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was extraordinarily inept in handling, exploring or recognizing anything. Now that we had been alerted by
Madelaine J., we wondered whether he too might not have a similar «developmental agnosia» — and, as
such, be «treatable» in the same way. And, indeed, we soon found that what had been achieved with
Madelaine could be achieved with Simon as well. Within a year he had become very «handy» in all ways,
and particularly enjoyed simple carpentry, shaping plywood and wooden blocks, and assembling them into
simple wooden toys. He had no impulse to sculpt, to make reproductions he was not a natural artist like
Madelaine. But still, after a half-century spent virtually without hands, he enjoyed their use in all sorts of
ways.
This is more remarkable, perhaps, because he is mildly retarded, an amiable simpleton, in contrast to the
passionate and highly gifted Madelaine J. It might be said that she is extraordinary, a Helen Keller, a
woman in a million — but nothing like this could possibly be said of simple Simon. And yet the essential
achievement — the achievement of hands — proved wholly as possible for him as for her. It seems clear
that intelligence, as such, plays no part in the matter — that the sole and essential thing is use.
From.: «The New York Review of Books», Nov. 1984 .
ECOLOGICAL ARMAGEDDON
By Robert Heilbroner
The desirability of economic growth in an affluent industrial society such as the United States has in
recent years come under attack from many quarters. Some of the strongest and most pervasive critics have
been the ecologists. In a review of an important book, POPULATION, RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENTS,
by Paul and Ann Ehrlich, Robert Heilbroner summarizes and analyzes the major ecological problems posed
by unlimited growth.
l. The ecological issue has assumed the dimensions of a vast popular fad, for which one can predict with
reasonable assurance the trajectory of all fads — a period of intense general involvement, followed by
2
growing boredom and gradual extinction, save for a die-hard remnant of the faithful.
2. I have slowly become convinced during the last twelve months that the ecological issue is not only of
primary and lasting importance, but that it may indeed constitute the most dangerous and difficult
10
challenge that humanity has ever faced. Since these are very large statements, let me attempt to substantiate
them by drawing freely on the best single descriptive and analytic treatment of the subject that I have yet
seen, Population, Resources, Environment by Paul and Ann Ehrlich of Stanford University. Rather than
15
resort to the bothersome procedure of endlessly citing their arguments in quotation marks, I shall take the
liberty of reproducing their case in a rather free paraphrase, as if it were my own, until we reach the end of
the basic argument after which I shall make clear some conclusions that I believe lie implicit in their work.
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3. Ultimately, the ecological crisis represents our belated awakening to the fact that we live on what
Kenneth Boulding has called, in the perfect phrase, our Spaceship Earth. As in all spaceships, sustained life
requires that a meticulous balance be maintained between the capability of the vehicle to support life
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and the demands made by the inhabitants of the craft. Until recently, those demands have been well within
the capability of the ship, in its ability both to supply the physical and chemical requirements for continued
existence and to absorb the waste products of the voyagers. This is not to say that the earth has been
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generous — short rations have been the lot of mankind for most of its history — nor is it to deny the
recurrent advent of local ecological crises — witness the destruction of whole areas like the erstwhile
granaries of North Africa. But famines have passed and there have always been new areas to move to.The
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idea that the earth as a whole was overtaxed is one that is new to our time.
3.
For it is only in our time that we are reaching the limit of earthly carrying capacity, not on a local
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but on a global basis. Indeed, as will soon become clear, we are well past that capacity, provided that the
level of resource intake and waste output represented by the average American or European is taken as a
standard to be achieved by all humanity. To put it bluntly, if we take as the price of a first-class ticket the
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resource requirements-of those passengers who travel in the Northern Hemisphere of the Spaceship, we
have now reached a point at which the steerage is condemned to live forever — or at least within the
horizon of the technology presently visible — at a second-class level: 5 or a point at which a considerable
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change in living habits just be imposed on first class if the ship is ever to be converted to a one-class cruise.