By Diana Holbourn
Upset, Discussions and a Bit of Fun During Becky's First Year at University
Book two of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 2 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
(To recap: At the end of the previous page, a student started making wry quips about politicians not being trustworthy, and not taking notice of public opinion except at election time.)
One student said, "I've heard some jokes that seem appropriate for politicians, like, 'Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel,' And, 'Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.'"
Some of the students grinned, and another one said, "Yeah. I heard one that says, 'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying unsuitable remedies.'"
"They're all appropriate for politicians, aren't they," said another student, who'd remembered a couple of politician jokes of his own, saying that one went, "Politicians are those who deal with the problems that would not exist if they themselves didn't exist."
"Is that a joke or just a statement of fact?" asked one student with a grin.
"You could say the same about this one," said another student: "Never have I seen a word as accurate as politics. Poly meaning many, and tic being a blood-sucking thing."
"I heard that a political leader himself in Germany once said, 'Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied," said another student.
"Please," said the tutor. "Jokes can be funny, but I'd like us to get back to discussing the subject."
The rest of their politics jokes had to wait till after the class was finished, when a few went for coffee together and ended up telling each other ones they remembered, such as, "We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate," and, "Don't vote. You'll only encourage them".
But they didn't tell any more jokes quite like that during the class.
Then one student said, "I'm not trying to take this discussion off the topic again, but I just want to say that I've heard that there Are politicians who go into parliament because they genuinely want to change things for the better and think that'll be a good way to do it. I heard about a politician who got badly injured a few years ago and his assistant got killed. I don't know what the motive was. But I got irritated when someone said she couldn't care less, and that it was good that politicians were finally having to cope with one of their own being attacked, because it would help them understand what it was like for the general public who have to put up with attackers on the loose.
"But I thought that was a stupid point of view, apart from being insensitive. I mean, for one thing, what evidence is there that most politicians don't know or don't care about what's going on? For another, what she said was daft, because it was phrased as if she thought the whole of the public was facing death and serious injury every day; she said, 'Now they'll know what it's like for everyone else.' I mean, if it really was that bad for everyone, there wouldn't be many people left alive in this country by now!
"And the main illogical thing about what she said was that, although I don't know anything about this man who got seriously injured or his assistant that got killed, how do we know they weren't charity or health workers or something like that before the injured man went into politics? She seemed to imagine that all politicians are exactly the same - that all of them are just clones of each other - all of them out-of-touch scumbags with exactly the same attitudes as each other.
"But if those men who got attacked really were charity workers before they went into parliament, what if they'd been attacked when they still were charity workers? This person who was so uncaring about the man being injured and his assistant being killed might have said it was a terrible shame that two charity workers who'd done so much good had been treated in that way. But they enter parliament, maybe to try to do good there where they hope to be able to really influence new laws and people's attitudes, and when the exact same people who this person would have thought it was a shame if they heard about them being attacked only a couple of years earlier when they were charity workers get violently attacked, somehow they're now people who it just doesn't matter about in this person's silly mind! You know, she might have had exactly the opposite attitude to exactly the same people, just because before they got attacked, one of them happened to go into parliament, even though he became a politician to try to do some good there."
The tutor cleared his throat and said, "Yes, you've got a good point there. But I'm thinking about my tea going cold in the oven while I'm on a train coming home late. I don't mean to sound insensitive, so don't go complaining one day about this insensitive tutor you had on your course once who just told you to get back to the topic of the lesson after you'd just been talking about someone getting killed; but please can we just get on with the lesson?"
The one who'd just been speaking looked embarrassed. But all the students thought she'd made a good point, regardless of the fact that it was nothing to do with what they were supposed to be talking about.
Then one of them said, "Hang on, if your tea's going cold in the oven, won't that mean somebody's forgotten to switch it on? ... Or absent-mindedly switched it off when they shouldn't have? It won't be our fault."
All the other students laughed.
It was the tutor's turn to look embarrassed. But he said sternly, "You know what I mean!"
He was about to continue talking when one student, coming to his defence, said, "To be fair, it could have been put in the oven to cook, and then the oven could have been switched off, and the food could have been left in it to cool down gradually; but if it ended up being in there for ages, then it would go cold."
The student was dismayed to discover that the tutor didn't seem to appreciate that attempt to stand up for him, or didn't realise it was one, since he just threw his head back in exasperation and said in a stern raised voice, "Please, let's just get back to talking about what this class discussion's actually supposed to be about!"
There was silence for a few seconds.
