The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  “Grandma Tomasita could not be defeated, in other words, yet her family was so poor that she never knew toys existed and only was given candy once. The lack of a childhood, the harshness of her life and the injustice of the nuns and factory owners made her ardently wish for a better future for all mankind, and she joined the Communist Party at the age of eleven. She was arrested one night when she stopped a policeman who was beating a child by threatening to curse his mother. When her father came to the police station to get her, the officers told him that she was deeply involved in radical politics that would hurt her and that he must beat it out of her. But, he had always been very close to her; and, after they had returned home, he only asked, ‘Pequeña, is it true?’ She said it was and showed him her card. When he half-heartedly picked up a belt to beat her, she said that she would never stop her political activities. If he forbade them, she would live elsewhere and support herself alone, as they knew very well she could. ‘I love you and mother,’ she said, ‘but I must do this for my ideals and a better world. This life is not worth living.’ He said to her, ‘OK, Pequeña, stand up for your self and for all of us. It’s true that I’ve never been able to do it myself.’

  “She was arrested and imprisoned when she was only fourteen years old and faced the same torture we’ve already heard about and the resulting damage to the spine and the kidneys. Her father died when he heard the length of her sentence, thirty-five years. She escaped at one point, however, and lived in the mountains with the guerrilla fighters. She married my grandfather and had my mother as her only child. My grandparents could not live safely outside the mountains until the death of Franco.

  “When I went to the university, I had a long spirited talk with her, though she was on her deathbed. I told her that I wanted only to heal the sick and would prepare myself for a long career in healthcare. She said to me, ‘I’ve fought all my life for a cause, and only now do I see that I was fighting for you, though I didn’t know whether you would ever exist or not. Your mother and I were poor and uneducated, and now here you are, going to the university to live in a world without fascism, where Spain is free, and you can choose to heal with medicine rather than firearms and resistance. My nickname has always been Pequeña, the Little One, so I want you to give yourself a nickname. Call yourself Big One. Be whatever you want—a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a matador for all I care. Whatever you become, always remember that if I were still alive (and I won’t be), I would welcome you home with a big, big hug and call you my Big One, for all the pride I felt because of you. You are worth what the fascists did to my spine and kidneys in torture when I was so much younger than you, just a child, and that is a very big thing, remember!’ She was right, and how could I ever forget it? I want you to remember, too, because her story also belongs in this house, to be told to the women who come here. We are the lucky ones.”

  ALEX WAS UP early, since she had not been able to find Ruth during the previous evening. She walked around the house’s ground floor and then went into the kitchen, where she was relieved to find Ruth making coffee. Ruth politely invited her to have coffee, and they went into the living room with two cups and a pot.

  Alex could find no subtle way to begin talking to Ruth about grief. She finally settled on an observation that was the reverse of what she wanted to know. “You seem very happy with Monserrat,” Alex began, and her statement ended with a slight question mark.

  “Oh, yes, very much so,” Ruth answered and thought, Sylvie has sent her. There’s no other explanation as to why she would be up so early, asking me such intimate questions. It’s still not resolved with Sylvie, and the situation is chaotic enough that both of them are disturbed. I must relieve them, but how?

  “If you don’t mind a casual observation, I thought you might also be a bit upset over something, probably related to your book, not about Sylvie, of course,” Alex said and thought this is awful. I will never be an ambassador.

  “Don’t let Sylvie hear that, ‘of course.’” They both laughed. Good, she’s getting right to it, Ruth thought.

  Both felt a uniquely queasy sensation in knowing that they had both been so recently involved with the same woman, one whom they both knew to be very difficult, attractive, magnetic, and explosive. “It’s really nothing you don’t already know from our lunch, when we first met,” Ruth said. “This time is very disturbing for the planet and the future of our civilization. We’re more vulnerable than most countries seem to realize. The animals I have studied all my life are in danger of extinction, and that is only small part of what’s at stake. Human pollution and habitat destruction are causing the sixth mass extinction on the entire planet, and people will pay the price along with other animals. Global warming is a big part of it, but there is much more. I am increasingly convinced that there will be a global catastrophe before humans are serious about stopping it, and it could be enough to send us back to the middle ages.”

  “I’m very worried about this, too, but I’m sure you know the situation in much greater detail. What do you foresee?”

