MISANTHROPIC INTERLUDE...

I walk down the streets of this city and increasingly I see people who remind me of Wells's Morlocks and Eloi, except that the two types are combined in one: a person who has all the ugliness and lowliness of the Morlock, but at the same time the pathetic helplessness of the Eloi. These are people you can see buying things but you can't imagine them making anything or engaging in any kind of humanly challenging labour. Look at the physical manifestations of the civilization around us -- giant buildings, computers, automobiles -- and ask yourself this: did such a race of schlemihls design and run all this? How is it possible? It's like discovering a sophisticated space station built, inhabited, and maintained by absent-minded chimpanzees. We seem to be too small for the world we have made.