Then one student said seriously, "Yeah. The thing is, getting back to talking about war again, it does seem that some politicians are given way more power than they deserve. Considering what's happened in the past, it seems that some who had a lot of power just weren't responsible enough to handle it wisely. I wonder if so many people would be so eager to rush off to war because politicians told them to these days. Maybe a lot of people don't trust politicians so much nowadays. Maybe if the Internet had been around in 1914, quite a lot of people would have written anti-war blogs and argued on forums about how bad it might be and how badly the politicians were really managing things, and maybe they would have changed a lot of people's minds about going."
"A lot of people might not have come across the places where people were talking about the anti-war stuff though," said another student.
"Yes, but people who'd really wanted to publicise their opinions could have got friends to share links to their blog posts with their friends, and they might have got passed on and on till lots of people read them," said another one with enthusiasm.
One said with a grin, "The best thing would be if politicians didn't start wars in the first place though. Maybe what really needs to happen is that the staff in the House of Commons canteen should put cannabis or some other drug in all their cups of tea, or if they don't want tea, they could sprinkle it over their food when they're not looking or something, and maybe soothing music could be played in the House of Commons all the time too, and then maybe they'd feel so mellowed out, they'd never want to send anyone to war again."
The students sniggered, and one said with a giggle, "Yeah, but it might work a bit better than expected. And then imagine if one day an MP asked the prime minister what he planned to do about a shortage of affordable housing, and he said, 'Nothing! What do these people want houses for anyway? They could all go and live naked in a hippy commune somewhere! I might join them one day.'
"Wouldn't that be a scandal! It would be reported all over the news! Recordings of him saying that would be played all over the BBC."
The students laughed, and one said, "I don't know; maybe politicians would always be saying funny things, so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for the prime minister to say things like that. Just imagine if an MP said he'd read a report that said our schools aren't coming up to standard so they're letting pupils down, and he asked the education minister what he was going to do about it, and he said, 'Why should I do anything about it? School's a total waste of time! I'm sure it never did Me any good! Let's close them all down, and let all the children do what they want!'"
All the students laughed again, and another one said, "Or just imagine if before the canteen staff started drugging the politicians' food and drink with the mellowing drug, a health minister had announced there were going to be cutbacks in the amount of money the government was giving the health service, but afterwards, when someone asked him about them, he said, 'Cutbacks? No, give 'em more money, as much as they want, that's what I say! No, actually, I don't know what they put in my tea nowadays, but it does make me feel good! From now on, I want every patient in every hospital in the country to get five cups of House of Commons tea every day! I want more staff recruited to work in the canteen making that lovely tea, and lots of lorries brought here to transfer the tea to hospitals in every part of the country!'"
The students giggled, and Becky said, "Or just imagine if they didn't see any point in bothering with the parliamentary rules any more, and a lot of them had pets and brought them into the House of Commons every day, and sat stroking them all day, but they sometimes had to pull them apart when two didn't like each other and they thought they might fight. Or maybe the pets' water bowls would be filled with House of Commons tea too so the pets would be too mellowed out to want to fight as well.
"Then when anyone put the telly on and went to the parliamentary channel, instead of hearing politicians' speeches, they might hear a load of meowing and barking!"
The students thought that was funny, but the tutor was anxiously looking at the time. He'd been thinking about calling them to order sternly when they started joking yet again, but he wasn't sure whether to or not, because he'd been secretly enjoying the jokes. But he thought it was about time they started talking about what they were supposed to talk about, and said, "Listen, you lot might be happy to stay here all day chatting, but I'd like to get home sometime tonight and have some tea!"
"Will it be House of Commons tea?" asked one student quietly with a smirk.
The tutor tried not to smile and said, "What I'm saying is that I want you all to get back to the topic of obedience to authority now, please! Things began to sound hopeful when you started talking about soldiers in wars."
They all became serious again. One student said, "I heard a recording of some men who had to fight in the first world war being interviewed on the radio. They said the first Christmas they were there, a truce broke out just for a day or two between the ordinary soldiers, because they wanted to celebrate Christmas. Some British and German soldiers even exchanged gifts. And some started chatting with each other as best they could. They said they were surprised to find out that the Germans they spoke to didn't want to fight any more than they did, and just wanted to get home to their children and girlfriends and parents. They realised they were just the same as them, so they started wondering what they were doing fighting them. They started thinking they actually had more in common with the ordinary German soldiers than they did with their own generals and politicians, who spent most of the time safe behind the lines, just giving orders.
