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Southern Star, v. 1, issue 3, August 1941
Page 12
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Life Everlasting SOUTHERN STAR Page 11 Again my friend bellowed in anguish at my ignorance. "The human who studies finds that educational practices are becoming more involved, more specialized and complex every day," he protested. "Fifty years ago, people studied an average of six years before going into the world as educated and fitted for making a living. Now they study 16 years before becoming qualified for a profession." All this is true. To be a professional in any line one must study many years and the future will show more time being spent in learning. But the average man, just as today, will never be able to compete with the professional in learning. My knowledge of medicine, math, social history, and economics is that of a layman, but I could, if necessary, and if I had the time for century after century -- I could learn enough, surely to keep on making a living. Just supposing I would be a doctor. I would know that I was to be here for all time until the very end of time. I would enter a good university (say next century after all home ties had been dissolved) and would study along for a number of years and get my practicing degree. Good -- now I'm a doctor. The new discoveries are brought to my attention, just as they are to all doctors, month after month. My mind, my body, stays at thirty. That is, my native intelligence suffers no decrease in power such as old age would bring. My ability to learn is that of a thirty-year-old man. Fifty years pass away, and all my patients are passing, too. (Through no fault of mine.) To keep from being an object of curiosity because of my continued youthfulness, I move to another part of the world. I again enter university as a Freshman medical student, and find that in THIS country ten years are required for the obtaining of a degree. Okay! I've plenty of time. I've already had fifty years experience and I'm a pretty smart freshman. In fact, I'll probably surprise some of my professors. So this procedure, we'll say, goes on for a thousand years. Great changes have come upon the Earth. The governments have all been consolidated, and only one tongue is spoken. Well, I've been here all the time, and through the years I have picked up the language, the customs, the ideas and the incidental knowledge to get along in life. I'm entering another university, perhaps on Mars, as a Freshman in Medicine. The course now takes 100 years to finish because human life has been increased to span 300 years of living. I've got the time, and better still I've got those years of experience and: Those brain convolutions! Boy, is my brain convoluted! Along comes the year 21,421, and I have just received a hurry call to the mines of Pluto where a cave-in has killed and wounded thousands. I step easily through the walls of my office (the proper mental wave automatically actuating certain atom-separation apparatus) and I get into my plastic "spacer". I set a knob on the proper pin-point on my constellation map on the instrument panel, and in 15 minutes by the clock I'm on Pluto. (The reason I've gone by "spacer" is that my "transferrer" can't work. The cave-in on Pluto destroyed the receiving set -- otherwise I would have gone into my metal cabinet on Earth, turned the knob and disintegrated into a wave pattern easily reassembled on Pluto. Is all this strange to me? No. I've gone along with the world, never losing my youth, my vitality, and my ability to absorb the new things as they come along. I still maintain that I would like to live until the Planets of the Universe are again dust, and the energies that flow through us are once more only cosmic static. To see the sun grow cold, and the human race reach the pinnacle of perfection. Perhaps I shall. Who knows? * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Life Everlasting SOUTHERN STAR Page 11 Again my friend bellowed in anguish at my ignorance. "The human who studies finds that educational practices are becoming more involved, more specialized and complex every day," he protested. "Fifty years ago, people studied an average of six years before going into the world as educated and fitted for making a living. Now they study 16 years before becoming qualified for a profession." All this is true. To be a professional in any line one must study many years and the future will show more time being spent in learning. But the average man, just as today, will never be able to compete with the professional in learning. My knowledge of medicine, math, social history, and economics is that of a layman, but I could, if necessary, and if I had the time for century after century -- I could learn enough, surely to keep on making a living. Just supposing I would be a doctor. I would know that I was to be here for all time until the very end of time. I would enter a good university (say next century after all home ties had been dissolved) and would study along for a number of years and get my practicing degree. Good -- now I'm a doctor. The new discoveries are brought to my attention, just as they are to all doctors, month after month. My mind, my body, stays at thirty. That is, my native intelligence suffers no decrease in power such as old age would bring. My ability to learn is that of a thirty-year-old man. Fifty years pass away, and all my patients are passing, too. (Through no fault of mine.) To keep from being an object of curiosity because of my continued youthfulness, I move to another part of the world. I again enter university as a Freshman medical student, and find that in THIS country ten years are required for the obtaining of a degree. Okay! I've plenty of time. I've already had fifty years experience and I'm a pretty smart freshman. In fact, I'll probably surprise some of my professors. So this procedure, we'll say, goes on for a thousand years. Great changes have come upon the Earth. The governments have all been consolidated, and only one tongue is spoken. Well, I've been here all the time, and through the years I have picked up the language, the customs, the ideas and the incidental knowledge to get along in life. I'm entering another university, perhaps on Mars, as a Freshman in Medicine. The course now takes 100 years to finish because human life has been increased to span 300 years of living. I've got the time, and better still I've got those years of experience and: Those brain convolutions! Boy, is my brain convoluted! Along comes the year 21,421, and I have just received a hurry call to the mines of Pluto where a cave-in has killed and wounded thousands. I step easily through the walls of my office (the proper mental wave automatically actuating certain atom-separation apparatus) and I get into my plastic "spacer". I set a knob on the proper pin-point on my constellation map on the instrument panel, and in 15 minutes by the clock I'm on Pluto. (The reason I've gone by "spacer" is that my "transferrer" can't work. The cave-in on Pluto destroyed the receiving set -- otherwise I would have gone into my metal cabinet on Earth, turned the knob and disintegrated into a wave pattern easily reassembled on Pluto. Is all this strange to me? No. I've gone along with the world, never losing my youth, my vitality, and my ability to absorb the new things as they come along. I still maintain that I would like to live until the Planets of the Universe are again dust, and the energies that flow through us are once more only cosmic static. To see the sun grow cold, and the human race reach the pinnacle of perfection. Perhaps I shall. Who knows? * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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