I’ve yet to hear of a committee steering a lifeboat tonsafety. In our days, few dictators are elected, but theirnprohferation should speak to us of the danger we all feel, butnmany fail to acknowledge. It will not be the Bomb that doesnus in: when Herodotus met the Scythians, they were andegenerate, obese race, on their last legs to extinction.nEverybody dies, and all things die: it is the price we paynfor living. So the only thing left to us is to ensure that wenhave lived. The promise of life breathed upon us is asntenuous as our existence. No technology will ever be able tonfulfill it, for the simple reason that no technology is everngoing to be alive. If we ever succeed in breeding simulacranof life in our workshops or laboratories, we will only havencompleted what we have so far set out to do. Our world willnhave become solid-state, crystalline, and dead, to no one’sndetriment but our own.nThese things, unfortunately, go beyond ideology. Ournsearch for life without its consequences, evident withnBrazilian tribes as with the people in America, is the onlyndanger we face. The communists have only turned out tonbe the most ferocious, devoted, and consistent huntersnafter safe, and deathless, life. Maybe that is the reason thatntheir name has been tied up with so much murder and destruction.nWe are killing ourselves and everything around us withnour desire to live. The first outcome of our “rationalism”nhas been by now a permanent quantification of everything.nThat which cannot be counted, many have come to regardnas nonexistent. But how is one to quantify love, devotion,nloyalty, courage, truth, or even life itself? Nobody speaks ofnanyone being “partially alive,” yet I have been told, often,nthat Yugoslavia, for instance, is “freer” than the SovietnUnion. Our ability to make such distinctions may be a goodnindicator of why slavery still rules the world.nIntrinsically, there is no reason why freedom should bendependent upon opportunity. Of course, Marxists wouldndisagree with me, but I have seen men spring out of miserynand meanness issue from privilege. Men have been free,nand free of fear as well, in very adverse conditions, and theynhave been, and are, dying of fear in wonderlands of plenty.nCancer and AIDS are not our plagues, but our fear of themnis. Death has no name, and cultures have diflFered, so far.nnnJANUARY 19861 Vn