1 More Day Until Home Sweet Home

I finished the book I was reading, "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein. It was a compelling book. The book is not so much an adventure (as the movie made it out to be) but a social commentary on what is wrong with the current world and he puts forth his idea of a good system - not ideal but good.In fact, that is where Heinlein fall down in his vision.

He has no idea of a final truth or the right way; merely that which has worked. He declares man to be a amoral species. His argument is that if we were a moral species then the appeals to a higher standard we use today would work. That the higher moral standard would be followed. The fact that we don't seem to follow a higher standard leads him to conclude that there is no such standard and that humans are amoral, neither good nor bad.

I assume that Heinlein is not a Christian, because there is another option that explains the failures of the appeal to the Higher Standard. That option is that humans are immoral. Not amoral or moral, but actively opposed to good, and because Heinlein rejects our moral nature, he reaches a conclusion which he explains about a third of the way through the book: We respond to punishment and reward, exactly like any Pavlovlovian experiment. He does say that it doesn't always work, because not everyone's brains are wired correctly, but in general, use the proper stick and carrot and mankind can go to maximum long term survivability, which he holds up as the only standard in the universe. It is Darwin's survival of the fittest applied.

Yes, he believes we are machines, but the next 2/3rd of the book is explaining how wonderful that is once we find the proper carrot and stick and that everything will be wonderful. Heinlein puts a lot of philosophical questions put into his conversations in which he develops a high standard of correct action based on amorality. But though the book kept my attention, at the end all I could think is, "For what? The main character found his position in life, being a solder dedicated to the group." What a terrible final hope. That is nothing. In a few years, life is done and no one remembers. How much better it is to have a hope beyond being a 'good' machine - to go into a life where the joy is unimaginable and everlasting. Where we will not be tired, have physical pains, be grumpy in the morning, or have any of the problems that we live with right now.

I thought it was a great book. It made me think hard as I read; though I ended up rejecting almost every premise and conclusion Heinlein came up with, it still made me think and become more settled in my own Christian beliefs.