"The generals decided they needed to put a quick stop to the truce, before the soldiers got too friendly and started asking questions about what on earth the war was really for and why so many ordinary people had to be killed. So they ordered the firing to start again, and once the British side started firing, the Germans quickly retaliated, and the whole thing started again."
The students thought that was terrible. But Becky said, "I wonder what would have happened if the soldiers had all refused to start firing again when they were told."
One student said, "Wow, just imagine if no one volunteered to fight in the first place when the politicians tried to persuade them! The government would have had no choice but to change their minds about sending the country to war!"
"The ones who were already in the army would have had to fight though," said another student, "since when you join the army you just have to do what they tell you, unless you're pretty sure an order's illegal."
"What if soldiers could have a go at making some kind of case that a war itself was illegal?" piped up another one enthusiastically.
"Or what about if loads of soldiers tried to make the case that it would be an immoral war so it Ought to be illegal?" said another. "Maybe they could take it to court, and even if they lost, the case might take so long the politicians who wanted to start the war might have changed their minds by the time the verdict came through."
"It might be easier for a soldier who came up with an idea like that to get support nowadays with the Internet around!" said another student thoughtfully.
"Wow, imagine how much more peaceful the world might be if everyone in every country just ignored politicians who tried to get them to go to war!" said another student dreamily with excitement.
The tutor was hoping the subject might finally be turning to what it was supposed to be - obedience or disobedience to authorities. But both he and the dreamy student were brought down to earth - though for different reasons - when another student said gloomily, "There would always be a hardcore of people who like fighting though, for some reason, and once they'd attacked people, those people would want to call on others to help defend them, and then the people who started the fight would call for reinforcements, and then the people being attacked would want more help from others, and the conflict would grow and grow from there."
"Yes but I bet wars wouldn't be nearly as big as they get when politicians call for lots of people to be involved!" said someone else.
One student said with a hint of a smile, "You've been criticising politicians quite a bit. What would you say if I told you my dad's a politician?"
The student who'd been talking just before that blushed and said, "Is he?"
"No, he isn't actually," said the one who'd asked the question with a smirk.
They all giggled. But then things got serious again.
One student said, "I heard a programme on the radio about whether humans just naturally have a predisposition to go to war because of the way we evolved."
Another student said mockingly, "What, you mean, forget all the things we've just been saying, it's all in our genes, and we're All just a bunch of thugs really?"
The student who'd mentioned it replied, "Well actually, I didn't think the programme was all that good; most of it was just about violence in chimpanzees; they seemed to be working on this theory that if chimpanzees were found to be warlike, it must mean humans had inherited warlike tendencies from them, because us and them have got almost all our genes in common. They Did find that chimpanzees sometimes gang up against each other. But they said other mammals don't, like there are some monkey species that are actually peaceful, and we must share a lot of our genes with Them too.
"But people shouldn't try to find out the answer to a question like that without investigating alternative possibilities to see if they're more likely, or if they can be eliminated; I mean, I think they should have looked into other reasons wars have been started to see if they were better explanations. You know, like, how many have been to do with struggles for the basics of life like food and water, and how easy it would have been for people having those problems to have come up with alternative solutions, so they'd know how high the pressure to go to war really was on them.
"And where people like that didn't come up with alternative solutions so they went to war, could it really have been to do with their genes, or isn't it possible that it had a lot more to do with lack of the kind of education that could have trained them in more intelligent thinking, or emotions like greed that made them want more than they really needed, or the way they were brought up - I mean, I heard there are tribes that used to train boys for war from the time they weren't much more than toddlers! If you grow up believing it's natural, maybe you're more likely to do it. Well, I suppose you might reject the whole idea instead.
"But I mean if you've been trained to attack quickly when you think you spot a predator and you've practised and practised, it'll be like training your reflexes to trigger off faster and faster when you feel threatened. I don't know how they train these children, but suppose they take them out hunting, and if they see a big animal through the trees, the person training them whips up excitement and tells them they'd better use their weapons quickly or they might get eaten - which might actually be true - then they'll get quicker and quicker at attacking on sight, till one day if they're taken out on a raiding party with the men, and they go into another community, the minute they see a person through the trees, they'll be programmed to attack them before they're at risk of being killed; so they might kill them before they even stop to think about whether they're an armed man who might actually be a threat, even though he might only be defending his community, or a civilian carrying a pail of milk home for her little children!"
"Cripes this is depressing!" said one student. She paused for a second or two and then said, "I could really do with some of that House of Commons tea at the moment! Or some alcohol."