  “In a nutshell, computer simulations say that ocean levels will rise by about three feet by 2100. But, they are always revised upward when actual measuring is done to determine whether the simulation is correct. A much more accurate figure would be a rise by fifteen feet. The beautiful cities on water that I have always loved—San Francisco, Rio, Hong Kong, Barcelona, too—will all either be underwater or behind sea walls by then. All the coastal areas will be behind sea walls, too. There will be no more swimming in the ocean, feeling at one with the universe, you can be sure. If our infrastructure doesn’t produce those walls, which will be very expensive and complex to keep functioning, the foundation of La Sagrada Familia will be under water. There will be tremendous loss of human life as well as animals. By 2015, the world’s population will number some nine billion people, many living on coastlines. The first global catastrophe is most likely to occur on the coasts or the island nations. There’s always a chance that people will take up alternative energy and methods of conservation in time, but it looks less and less likely as time passes and the situation becomes more dangerous. There is a new science of geoengineering that might come up with solutions, but its work will always be based on computer simulations, which can always be wrong. One idea that has been offered, the creation of gigantic mirrors placed between the earth and the sun, is a good example. If the calculations of the earth’s resulting temperature are off by the smallest margin, we could be plunged into a thousand-year winter. Conservation and shifting to other energy sources are the only safe methods, and that’s where people start becoming stubborn and resistant to change. The rise in sea level may not even be the worst part of the change. The first stage is increased precipitation, which causes chaotic weather—hurricanes, tornadoes, twisters. In winter, there are more snowstorms, paradoxically, in addition to warmer weather. Hurricanes and winter storms that are so powerful as to occur only twice century in the past, will happen every couple of years. We have no infrastructure for that. All countries need powerful central governments, much more intelligent leaders and a united, knowledgeable and motivated population for that. You know where the U.S. stands there; we both left in disgust. Northern and Western Europe are in a better position, Canada and New Zealand, too. They’ve had a long tradition of liberal government. But, the biggest nations—the U.S., India, and China—do not. In time, India and China will probably move in that direction, but the U.S. is moving farther and farther right. That’s why there has been so little job growth under Bush. I am sorry to speak at such length. I taught college students for so many years that it has permanently turned my language into that of an old professor.”

  “But I really want to know about this!” Alex said. “I’m beginning to realize that we need a political commitment to this issue here, in the house. It should be on the web site and Facebook page, and there should be a group meeting. There are plenty of scientists in the university professors group. I honestly don’t understan
d why Americans have so little commitment to this issue. They only talk about future generations when the Republicans want to cut the entitlements again. Otherwise, they could care less. It disgusted me enough to leave, but my Internet protests aren’t changing the situation at all. I’m sure they’ll elect a Democrat in 2008, but I doubt that government will really be able to change anything, either. Why are people so damned dumb?”

  “I’m happy to answer, but you’ll only hear a longer version of the old professor’s essay.”

  “So go ahead. I would like to feel something other than disgust for my country. And, you’ve heard what people around here have to say about it.”

  “To begin with, you’ve been part of an intellectual elite, probably since grade school. You may not have known enough people who are truly defeated by the American economy, but I teach all types at the university, and I’ve been thinking and reading about these issues for decades. You can’t imagine how economically besieged the middle class is now and how poorly educated. The public schools are so badly in need of funding as to be a disaster. Their graduates, if they can find work at all, are most often working two jobs. They have no time for the future when the present is so oppressive. They clearly haven’t the time to read and think enough to understand what’s happening to them and what their options are. That’s why they’re so easily swayed by the money and mendacity of the far-right Republican Party. It truly only acts in favor of the wealthy—the rest is pure deceit, which they engage in shamelessly. It reminds me so much of chimp behavior: if chimps meet another colony of chimps, they attack immediately. Of course, bonobos don’t do this. Chimps are intolerant of any divergence from the group they form. Equally, the Republicans represent the wealthy, and everyone else is not a human being, only a fool to be manipulated by lies.

  “Religion, which they also manipulate shamelessly, only exacerbates the situation by providing another justification for oppression of others. This is a complete violation not only of the New Testament but also of the social compact itself, through which humans are nurtured to adulthood and live lawfully in groups as adults. Wealth cannot be won without it, and the wealthy can’t then refuse to support the system that allowed them to acquire their wealth. But, this observation is a matter of thought and reason, and there’s no reason in the far right. Living in the U.S., you feel how powerful, vicious, ignorant and unreasoning the conservative predisposition is; it comes as no surprise to me that it’s biological. If their wealth has been acquired legally, unethically, or criminally but it has not been detected, the wealthy believe they have every right to deny a life of human decency to everyone else.

  “The other system of justice, typified by the Democrats with its biological basis in bonobo behavior, is that we must function and make decisions in diverse groups, help one another, protect the environment, and provide a strong safety net for the old and disabled. Clearly these are two different forms of justice, but only the latter is moral, and only the latter has ever resulted in economic prosperity and political maturity.”

  “Wasn’t there an economic expansion under Reagan?”

  “Yes, but also a big budget deficit. The Republicans always deliberately create one, like Bush did, so that they can argue against the entitlements. They create their own problems and then try to get themselves re-elected to solve them. It never happens, of course. Clinton had to clean up after both Reagan and Bush, balancing the budget while expanding the economy. He was the most effective president in modern memory, as they say.”

  “But, why don’t Americans feel the danger they’re in? I do, but I always feel that I’m alone outside of Moveon.org.”

