Besides, she insisted that she could remember many past lifetimes in which she had lived selfish micro existences both as male and as female.
I wondered about this business of past lives of different sexes, but decided to bring it up later.
Back-in our Alpha dyad room-I thought of it as our room now-Carol showed me the toilet facilities by activating a circuit which caused a portion of the wall and adjoining floor to change into a very strange, but remarkably convenient, area for disposing bodily wastes. When I looked pained at its lack of privacy, Carol smiled and suggested I press a nearby button, which I did, causing an opaque plastic-like wall to slide completely around the area.
'There you are, Jon,' she said. 'A way to hide that part of you which you feel is shameful. We prepared this barrier screen especially for your arrival,' she teased.
'Here in 2150 we provide privacy for thinking, not for hiding, but I know that you in the 20th century were still very ambivalent about the human body and its most basic and necessary functions.'
I had to agree with Carol that I was probably neurotic by 2150 standards, but I used the opaque wall and asked her to do the same. I was pleased that she didn't resist my request. She was a very accepting, easy-going person. Not that she was at all reluctant to express a point of view that differed with mine, but she didn't get impatient or angry with my micro neurotic ways or my insatiable curiosity about 2150.
When I asked her about the video wall screen, she explained that it was connected with Central Information just like the one in the C.I. room. Then/ she showed me some new ways of using it.
As we sat down in the two chairs facing the. video screen Carol commanded Central Information to show us some newsmagazine material from 1970. Almost immediately we found ourselves leafing through the pages of Time and Newsweek magazines as recorded on microfilm. Carol stopped the C.I. at one of the pages and asked me to read and comment on the following:
Time magazine, 7-13-70:
'Millions of Americans in 1970 are gripped by an anxiety that is not caused by war, inflation, or recession- important as those issues are. Across the U.S. the universal fear of violent crime and vicious strangers, armed robbers, packs of muggers, addict burglars ready to trade a life for heroin is a constant companion of the populace. It is the cold fear of dying at random in a brief spasm of senseless violence for a few pennies, for nothing. 'And yet, Americans are several times more likely to. be hurt in auto accidents or household mishaps than to be raped, robbed or murdered. Only about 10% of robbery victims are badly injured, fewer than 1% are killed. The nation's well-being is far more insidiously undermined by embezzlers, price-fixers [micro politicians] and organized racketeers than by muggers or car thieves.
'Roughly half of all serious crimes are never reported, often because numbed victims expect no, help from overburdened police. Between 70% and 80% of police effort is spent, not on crime, but on hushing blaring radios, rescuing cats, and administering first aid. Countless additional police hours are wasted on crimes without true victims, e.g., drunkenness, gambling, pornography, illicit sexual activities. Even the best police work is undone by clogged courts and punitive prisons that breed more crime.'
I looked at Carol and said, 'What can I say except that the world of the '70s was divided, not united, and, couldn't cooperate enough to resolve its major social problems.'
'Your society,' Carol said, 'functioned in the only way it could, based on its micro perspective of life. People can only behave in terms of how they perceive themselves and the world about them. And these perceptions are completely determined by one's beliefs or philosophy of life, which were, prior to the 21st century, generally unconscious.'
'Okay,' I admitted. 'We needed a broader perspective so we could see the larger picture. We needed a Macro perspective-a perspective large enough so that we could see that the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount provided the best of all practical advice.'
Carol smiled and quoted, ' 'For whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt back to you.' '
'Yes,' I responded, 'but that doesn't make sense in everyday human affairs unless the individual is aware of this macrocosmic oneness.'
'In the 1970s,' Carol added, 'you lived in a world in which at least one out of every three people lived in abject crippling poverty, and you people, in your proud United States – united indeed! Hmmm, but that's another story you people had a welfare system so politically corrupt and inadequate that it not only ignored the worst cases of human neglect and poverty but actually perpetuated poverty and ignorance from one generation to the next.
'At the same time,' she continued, 'you dedicated your major national energies and resources to war and paranoid preparations for war. If, in the 1960s and '70s, you had devoted the same amount of money and national effort to solving your social problems that you did to waging your nation-dividing Vietnam War, you could have ended the poverty cycle forever in your country and gone a long way toward resolving many of your nation's other social problems.'
'I know,' I said, 'but our political leaders were ignorant, if not corrupt.'
Carol shook her head. 'Every nation deserves its leaders,' she said. 'You're trying to avoid your own responsibility by placing the blame on others. Please, Jon, don't think I am sitting in righteous judgment of you or your micro society. I don't blame or condemn micro man for acting like micro man. It is the only way he can act, because it is the only way he has learned to act. But I must help you see this broader perspective.'
'But,' I objected, 'how can you not condemn human beings for selfish, cruel, and even vicious behavior toward others? Especially since that behavior became so selfish and shortsighted that it almost wiped out our whole planet?'
'It was the only way,' Carol answered, 'that man could learn the consequences of his own actions. Mistakes are absolutely essential in the learning process. Besides, Jon, it's only terrible from the short-term micro point of view. From the Macro view it's all perfect. Everything has a purpose and a happy ending because everything is evolving toward perfect Macro awareness.'
'I know,' I said 'that from your Macro view we are all responsible for our every experience. But tell that to someone who is suffering from poverty or disease, or some other kind of human injustice.'
Carol smiled and said, 'I don't speak to children about things they're not ready to understand. But I don't forget that in time every child becomes an adult and everyone eventually will understand everything.'
I decided that we had gone as far as I felt I was ready to go on this subject, so I asked Carol when I would meet the other Alpha members. She immediately asked C.I. to contact her, or should I now say 'our,' Alphar. In about fifteen seconds we heard the voice of our Alpha leader who informed Carol that the rest of our Alpha would be back in about two hours.
After Carol had thanked him for this information she terminated their contact and told me how C.I. can contact any Macro society member by using the communications cell contained in the bracelet which each of them wore. She showed me what she called her mib (for Macro identity bracelet). It contained a timepiece, a communications cell, a bionic monitor, and a nutrition compartment. I was fascinated by the fact that the bracelets supplied C.I. with the heart and brain patterns for everyone in the Macro society. Any danger was immediately relayed, via C.I., to those closest and best able to offer help even if the person in trouble was unconscious and, thus, unable to call for help.
Carol told me that I would soon receive my own mib. Then she asked me if I would like to see pictures of our other Alpha members. Of course I did, so she asked C.I. to present them.
Suddenly I was looking at a picture of our leader, Alan, whose voice I had just heard. At the same time C.I. was telling me about him.
'Your Alpha leader, Alan, is 20.6 years old, six feet five inches tall (this, along with his weight, was given in metric equivalents, then translated for My benefit), 240 pounds, and is presently residing in the student Gamma of Delta 927.'
Carol interrupted C.I. at this point to tell me that we could listen for days to the accumulated information that C.I. had on every individual member of our Alpha. This information, she said, even included data on past lives. However, she felt that I probably was not ready for too much information on each member yet.