She said to the tutor in mock seriousness, "Sir, I request a pint of ale to enable me to finish this lesson!"
The tutor cleared his throat and seemed to be about to say something, but before he managed to, another student said, "You know, I've heard some people say animals are better than humans because they don't go around killing because they're trying to get more power and things like that; they only kill because they need to eat. Actually I don't think things are as simple as that; it's not as if all humans kill, and there are animals that kill for power and things, or so I've heard.
"But anyway, I heard that when Charles Darwin's books got published that said humans are descended from apes, some people were outraged at the thought that we could just be animals like the rest of them. But just imagine if apes were even more upset when they found out what Darwin was saying; just imagine if there were shrieks of outrage all over the forests where apes lived, and they said in ape language, 'How dare that Darwin insult us by saying humans descended from us! They're not like us at all! We don't have big wars where thousands get killed! We don't make weapons! We don't destroy forests and pollute the land! How dare he!'
"And imagine if the ape king gave an order, saying that if anyone were to spot Charles Darwin wandering around in a forest somewhere, they were to organise a surveillance squad to follow him, so when he went home, loads of apes could stow away on the ship he was travelling on, and then have a great ape march to his house to protest about his outrageous claims about humans being descended from apes! Imagine the ape king ordered that lots of apes should demonstrate at his house, trying to make him understand that he ought to tell the public it wasn't true after all, and if he refused to listen, they were to climb through his windows or get into his house by whatever other means they could, so they could find the manuscript of his dreadful book and eat it or something!"
The students sniggered, partly at what had just been said, and partly because they wondered what the tutor would think of this latest interruption.
The tutor said sarcastically, "Listen, you may be an entertaining bunch of students, but if you want to pass your degrees, you're actually going to have to get around to doing a bit of work! Please get back to the topic we're supposed to be discussing!"
One student joked with a smirk, "Ah, but what we're saying has to do with the topic; we're demonstrating that we're at least capable of disobeying authority Sometimes."
The tutor could barely resist a smile, but he turned to the student who'd been talking about people being trained to fight and told her to carry on with what she'd been saying, hoping to goodness that at least That was on-topic!
The conversation immediately plunged into gloom again as she said, "Well, I was saying that tribes that taught their kids to fight from an early age might have trained them to have quick reflexes so they'd react quickly when they saw someone who just might be a threat, so even if they weren't, they might have killed them before they realised. I've heard that modern armies train people to have quick reflexes too. And it's not just that, but they train people to be Willing to kill more quickly. They studied how to make people more willing to kill others, because they found out that in the second world war, quite a lot of people weren't shooting to kill, but were aiming over their enemies' heads. Look it up! They found that people are more likely to kill in certain conditions, such as if they're defending friends, so they sometimes team people up with them so they'll want to defend them so they'll fight harder.
"Another way army training can make people more willing to kill enemies is by dehumanising them in people's minds, by not talking about them as if they're fellow humans, but calling them names that are abusive or as if they're objects, and saying things about them designed to fire recruits up with hatred and anger. When they do that day after day, I suppose trainees start valuing even civilian lives on the other side much less than they do their own.
"Anyway, about this programme I heard about whether people just inherit a tendency to be violent from chimpanzees and that's why they get warlike, they didn't even seem to wonder whether things might be more complicated than that; they just seemed to be out to prove chimpanzees are aggressive, and then take for granted that if that was true, we must have inherited their aggression genes. But scientists shouldn't just try to prove a theory by looking at the evidence For it, but they should try to find out if there's stronger evidence Against it too!
"And I told the radio at the beginning that they should have thought about just What Percentage of the human population are responsible for starting wars anyway! It's actually a pretty tiny one, although they manage to drag lots of people into them. So just why they were assuming that humans in general are warlike, I don't know!
"I actually read that people don't all even join the army because they want to be violent. I read an article that said that in America anyway, a lot of people join up to escape poverty or because the army offers them a free education. There must have been times when people could join up not expecting to have to actually go to war."
One student said, "You'd be taking a massive risk though if you joined the army hoping not to go to war! Wars can come on quite quickly sometimes, I think, can't they?"
Another student smiled and joked, "Maybe we inherited risk-taking genes from chimpanzees and that's why people do it."
One student asked, "Is it really true that we share over 95 % of our genes with chimpanzees? I mean, we can do so much more than they can!"
"I can certainly believe Some people share that many with them!" said one student, grinning.
Another one said, "If we do, doesn't that make giving birth a bit risky? I mean, I know it can be anyway, but what if somehow a baby just lost four per cent or so of its genes before it was born. It might be a chimpanzee!"
