why yes, that is I. Am I really too late. I have my own collection of butterflies you
see, quite extensive. I thought if I ever had a chance to share his with the likes of Mr. Darwin
here, why that would be an event I had to attend.
Tired as old men get, they huffed and snorted and shook hands again and hugged again
and then each with a tired bow and another grunt climbed back into their slag holes and
36

vanished beneath the surface of the slag. Mr. Nabokov looked around with an expression of
bewilderment, but joined the others and disappeared as well.
Satisfied? McGuire asked Stefan, now that they were alone.
Yea, Stefan said, I mean who would have known that I would have had the chance to
meet all of these men. I really cant thank you.
Well my dear Stefan, you have done to me what I thought I was best doing to others
you have bored me back to death. But it was fun seeing you. A chance to get out, see the
stars, reminisce a bit about the time eighty years ago when I came to this town, I was chasing
a young girl in those days, met her in the sweaty city of LA, she had come to be a movie star
but lost her way, I tried to convince her to stay, but tearfully she said no way.
Those are all rhymes.
So they are.
So what you just described never happened, did it?
No, but you never know, some day
And with that he left.

37