“I’m sure you’ve noticed that only tourists really look at local landmarks. For all practical purposes, these landmarks are invisible to the natives, simply because they’re always there in plain sight.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
“This is what we’ve been doing in our journey so far. We’ve been wandering around your cultural homeland looking at the landmarks the natives never see. A visitor from another planet would find them remarkable, even extraordinary, but the natives of your culture take them for granted and don’t even notice them.”
“That’s right. You’ve had to clamp my head between your hands and point it in one direction and say, ‘Don’t you see that?’ And I’d say, ‘See what? There’s nothing there to see.’”
“We’ve spent a lot of today looking at one of your most impressive monuments—an axiom stating that there is no way to obtain any certain knowledge about how people ought to live. Mother Culture offers this for acceptance on its own merits, without proof, since it is inherently unprovable.”
“True.”
“And the conclusion you draw from this axiom is …?”
“Therefore there’s no point in looking for such knowledge.”
“That’s right. According to your maps, the world of thought is coterminous with your culture. It ends at the border of your culture, and if you venture beyond that border, you simply fall off the edge of the world. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Tomorrow we’ll screw up our courage and cross that border. And as you’ll see, we will not fall off the edge of the world. We’ll just find ourselves in new territory, in territory never explored by anyone in your culture, because your maps say it isn’t there—and indeed can’t be there.”
SIX
1
“And how are you feeling today?” Ishmael asked. “Palms sweating? Heart going pit-a-pat?”
I gazed at him thoughtfully through the glass that separated us. This twinkle-eyed playfulness was something new, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I was tempted to remind him that he was a gorilla, for God’s sake, but I held it in and muttered:
“Relatively calm, so far.”
“Good. Like the Second Murderer, you are one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incens’d that you are reckless what you do to spite the world.”
“Absolutely.”
“Then let’s begin. We confront a wall at the boundary of thought in your culture. Yesterday I called it
a monument, but I suppose there’s nothing to prevent a wall from being a monument as well. In any case, this wall is an axiom stating that certain knowledge about how people should live is unobtainable. I reject this axiom and climb over the wall. We don’t need prophets to tell us how to live; we can find out for ourselves by consulting what’s actually there.” There was nothing to say to that, so I just shrugged.
“You’re skeptical, of course. According to the Takers, all sorts of useful information can be found in the universe, but none of it pertains to how people should live. By studying the universe, you’ve learned how to fly, split atoms, send messages to the stars at the speed of light, and so on, but there’s no way of studying the universe to acquire the most basic and needful knowledge of all: the knowledge of how you ought to live.”
“That’s right.”
“A century ago the would-be aeronauts of the world were in exactly the same condition with regard to learning how to fly. Do you see why?”
“No. I don’t see what aeronauts have to do with it.”
“It was far from certain that the knowledge these would-be aeronauts were looking for existed at all. Some said it wasn’t out there to be found, so there was no point in looking for it. Do you see the similarity now?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“There’s more to the similarity than that, however. At that point in time, there wasn’t a single piece of knowledge about flying that could be considered certain. Everyone had his own theory. One would say, ‘The only way to achieve flight is to imitate the bird; you’ve got to have a pair of flapping wings.’ Another would say, ‘One pair isn’t enough, you’ve got to have two.’ And another would say, ‘Nonsense. Paper airplanes fly without flapping wings; you need a pair of rigid wings and a power plant to push you through the air.’ And so on. They could argue their pet notions to their hearts’ content, because there wasn’t a single thing that was certain. All they could do was proceed by trial and error.”
“Uh huh.”
“What would have enabled them to proceed in a more efficient way?”
“Well, as you say, obviously some knowledge.”