The student who said that was being serious, but some of the others laughed, and one said, "I don't suppose it works like that, otherwise we would have heard about it happening. Anyway, chimpanzees probably still have quite a lot of genes we don't have; I don't suppose it's just that we have a few extra ones."
One student said, "I read that humans share a quarter of our genes with rice! And we share some with coral, and even fungi!"
"Ugh, fungi? Doesn't that mean mould and things?" asked one student in disgust.
"Mushrooms too," said another one. "Hey imagine if someone gave birth to a mushroom, because something went wrong and their baby developed without a lot of its genes. Imagine someone pushing a mushroom around in a pram. But Imagine if it still had some human genes, so it could still cry like a baby, and it grew as big as a human, so it grew to about six feet tall, and its stalk was like a leg it would use to hop along everywhere."
The students giggled. One said, "Or imagine giving birth to something that was a bit like a chimpanzee, but it had leaves growing all over it instead of fur, and a rice plant growing out of the top of its head."
Another student joked, "Hey, just imagine if when a man was being aggressive and had a primitive attitude to women or something, it was the law that you could report him to scientists, and they might decide he was a human-chimp hybrid who belonged in the zoo, and they might take him there. Men like that might become massive tourist attractions; they'd have signs above their cages saying things like, 'Here's a chimp-human. He looks like a human and can talk like one, but inside he's a chimp'."
They sniggered. Then one said, "I don't know how scientists can work out that we have so many genes in common with chimpanzees; I mean, we don't even share all our genes with each other, do we? I mean, if we did, the human race would be a mess, wouldn't it, just like if people marry their cousins, their babies are more likely to have things wrong with them than if they marry people who aren't related to them, because their genes are too similar. Isn't that how it works?"
Another student said, "I don't think it's the fact that they've Got the same genes that causes the problem; we've all got the same ones, I think; it's just that we've probably all got things wrong with some of them. Most people won't realise, because if they've at least got the healthy versions from one parent, even if they'll carry faulty versions of them that they got from the other parent so they'll pass them on to any children they have, they won't have any symptoms of any problems themselves, and their children likely won't either, as long as they've been given one copy of the healthy version of the gene from the other parent.
"But if parents are related, there's a higher chance that any things wrong with any of their genes will be wrong with both parents' genes, so their kids definitely will have something wrong with theirs because they'll be getting faulty versions of the genes from both parents, because, say, the parents of cousins who marry might be a brother and sister whose parents passed on a copy of the same faulty genes to each of them, so when they marry people and pass the faulty genes to the kids who'll be cousins and later marry each other, both of those cousins will have unhealthy versions of the genes, so their own kids will likely get both copies of the unhealthy versions, so they've got less chance of avoiding whatever diseases people get when they've got the faulty versions.
"I think it's more complicated than that, but I think that's basically it."
"So what causes genes to get things wrong with them?" asked one student.
The tutor looked up at the ceiling as if trying to summon inspiration from the skies, or maybe from just the ceiling, feeling a bit hopeless about being able to control the conversation and bring it back to the topic it was actually supposed to be about. He could have done, but he was too interested in what the students were saying to really want to stop them, even though he knew he should have done if the class was going to end at a decent time. So he wasn't sure what to do.
One student said, "I think one thing that can go wrong is that whenever cells divide, like when children are growing bigger so they need more and more, or if people's bodies are repairing little things so new ones need to be created, they need to copy all the long long genetic code into the new cells, and sometimes they make mistakes, so a little bit of it changes. Most of the time it doesn't matter much; the body repairs itself or the mistake isn't significant. Occasionally it can be serious and make it more likely a person will get a serious disease, but any babies they have will only get something nasty wrong with them if the cells the mistakes are made in are the ones that are going to make a baby, so that would be the egg or sperm that goes into making one.
"But then, if a mistake's made in the egg or sperm cells before the baby starts growing, it'll be copied into every cell of the baby's body, including the ones they'll be using to make babies themselves later on in life if they live that long, so the mistake will then be passed down from generation to generation. Some mistakes aren't significant, but If it's a serious one, babies can be born with diseases and sometimes they'll even die at birth. Or sometimes they're born just carrying the disease gene, but it doesn't cause a disease in them, but it might in some of their descendants.
"So if some of their descendants marry each other, they might not know it, but they might both be carrying genes with the same mistakes. If those mistakes are serious ones, then that might be bad for their children, because they won't be getting a healthy version of the gene from one parent at least, like they would if someone with a mistake in some of their genes married someone who didn't have it.
