Implications

Brain Wave, 5-6.

An sf novel should have a counterfactual premise with logically worked out implications. Animal and human intelligence has increased and a bull has escaped:

"[Brock] checked the bull's pen. The gate had been broken down by a determined push. Half the power of fences had always lain in the fact that animals didn't know enough to keep shoving at them. Well, now they did, it seemed." (p. 56)

We should all have been able to think of that.

Because many people have quit low ability jobs, the city has almost ceased to function. A man preaches:

"'...because we forgot the eternal principles of life, because we let the scientists betray us, because we all followed the eggheads.'" (p. 58)

Because a sudden increase in intelligence has disrupted society, he turns against intelligence. Anti-intellectualism is not the answer; nor is intellectualism at the expense of values. The preacher continues:

"'I tell you, it is life only that matters before the great Oneness in whom all are one and one is all.'" (ibid.)

As a matter of fact, I agree that the single reality has become conscious of itself by appearing to itself as other and many, thus that all is one and we are one although in a way that does not negate but incorporates our individualities. The One is neither homogeneous nor static but internally differentiated and dynamic. However, the content of these abstract propositions must be concretely experienced and enacted. Can we act as one not at gunpoint but from freely realized necessity as in an emergency? Global survival becomes an emergency. Anti-intellectual preaching will not help.