Did he “love” Jameela, or she him? The word was too simple for what they had together. English needed more fine-tunings of such terms as “love,” anyway, just as the Eskimo tongue was supposed to have a score of words to express different kinds of snow. There ought to be separate names for platonic friendships, once-for-the-hell-of-it larks, casual rolls-in-the-hay, pay-as-you-lay commercial couplings, motel afternoons, one-night stands, beach-blanket weekends, let’s-try-for-a-week experiments, month-long serious relationships, share-the-apartment-until-one-of-us-gets-bored-long-term stuff — all the way up to eternal matrimony sanctioned in Heaven and stamped with God’s holy thumbprint.
Lessing’s relationship with Jameela Husaini did not fit any category. They cared a great deal for one another, but neither was sure where it went beyond that. He didn’t want to marry Jameela, settle down in India, or, God forbid, back in Iowa, and grow old and squishy like a potato in a bin. She hadn’t mentioned marriage either. Wrench had once suggested that opportunity and proximity were the mainsprings of love. The Indoco plant was a zoo, and Lessing and Jameela were tiger cubs tossed into the same pen. What would they do if the cage door were opened?
It would be easy to hide any extra-curricular games from Jameela. Indoco’s wire-mesh fences locked things out as well as in. Here in Guatemala City it was simpler still. He could lose Goddard and Wrench in a revolving door. Jameela would never know.
To get down to bedrock, however, Lessing was no Captain Marlow Striker, the steely-eyed, granite-thewed, stereotypical mere of the movies and TV. Fantasy was fine for the kiddies and the frustrated, but it wasn’t reality. Fictional heroes might treat women as objects to be acquired, laid, and discarded; Lessing preferred women who were people, responsive and intelligent, with humorous, quirky personalities. He wasn’t like Goddard, who went for TV sex-goddesses with teats like a pair of mortars. Such women were about as real as the Tooth Fairy. Wrench — well. Wrench had never been known to have sexual congress with anyone or anything, animal, vegetable, or mineral. Nobody knew what turned him on.
Lessing groaned inwardly. He was arguing himself out of what, for want of a euphemism, could be called a Great Lay. Here in this alien city he could have bar girls, booze, gambling, man-talk with his fellow beegees, but those didn’t appeal. He might as well read a book or count the little guys with sombreros pictured on the wallpaper. Liese appealed, even if only platonically. He made eye-contact with her again. This time she smiled back at him.
Mulder’s smooth voice insinuated itself between them. “…And in view of the breakin at Indoco, I propose to transfer the movement’s historic diaries to Mrs. Delacroix. Security in Pretoria will be better than ours in India, and, as a Descendant” — Lessing could almost hear the capital letter— “she has a right to retain the diaries, just as my family has had them for the past quarter-century. I shall thus send them along with my chief of security, Mr. Lessing… sorry, Alan, about the surprise trip… and Mrs. Delacroix’s people can take over once they reach South Africa.”
It looked as though he and Liese were going to have something more than dinner together after all.
What matters? What is worth establishing and maintaining?
Survival. Only survival. Individual survival is first; then comes the survival of the family, the clan, the tribe. These are immediately comprehensible. Beyond them lie ever larger and more diffuse, long-term loyalties. Eventually one arrives at the only objective that matters across the vast span of evolutionary time: the species.
When the species prospers, it is possible for the individual to prosper. Fulfill the basic species needs, and individual members then have the leisure for art, literature, crafts, and all of the other enhancements of life. The primary goal is thus service to the species. Every individual has a duty to contribute to this.
Yet, it must be noted, humanity itself is not homogeneous. Just as there are different species of apes, each with its own physical traits and temperament, so there are different races of men. We define breeds of dogs, horses, or cattle, yet some of us balk at speaking of different varieties of human beings. Why?
Physical differences between races are manifest; variations of temperament and mental ability are just as real, even if they are less evident to the uncritical eye. Some groups may be more inventive, others more contemplative; some more aggressive, others more cooperative and placid; some more powerful and with more stamina, others weaker. These differences have been poorly studied, due to the belief that to investigate racial differences is somehow dangerous or “not nice.” But it is no more reprehensible than saying that one breed of cat has longer fur than another, or that Poodles respond to training differently than Labradors.
This is fact, not theory; empirical truth, not propaganda. Some human sub-species may not be as distinct from one another as, say. Saint Bernards are from Pekingese. Yet the sub-specific variations which exist within the human species make for psychological and cultural divergences that become immensely important in the aggregate. Each sub-species’ basic genetic makeup combines with environmental, historical, and other factors to produce what may be termed a “racial character.”
We may call a human group identified with a distinct racial character an “ethnos.” As one goes down the scale from sub-species to nations, from communities to families, and finally to individuals, the manifestations of the ethnos appear at every level. In essence, this is “race”; this is “society”; this is “ethnic identity”; this is “regional character”; this is a large part of “personality.”
The word “ethnos” includes, but is not limited to, the German term Volk. That term was inclusive enough for the nationalistic “peoples” of the early twentieth century, but in this age of mass communication, easy travel, constant population shifts, and overlapping international economic and political power-spheres, a new and broader term is required. “Ethnos fills this need.
Except at the highest levels of abstraction, it is difficult to serve the human species as an undifferentiated whole. Attitudes and ideas and objectives diverge as one passes from one sub-species to another.
It is feasible to work for the communal goals of one’s own sub-species, one’s ethnos, however. This is intelligible to the individual; it is an extension of the tribe, the group, the community, and the family. It is the object of a human being’s primary loyalty. What does not serve the ethnos is irrelevant, superfluous— and possibly dangerous both to the ethnos and to its individual members.
Every sentient entity possesses a control center, a brain, which weighs perceptions, evaluates responses, and orders actions. In the past the control center of each ethnos was fragmented: kings, chiefs, princes, and pontiffs ruled moieties, clans, tribes, nations, factions, parties, sects, and other such groupings. These were shored up by such underpinnings as myth, ritual, ideology, morality, nationalism, tradition, the law, and the like. These sanctions were often further strengthened by declaring them to be “God’s Eternal Law” or attributing them to some other authority. Reasoning past these obstacles was difficult. Acting counter to them cost many martyrs their lives.
The time has come when there is no more room on earth, too little food, too many competing ideas and pressures. Catastrophe looms, and not for one species such as the dodo bird, but for life on earth. Humanity can no longer remain a mindless, purposeless organism whose parts cannot respond because there is no brain, no ganglia, no nervous system to issue commands.
The human entity as a whole must develop such a brain: a leading, guiding, directing force. It is imperative that one ethnos, the one best qualified by its historical record of invention, organization, and development, should create a control center and lead humanity into the future.