"Mind you, when a child's born with a genetic disease, it doesn't necessarily mean it's hereditary; sometimes a mistake's made after the baby starts developing in the womb, so the disease won't be in the parents' genetic codes at all.
"The mistakes that cause the most serious diseases aren't very common though. That might be partly because people who get them often don't live long enough to reproduce, or they're too ill to.
"The mistakes are called mutations, meaning they can slightly change the things a gene does. Not all of them are harmful; I think it was genetic mutations that caused people to have different hair colour and different eye and skin colour. And I think some mutations don't do anything much, as far as scientists know at the moment. But the worst ones cause diseases."
"Ugh, it's horrible to think of mistakes being made in genes that end up causing diseases!" said one student.
Another one said, "I read a strange-sounding article not long ago that said humans have a lot of the same disease-causing genetic mutations that animals do, or even that things like yeast does! Apparently yeast has a gene that often has a mutation that causes deafness! As if it would need a gene for hearing!"
Some of the students shuddered at the thought. But one joked, "Poor yeast! You mean when you eat bread with yeast with a deafness gene in it, it won't be able to hear you shout the warnings you give your bread when you're just about to eat it?"
The students grinned. But one said, "Actually, that sounds horrible, eating something with a disease gene in it! Couldn't that be harmful?"
One said, "No, I don't suppose it could be. I mean, we're eating genes from other species all the time when we eat things. I mean, anyone who eats pork will be eating a load of pig genes, everyone who eats apples will be eating a load of apple genes, and that kind of thing. But no one ever seems to catch anything genetic from anything else.
"Anyway, I heard that some genes do different things in different kinds of plants and animals, so maybe the deafness gene was supposed to do something different to the yeast. Like I read that a gene that helps humans grow blood vessels helps things like yeast build cell walls instead. Or one that's equivalent to it in some way does."
One student grinned and joked, "Hey imagine if the genes of other species did change us every time we ate them, so if someone ate a load of pork, the next day they might wake up with the head of a pig!"
Another student giggled and said, "Yeah, or just imagine if someone had lots of different kinds of meat on a plate one day with some vegetables - chicken, pork, beef, and other stuff, and the next day, they woke up with a head like a pig, apart from having a nose like a carrot, and they had a tail, and they were covered in feathers, and whenever they talked, instead of saying no they would always say moo."
Another student grinned and said, "Just imagine if there were cheese genes, and anyone who ate cheese ended up with cheesy feet, permanently!"
"Oh yuck!" laughed one student. "No one would ever dare eat it!"
"But you could say that of anything," said Becky. "You'd Have to eat Something. People would just have to get used to weird things happening to them all the time."
One student said, "Just imagine if people started Deliberately eating certain things to get to look a certain way; like imagine if sometimes there was a fashion for growing feathers all over you, so loads of people would eat more chicken than normal so they'd grow feathers."
Another student said, "Or just imagine if when you blended ingredients together, a load of new genes would be created, so if you made pastry, all the genes in the flour and butter it was made with would turn into new pastry genes. And imagine if you ate an apple pie, and the next day you woke up with a pie crust growing on your head like a hat because of the pastry genes, with half an apple on the top so it was a bit like a bobble hat."
One student said, "Yeah, and maybe it would be the fashion to have hats like that, and people would deliberately eat pies so they could grow them on their heads."
The tutor was fidgeting awkwardly and looking at the time, but he was enjoying the joking, so he was in two minds as to whether to bring it to a stop; so he thought he'd wait just a bit longer before calling everyone to order.
Another student said, "And just imagine if it worked the other way around too, and every time a person touched something, they'd leave traces of their DNA on it, till if there were enough, whatever it was would start developing human characteristics because it would start having human genes. So if there was a nice juicy-looking apple in a shop, and a few customers squeezed it or something, wondering whether to buy it, it might start growing legs and jump off the shelf. And if someone found an apple in an orchard and bit it but then left it, it would have even more human DNA, so just imagine if it grew little legs and started running around! And if you picked it up and held it to your ear, imagine if you'd feel sure you could hear a heart beating inside!"
Another student said, "Yeah, and just imagine if someone had a pet cat they loved stroking, and it started developing human characteristics without them realising, and then one day they were stroking it, and instead of meowing, it suddenly said, 'Food! Food!'"
One student said, "Maybe people would be so used to that kind of thing happening they wouldn't think anything of it. But how would you ever recognise anyone if every time they ate something, they changed to be more like it! Imagine! Your dad might look like a pig one day, and then he'd eat a load of potatoes one day and the next morning he'd have a head like a potato! And then he might have a load of garlic in a chicken sauce, and the next day you'd wake up to a house smelling of garlic, and whenever you went near him the smell would get stronger and stronger, and he'd be growing garlic bulbs out the sides of his head, and he'd have feathers instead of hair. You wouldn't know if it was your dad or a monster! And the same with your friends. And what if humans only had to touch other living things to get some of their genes!"
"Well there would be one good thing," said one student. "If a politician was thinking of dragging a country into war, or there was a violent person, someone could get them a pet sloth or something, in the hope they'd get some sloth genes and mellow right out!"
"Of course, they might get a craving to go and live in the jungle and stay up in the trees all the time like sloths do," said another student with a grin. "That could be good. I heard that sloths move so slowly they get algae growing on them and insects living on them. Maybe that would happen to politicians and other warlike people when they got sloth genes."
"Or more likely they'd change into something else the next day," said another student. "Like if they ate a melon one day, maybe they'd wake up with a head like a melon the day after. And imagine if they ate a coconut as well; they might have fingers and toes like chunks of coconut the next day; or maybe they'd have two heads, one like a melon and the other one like a coconut."
The students laughed. But the tutor looked at the time again. He was thankful that it was the last class of the day, because they were already going over time and they'd hardly said anything relevant yet! He thought they would have to stay there longer till they did. He sighed.
The students sensed that he might be about to tell them off for saying irrelevant things again and stopped joking around. That didn't mean the discussion got back on-topic though! The one who'd been talking about the radio programme she'd heard before they'd started joking said:
"Anyway, as for this programme I heard, that I didn't get to finish talking about, where they seemed to be trying to prove humans have inherited warlike tendencies from chimps by just investigating how aggressive chimps could get, it seemed a bit daft to me, because they didn't even investigate whether we Have actually got the same aggression genes as chimps. Or at least, they didn't say they did. I mean, they could have looked at brain scans, and got someone to talk about whether we even do actually have genes for violence, as far as anyone knows, and whether we all do, or just a percentage of us, instead of seeming to just assume everyone does.
"You hear about some horrible things going on in the world! But as well as trying to find out whether something in particular might be the cause, it's as well to try and find out if it's Not the cause too, or just part of the cause. I mean, imagine if some gangsters let scientists test them to see if they had genes for violence, and the scientists found they had. It wouldn't be good if they just concluded that the genes must be what was making them violent, would it, because lots of other people might have those same genes and yet Not be violent. So scientists would need to test quite a few non-violent people to see if they had similar genes.
"And I wonder what would happen if, say, only one per cent of people had any genes that made them more likely to be violent. What would happen if one of them was violent to someone who didn't have any violence genes? Would they always just put up with it when they were mistreated, or might they get fired up with thoughts of revenge and go after the one who'd been violent to them, just as if they Did have violence genes? I mean, couldn't it spark off the kind of feud that could happen anyway? I'm sure it could!
"And if one of the people involved was the leader of a country, and the people they were feuding with were from another one, or just another part of their own country, couldn't they still motivate people they ruled to go to war with that country or part of the country, using all the techniques leaders use now? Would it be impossible to get people to go if most of them didn't have violence genes? Or would they go for the same reasons they do now, some of which don't really have to do with wanting to be violent?
"And if the country was at war, a whole load of children would grow up watching people being hurt. Nowadays that can stir up angry feelings in children and they can grow up more violent than they would have been, I think. If people didn't have any genes for aggression, what would they do instead? Would they not be able to get angry enough for it to make them aggressive? Or would they feel and behave just the same? I'm wondering just how much difference genes really make."
None of the students knew.
The tutor thought the students were getting even more off-topic than they'd already been - which was saying something - and wondered whether to hold his head in his hands in despair; but then he decided to be decisive instead, calling them back to order; after all, it had been quite some time since they'd actually been talking about what they were supposed to. He hoped they wouldn't think it was a good exercise in their possible new-found awareness that it could be good to disobey authority to refuse to listen to him when he tried to get the conversation back on-topic! He said:
"Right you bunch of scatterbrains! You seem to have forgotten what this discussion class is supposed to be about!
"You were talking about how easy it was for authority figures to recruit people to go to war in the First World War. Don't forget that for the people who signed up to go to war years ago, the thought of the pain they might suffer if they were injured and the pain they might inflict on others could have seemed quite distant, and by the time the full impact hit them it would have been too late; desertion from the army was severely punished.
