Word: humanity
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hard, as Barth noted, to grasp the scale and meaning of the murder of millions of human beings. After statements like Castro's it is harder still. Extraordinary acts of murder slip by us, easing past our dulled sensibilities. Millions have died in Cambodia, as, it seems, will millions more. Persistent reports confirm that the Brazilian government is massacring the Amazon Indians to permit exploitation of the Brazilian hinterland. How can we describe these atrocities, how can we summon up the will to intervene, as the U.N. says we have the right to do, if "genocide" is just another lame...
...irresponsible practitioners who propose theories without ample evidence, make lots of noise in support of them, and then fall niftily by the wayside when someone with the facts comes along. Sagan debunks them in several delightful essays, taking to task, among others, the proponents of mathematically gifted horses and human levitation...
Aside from this, however, Sagan retreats into the misty land of speculation--on the future, on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, on the possibility of intergalactic communication. For example, he draws a hyperbolic and fatuous parallel between the Big Bang theory of the birth of the universe, and the human birth experience. He proposes a seemingly infinite number of theories in these chapters and substantiates each less well than its predecessor, abandoning totally the close scrutiny he has just advocated so strongly...
...consistent bumbling in these spheres is the unintentional leit-motif of Broca's Brain. When in doubt. Sagan shies away from the secular implications of his lofty ideas. In the course of declaring, for example, that we will one day have robots for garbagemen (at current prices, the human version are "expendable"). Sagan mentions hastily that "the effective re-employment of those human beings must, of course be arranged; but...that should not be too difficult." Such is his political sagacity...
Perhaps Geoffrey's brother at last exposed the real Duke, a fumbling, impotent, useless human being, unworthy of eulogy, much less a 270-page memorial. But this stinking jailbird did not bring up Geoffrey. The book is not about the real Duke, but the Duke of Deception, the father who raised a son "to be happier than he had been, to do better." Evidently he accomplished that goal and for that Geoffrey Wolff offers his compassion and his gratitude.Geoffrey Wolff and his children...