  “There are polls showing that nearly half of Americans don’t believe that global warming exists. This statistic alone shows how besieged the middle class, how unable to read and study they are, how vulnerable to the mendacity of Republicans. The concept behind global warming is very simple: the heat of the planet causes more ocean water to evaporate into the air. What goes up must come down, so the first stage is increased precipitation, more water coming down, and hence the increased presence and strength of hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, floods, landslides and mudslides, huge snowfalls in winter, etc. There can be no question but what we’re in the first phase. Our infrastructure is crumbling under the stress now, to say nothing of the future.

  “Meteorology is a very complex field, however, and so is the application of this simple concept. When we factor in all the effects of wind and sun, water and air, millions of other variables show a picture consistent only in predicting extreme and destructive weather. Spain, for example, will undoubtedly experience extremes of drought in the future as well as floods. The jet stream over the US, which carries precipitation and normally runs east-west, can suddenly—for the first time—run north-south for brief periods, releasing much greater precipitation than usual, and this can prevent water from reaching areas in the south and west that hence experience more drought than ever before.

  “Too, the public may not always understand what computer modeling is, the methodology of climate scientists which, as a huge database of perhaps millions of variables, can describe the present and allow us to understand the future. A good example of computer modeling that everyone has seen is the images we have of our solar system from the various space probes we’ve sent to study it. When the public sees the final data, it looks as though they’re viewing the planets from the deck of the Starship Enterprise as it moves throughout the solar system. The raw data, however, is nothing but streams of binary numbers, 0 and 1. The computer system, using programmed rules or algorithms, enable us to see images that conceptualize the data and answer questions we address to it. There are now computer simulations so complex as to recreate the formation of the universe using all the astronomical data we have assembled. They can actually display the time just after the big bang, with the irregularities in radiation becoming stars and galaxies and thus the conditions for our own life and evolution.

  “These two basic ideas—increased precipitation and computer modeling—are not understood by so many Americans because they are poorly educated and beleaguered economically to the degree that they no longer form clear and accurate opinions about their time. In the period after World War II until the 1970s, there was a much narrower gap between rich and poor and greater general prosperity and economic competitiveness. The tax on the wealthy went from seventy percent to thirty percent today, plus plenty of loopholes to reduce that thirty percent far below the percentage the middle class pays. All of our real national needs—effective public schools, competitive industries, and stable infrastructure—have weakened to an amazing degree in this period. Ultimately, even the wealthy will fall prey to environmental catastrophes and their inevitable economic consequences. It could send us back to the Middle Ages.”

  “Why are intellectuals so weak in alerting the public, in saying this? I’m reading it all the time, but nothing seems to affect an election.”

  “The U.S. does very poorly by its intellectuals; they are hardly used in industry at all. My analysis of America’s economy is liberal orthodoxy. Liberal journalists and academics have been saying it for years. My synthesis is original, however, so far as I know. Fewer liberals know that the tendency to be liberal or conservative is genetic, though some surely do; it has been discussed in the media. I know of no one who has related it to primatology. I am probably alone there, and the reaction to my ideas could be very hostile.”

  “But what is better? What exactly are you advocating?”

  “The problems of combating global warming can only be solved through an alliance between science and industry. This can’t even begin before there is more economic prosperity. Germany is a good example of a resilient economy. It has a strong emphasis on excellent public education and empowered labor, resulting in a skilled and talented work force in industries that fare well in global competition. You do not see the great disparity between rich and poor there; positions at the top of industry don’t
have the huge salaries you see in the US. Germany also has a powerful middle class and a strong safety net for the old and disabled. Historically, it seems to be without some of the US’s most misguided ideas, like salvation from a free market economy and the value of self-reliance over well-functioning groups and governance. The reverse of this is the dying, third-world economy that the U.S. has begun to resemble—poor public education, weakness in the position of labor, fewer jobs, corrupt and non-competitive industry, crumbling infrastructure, and the rise of far-right politicians who do nothing but obscure this reality. It leads to catastrophe for all.”

  “Sometimes I imagine their idea of a perfect world,” Alex said. “It’s all pleasure for the wealthy and no concern for anyone else at all; the rest is an impediment. Yet, they’re always the first to cry morality and ‘God’s plan.’”

  “I can only agree,” Ruth said. “That is human evil. There is no other. Genocide is only the final step: elimination of the impediment.”

  This has nothing to do with Sylvie, Alex thought. It’s depressing to me, too. “This has all been very helpful to me,” Alex said. “I can see now that my political priorities have not been ordered quite right. This seemed like one political problem of many, whereas they are clearly all related. If you want to share any ideas from your book as you write it, I will be happy to put it on the web site with links to many other sites.”

  “I would welcome it, and I hope there are many more young people like you. We’ve now drunk more coffee than anyone should in the early morning. You’ve got a dissertation to write.”