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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Space Is Clean
Message-ID: <1361@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Oct-85 16:25:28 EST
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1361
Posted: Thu Oct 31 16:25:28 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Nov-85 05:19:02 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
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                        Space Is Clean
                 An article by Mark R. Leeper

     I was listening to a record of music from science fiction films.  They
played the title song from the epic science fiction film GREEN SLIME (yes,
there was a Japanese-American co-production called GREEN SLIME).  The lyrics
contain the lines:
     Man has looked out to space in wonder
     For thousands of years,
     Sometimes thinking that life could be somewhere
     And now...now it's here!
"What a pity," I thought, "if after all that searching we found life and it
made you sick just to look at it."  But that got me thinking about how
likely it was that if we found life in the universe it would likely be
something that would turn our collective stomachs.  There are, after all,
not many life-forms on this planet that if you saw one scaled up to about
six feet tall or 180 pounds would not make you at least a little queasy.  I
heard someplace that most of the animal biomass of the world is beetles.  We
should certainly be used to what a beetle looks like.  Let's face it--Gregor
Samsa didn't have any groupies.  Mick Jagger has groupies, but even that is
pushing human tolerance.

     Not that there isn't a good reason to instinctively be disgusted by
relatively alien life-forms.  That's nature's way of saying "Do not touch!"
It is similar to the instinctive fear some people have of spiders and
snakes.  Somewhere in our past there were some pre-humans who hated spiders
and snakes, and some who thought they were pretty and grabbed for them.  The
former group were our ancestors; the latter ended as Caveman McNuggets for
jackals or buzzards or something.  Life-forms fall into three classes:
friends, food, and foes.  That's the safest way for a pre-human to live.
Friends better be close friends.

     So most life-forms we find disgusting, but the converse is even more
true.  Only a small part of the matter on Earth is connected with life-
forms, yet everything disgusting is.  I don't mean virtually everything, I
mean everything.  Think about it.  What your cat left on the floor, the
disposable diaper you kicked in the grocery parking lot, what you stepped in
on the sidewalk: they are all icky because of their connection to living
matter.  There's nothing disgusting about rocks on the moon.  People can say
space is barren and cold but it isn't disgusting.  When you find green
slime, then it will be disgusting.


					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper