10
Ira got his life philosophy from exobiology.
As a child, he read science fiction and science essays. He loved time and space travel, of course, but the real excitement was the possibility of discovering intelligent life in the universe. To estimate the number of planets with intelligent life in the galaxy, “experts” from those days developed something called the Green Bank formula. With virtually no data to work with, they proposed this:
Ira didn’t really remember the details, but the variables represented things like the number of planets in the galaxy and the percentage of planets that are Earth-like and so on. Plug in the right numbers, and you get the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy.
One problem: nobody knew the right numbers. Even today, the right numbers are unknown, but we’ve got more educated guesses.
Back in the early 1960s, some based their estimates on the Assumption of Mediocrity. In short, assume that our sun, our planet and pretty much everything else about us—earthlings and our habitat—is nothing special. Using that assumption, some concluded that our galaxy contained tens of thousands of intelligent civilizations.
Ira agreed with the assumption and extended it. He believed that it applied not only to our planet but that it also applied directly to Ira himself. He was average, nothing special. He believed this even though his mom and some of his teachers disagreed. “What do they know about the Green Bank Formula?” he asked.
He graduated with ordinary grades, married an average woman. Together they had 2.2 kids. (Midge’s third and final pregnancy ended in miscarriage after six weeks or so.) Following the miscarriage, another child was, for them, inconceivable.
Their two kids went to regular schools and finished with grades in the middle of the pack.
Ira and Midge continued to live in a typical neighborhood in an average-sized house. Ira worked as a mid-level executives and Midge was in sales.
Events seemed to confirm Ira’s beliefs.
Until, one night, Ira was lifted into an alien spaceship by a tractor beam. “How extraordinary!” he thought as the space creatures examined what they considered to be the perfect, or perhaps perfectly representative Earth specimen. And for the first time in his life, Ira felt great pride right up until the moment vivisection began.