"But in the Milgram experiments - remember those? They're what you're supposed to have been learning up about! - In those, the screams of the actor supposedly being given electric shocks were coming through a loudspeaker directly into the room where the person who thought they were giving them was. Yet they carried on and on and on. And the same with most of you people yesterday - the person you thought was suffering was right there in front of you, and yet most of you didn't refuse to carry on doing what you were told was the experiment on them. And some of the people in the Milgram experiments didn't need much persuasion, even when they thought the shocks must be seriously hurting. I wonder if a lot of you would have given shock after shock even though you thought the same if you'd done one of his experiments. A lot of people still gave electric shocks even when they thought they were giving them to an unconscious man. These weren't even people they had a reason to hate; they didn't even know who they were!"
"I think that's chilling!" said one student who had refused to carry on the experiment the day before when they were partway through. "I mean, maybe most people started off out of respect for science, because they thought there must be some good scientific reason they were being asked to do what they were; but they must have had a Lot of respect for it to carry on if they did it for that reason; I mean, I'd have thought that after a while they should have thought, 'OK, you might be university professors, but you could still be loonies, and I'm not going to trust you to know what you're doing any more; I think I'm going to trust my own judgment of what's right and wrong over yours and stop this.'"
The tutor hoped she wasn't suggesting he might be a "loony" himself.
Jenny, one of the students who'd been upset when she'd thought she had to do the experiment, plucked up courage and said, "I'm never going to trust you tutors again, you know. If you ever tell me to do something again that I'm not happy with, I'm going to think very hard before I do it!"
To her surprise, the tutor said, "Good!" Then to all the students he said, "Don't do things just because authority figures tell you to, even if it's us telling you to. You should always think through and judge for yourselves whether what you're being asked to do is moral and a good idea."
Jenny said, "But hang on, if you tell us to do something that we refuse to do, won't that mean you might give us lower grades? And how will we know there isn't a good reason for what you're telling us to do, even if it doesn't seem like a good idea to us?"
"Always ask what the reasons are," replied the tutor.
A student called Samantha smiled a mirthless smile and said, "If we're always going to be interrogating you about why you're asking us to do things, you'll never be able to deceive us again, you know, unless you're good at it.
"But is it true that we're supposed to do experiments on other people later on the course where we do things that might make them think things that aren't true for a while? Here's what I've heard! I've heard you tutors do things like make us offer people what we say are home-made cakes that we made ourselves, but unbeknownst to them, they've been prepared by the likes of you, and they've got fish paste and garlic mixed in with them! And you or another tutor will be watching us!
"And when they've eaten them, - or refused to eat them once they've tasted them, - we ask them if they liked them. And when they've said yes or no, if they say they liked them, we have to say one of two things that sound as if we're pleased to hear it, but which are really code, that you'll note down, one phrase meaning we believe them, and the other meaning we don't.
"And then we tell them we're really doing a psychology experiment on them, to find out what percentage of them eat them and say they like them when they're asked, even though they didn't really, because we say it's some kind of study of the number of people who'll tell white lies to try to be agreeable to people.
"But it isn't that really - we just say that because telling them the real reason for it might make them say things they think we'll want to hear to please or help us, because then, we ask them to be honest about what they really thought of the cakes, to find out how many people really meant they liked them, and how many just said they did out of politeness; and the real reason for that is so you can test us to find out how accurate our guesses were, and how good we are at detecting lies by looking at people's body language.
"Or is that just a rumour I've heard?
"Anyway, if we do do that, I'm not going to want to do it, because I think it's immoral to deceive people and give them yucky surprises. Am I going to be able to refuse to do it without getting lower grades?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," The tutor said. "Now I want to talk about more important things."
Samantha didn't agree with his suggestion that her grades weren't important! but he carried on talking, and then the conversation did get very serious, as he asked what examples the students could come up with of people obeying authority figures and doing bad things because of it nowadays.
There was talk of religious extremists who'd got to be extremists after just accepting the way other people interpreted controversial things in their holy books, without asking questions, talk of cults, and cultural traditions in some countries where people were actually hurt physically, because so many people accepted what others told them about how that was the way things were supposed to be done, or at least were willing to go along with it.
"So," concluded the tutor when he decided to end the discussion, "I think the main lesson learned here is that humanity would be much better off if a lot more people thought far more about whether what they've been brought up to believe is right or wrong, and about whether other messages they're given by authority figures are true."
The students went away thoughtfully.
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