Question: If you were the second officer on the starship, how would you answer the question: Are you a C1? a C2? a C3?
(a) (Behaviorist speaking) I give no answer. The question is not meaningful. There is no hard evidence that there is such an entity as consciousness, let alone “three types of consciousness.” In the behavioral sciences, we have discovered that we do very well indeed without recognizing such a thing as consciousness; in fact, by so doing, we have avoided the whole can of worms of subjectivity which has plagued psychology for hundreds of years.
(b) (Sagan speaking) C1. Our species is not qualitatively different from other creatures, but the evolution of man has been spectacular, from toolmaking hunter-gatherers to conscious technological man — with a few lapses such as the Christian epoch or the Dark Ages, lasting, say, from the destruction of the Alexandria library to the resumption of scientific progress with Galileo. We still have aggressive traits, but these can be explained by our residual reptilian brain. We do not recognize the existence of a “soul” or “psyche” if these entities be interpreted as anything other than a property of the organization of the DNA and other molecules of the organism.
(c) (Oriental, gnostic, etc., speaking) C1. We already live in a preternatural state of bliss if we but knew it. Our misery comes from maya and our own errors and can be dissipated by our own efforts. No help required or asked for or received.
(d) (Jew speaking) C2. Following an original preternatural or Edenic state, man did indeed suffer a catastrophe or Fall through his own pride and his own choice made in his God-given freedom. In his original state he invented language, named creatures, loved God and his mate, and was happy in his beautiful world. He fell and to this day is unredeemed and so he suffers the miseries of his unredeemed state and will continue to suffer until the Messiah comes to save him, or at least a Messianic Age, which we confidently expect. The coming of the Messianic Age, if not the Messiah, will be mediated by the Jews, who are a light unto the nations and with whom God entered into a unique covenant.
(e) (Baptist speaking) C3. Man is saved. He suffered the Fall, was promised a savior from the Jews. A savior came, Jesus Christ, to save us from sin and misery and death. The Good News of his coming was broadcast to the ends of the earth for all men to hear and be baptized and saved. The Kingdom of God exists here and now and we are in it. We have freed ourselves from the Catholic Church and other idolatries. I have had a personal encounter with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and I am saved once and for all and live now and forever in a state of blessedness, now on this earth and forever in heaven.
(f) Other (specify).
(CHECK ONE)
Thought Experiment: Sexuality and space travel.
As project designer at NASA, you must select a two-person crew to undertake a prolonged mission. Their objective: to act as emissaries to a civilization with whom communication is already established. It is a vital mission. They are more advanced than we. We, with an estimated 40 percent chance of survival, need their wisdom as well as their technology. Their goodwill is our objective. Your task, therefore, is to select the best, most admirable specimens of Homo sapiens sapiens.
It is also your responsibility to provide for the human needs of the astronauts. In the objective scientific stance so characteristic of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sexual needs are viewed as but one of the many human needs which must be provided for within the cramped confines of the spaceship, e.g., need for food, water, oxygen, exercise, simulated gravity, and so on. Previous missions have shown that pornography, Penthouse magazine, tapes of Nancy Friday, inflatable female dolls, and masturbation have been unsatisfactory sexual outlets. Nor have inhibitory hormones, saltpeter, cold baths worked.
You conclude that human sexual needs require humans to satisfy them.
It was decided against sending a husband and wife, not merely for the reason that a husband-and-wife team was not available, but because of evidence adduced by staff social scientists that the institution of marriage had fallen on such evil days that four out of five married couples studied — as well as unmarried live-in couples — were already so sick of each other that no one would take responsibility for what they might do to each other after years in space.
Accordingly, you have five crews available from whom you must choose one.
(1) A pair of good-humored and well-qualified astronauts, a man and a woman, who have no religious scruples and no marital or emotional attachments, a Burt Reynolds and a Shirley MacLaine type, each highly skilled technically, each sexually experienced and happily and actively and somewhat casually heterosexual, and who, though not well known to each other, find each other attractive — but who, let us admit it, are a little dumb and know next to nothing of Western civilization, literature, or history, beyond last year’s winner of the Super Bowl and the comparative ratings of Snyder, Carson, and Letterman during the last ratings sweeps.
(2) A pair of lesbians, an inseparable couple, pleasant, fastidious, housekeeping, “married” middle-aged homebodies with a low sex drive and a high toleration for closeness and intimacy. Besides being excellent astronauts, both are highly cultivated. One is by avocation a historian, the other a poet.
(3) A pair of male homosexuals from San Francisco. Strangers to each other before training, promiscuous as chimpanzees, they find each other attractive. Outside their technical proficiency, they have a range of interests; one was active in San Francisco politics, the other a Rhodes Scholar in medieval studies.
(4) A lapsed Catholic, Irish, Midwestern male chauvinist, and a militantly feminist woman. Despite, or perhaps because of, their differences, they get along famously. The male is perhaps the best qualified technically of the lot, his marriage is on the rocks, and he is highly sexed, humorous, and salacious as only a Christian or ex-Christian can be (as horny as a preacher, as the saying goes). The female is a handsome Gloria Steinem-Radcliffe type who subscribes to the NASA view that sexual drives and needs are normal biological properties of the human organism, and is willing to satisfy hers and his on the basis of an equality between the sexes — i.e., it must be understood that she is as free as he to initiate sexual behavior. (Her insistence on this point at the first interview made the male astronaut’s eyes sparkle with anticipation.)
These two were technically the best qualified of the crews, but one thing troubled the NASA project manager. In the standard questionnaire, the male astronaut responded to questions 45, 46, and 47 in the following fashion:
Q.: Do you now or have you ever professed a religion?
A.: Yes. But not now.
Q.: What was it?
A.: Catholic.
Q.: Do you regard sexual intercourse outside marriage as sinful?
A.: Technically, at the most. But in the interests of God and country I will make the sacrifice.
What bothered NASA was not that he might be compromising his principles — indeed, he seemed gleeful at the prospect — but rather a certain irony and flippancy in his answer. Beware of smart-ass ironical types, warned one of the older astronauts, the last of the line of un-ironical men beginning with John Glenn and Neal Armstrong. The NASA psychologist noted that the irony might conceal a deeply rooted scruple which might surface later in the mission. One thing the mission didn’t need was a guilty astronaut. Imagine an adulterous and penitent Catholic looking for a priest and a confessional on PC3 like a character in a Graham Greene novel.