IV. Jim-7
Alien life, we
are told, would be unlike human life, and that may be true enough as regards
such trivia as species and body form. Indeed, an alien may possess senses, organs,
and appetites unknown to us. What lusts do bats endure that compel their squeaks?
Does it pleasure them to receive the echo? How can human minds encompass the hankerings
of bats – let alone those of a headwalker?
(This
particular
species of headwalker, for example, does not feel pleasure in the
reproductive
act. Rather, it feels a growing pain the longer it abstains, so the
pleasure is more
like the pleasure of ceasing to hit yourself on the head with a hammer.
Mother Nature has more than one way of butt-kicking her children into
reproduction.)
And yet, all
things pursue the good insofar as they know the good, and the good is whatever
preserves and completes its nature. In inanimate bodies, this preservation is
called “inertia.” For animate bodies, it is called “life.” The struggle to
maintain existence that Darwin saw in living kinds is only a higher form of the
struggle of a boulder to remain stubbornly in place.
(cont. at the Preview)
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