The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [95]
“So educate me,” Smith said acidly. “What does he think it means?”
“Nietzsche’s idea of the overman was rather vague,” Lisa told him, “but he would certainly have been horrified by the subsequent usurpation of the idea by the Nazis. Nietzsche seems to have thought of overmen—and he did mean men in the narrow sense, although I hope that modern Algenists are more generous—as intellectuals and creative artists, definitely not swaggering oafs in jackboots. Nietzsche’s critique of moral systems is complicated, but one of its fundamental observations is that the old moral systems tend to see good in negative terms, as the absence of manifest evils like hunger, pain, injury, and death. That was perfectly reasonable in societies so primitive that they were perpetually assailed by all the ills that made even human life nasty, brutish, and short—but it no longer makes much sense in advanced societies that have the means to oppose the elementary evils and drastically reduce their role in everyday life.
“Nietzsche thought, and Morgan Miller agreed with him, that there comes a point in social and personal evolution at which one has to stop thinking of good merely as the absence of manifest evil—the so-called ‘ethics of the herd’—and begin thinking of good in positive, active, and creative terms. It’s a fundamental tenet of algenist philosophy that instead of merely trying to insulate ourselves from suffering, we have to start thinking about what we actually want to make of ourselves. We have to stop being content to be merely human and decide exactly what kinds of superhumans we intend to become. Nietzsche would have agreed with Morgan that the two most obviously mistaken models are political tyrants and plutocrats—and I think Herr Geyer would like us to believe that his Institute of Algeny takes the same view.”
“Does it?” Smith wanted to know.
“You’re the one who commissioned the background check.”
The MOD man curled his lip skeptically. “What about the other stuff?” he asked. “That crack about the elixir of life not being as simple as fantasists made out. He seemed to be trying to make a point.”
“He was,” Lisa admitted, and hesitated only briefly over the question of how honest she ought to be in explaining her interpretation of the point in question. “As far as I could judge, he was suggesting that finding ways to live longer would be futile if we continued trying to live in the same old way. That’s why he was rather contemptuous about Ahasuerus. If Adam Zimmerman really has had himself frozen down until his Foundation can find a way to make him emortal, Herr Geyer might concede that the man’s an enterprising and ingenious coward, but would nevertheless find his cowardice deplorable. I daresay that he said much the same to Morgan in the course of the conversation he was too scrupulous to tape—and he seems to think that he struck a chord. Herr Geyer presumably wants to believe there’s more to Morgan’s imperfect discovery than the possibility of extending the life span—but that might be wishful thinking on his part. He might have been misled by his optimism into mistaking the actual import of Morgan’s reservations.”
Smith thought about that for a moment or two. “You mean that if Miller has discovered a way of extending the human life span, it may have some unfortunate side effect that renders it less than wholly desirable. Like the Struldbruggs in Swift.”
Lisa was mildly surprised by the literary reference, but all she said was “Yes.” She had gone as far as she was willing to go—but it was far enough. She looked out the window again, but there was still no sign of first light. How can dawn be dragging its feet, she wondered, when time is racing at such a headlong pace? Have I somehow cut myself adrift from order and continuity?
“I think what Dr. Friemann means, sir,” Ginny put in, her voice only slightly muffled by the loose-set mouthpiece of her helmet, “is that it might work only on females. That would explain the radfem motivation.