It might be argued that if we can ever live without ego, willing to subordinate self-interest to the higher good, we will need to judge in order to recognize what the higher good really is. On Mars, everyone agrees on what is good and right. Everyon e is of one mind and individuality doesn't really seem to exist the way it does on Earth (a not too surprising consequence of the egoless state they are in). There is complete harmony and those selected for discorporation go happily and willingly. It is not so on Earth. Here, we hold multiple value systems and will different things. We do not have the kind of harmony that makes "wrongness" or "rightness" clear-cut and non-problematical concepts. We must also wonder how any "wrongness" could even exist on a planet like Mars where everyone is in such a high degree of harmony. Grokking leads to harmony. When two people grok together and achieve the kind of empathy with one and other that enables them to see with each other's eyes, there can be no wrong between them. But judgment never leads to empathy and it is the antipathy of grokking.
From killing storm troupers, Mike moves on to a greatly expanded sense of his mission to rid the world of "wrongness."
"I have been waiting, making a list, making sure of
fullness in each case. So, now that we are leving this city
--they don't live here anymore. They were discorporated and
sent back to the foot of the line to try again. Incidentally,
that was the grokking that changed Jill's attitude from one of
squeamingness to hearty approval: when she finally grokked in
fullness that it is impossible to kill a man--that all we were
doing was much like a referee removing a player for 'unnecessary
roughness.'"6
Jubal asked, "How many did you toss out of the game last night?" "Oh, about four hundred and fifty--I didn't count. This is a largish city. But for a while it is going to be an unusually decent one. No cure, of course--there is no cure, short of the discipline." Jubel has grave misgivings about all this. "Aren't you afraid of playing God, lad?" Mike replied, "I am God. Thou art God...and any jerk I remove is God, too."
If everyone is God, Michael and Heinlein seem to suggest we be Old Testament Jehovahs, each passing judgment on everyone else's right to live, and each executing the sentence of death as he finds appropriate. But the Old Testament Jehovah was a monotheistic god. He couldn't be otherwise and judge as he did. If everyone is God, then everyone is sovereign. No one has the right to kill a sovereign being, except in self-defense or defense of others. If the "jerk" Mike "tossed out of the game" was God, too, then that jerk had the same right to toss Mike out of the game. The social contract and the golden rule are part of our ethical make up in order to prevent such a debacle.
Another interpretation would be that not everyone has the right to judge and kill. Only those who have achieved a degree of enlightenment have that privilege. But this only raises the question of how we are to know if we are enlightened. Anyone can think he is enlightened. The philosophy and fictional commune of Stranger is very much like that of the Manson family. They too combined a lifestyle of orgies with a belief in their elite status and right to kill.
More needs to be said about the sexual philosophy in Stranger. Sexual possessiveness is bad, free love is good. Jill begins with prudish and straight-laced attitudes towards sex and religion. She learns to think honestly and freely, disgarding the taboos that had been keeping her from seeing things clearly. There is a beautiful passage describing how Jill gets in touch with her exhibitionism by taking a job as a stripper. She becomes "as happily shameless as a tabby in heat" while showing her body to horny men. Sadly, Heinlein is not consistent in his willingness to disgard irrational taboos. He, like Jill, displays some provincial thinking which he had not overcome in his writing.
"...she had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok -- and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke -- fortunately Mike's male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as his others were very female women. Jill suspected that Mike would grok a 'wrongness' in the poor in- betweeners anyhow -- they would never be offered water.)"
Well, obviously, it is homophobia, plain and simple. Heinlein thought it beautiful for certain sexual taboos to be overcome (all straight women should become wanton and free for example). But other things (mainly those that don't compliment the hetero-male's fantasy) were wrong. This is disturbing enough. But there is an even more disturbing aspect to it and that is the idea of homophobia being achieved through the process of "grokking." Here, once more, the misuse of the concept bears evil fruit. Heinlein is free to indulge his prejudices while hiding behind the loftiness of the high-consciousness form of perceptiveness presumed in his hero.
Mike's use of the word grok seems to fall into even greater laxity when, after discussing their realization that Jill could be intimate with any of the (male) water brethern, Jill asks him,
"Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks made a pass at me?" Mike barely smiled. "I grok he would be missing."That is so offensive! If said in the heat of passion, it would have been oppressive enough. But it was uttered calmly and coldly. It reminds me of a stern Christian minister, a daddy, administering the law with all the sense of entitlement to interpret as well as enforce whatever he believes is "right." Once again, Mike takes on the persona of an Old Testament Jehovah.
The New Age is a challenging meeting place of East and West. Many of the ideas in New Age thinking (and in Stranger) are Eastern, the oneness, harmony, transcendence of ego. But the Western need to judge is also present and takes its entitlement from the Eastern justifications. Most New Age thinkers are probably not even aware of the extent to which their thinking has been contaminated by such traditional thinking they had thought they had disgarded. "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet," warned Kipling. But they have met. It was inevitable. In a way, our exposure to these other cultures is like the exposure of the Earth to Martian culture in Stranger. Western culture is ready for Eastern influence and has received much fertilization or inspiration from the connection. Without it, the New Age would not be happening. Dispite my reservations, I regard Eastern thinking and the New Age as both positive and necessary. We must keep in mind, however, that some of the combinations may be a difficult mix. The East has lived with it's own culture for centuries and knows how to do it. We must learn how to integrate the ideas we are absorbing into our own existing culture.
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