Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer

Author:Robert J. Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Daily Show was taped in the afternoon, for airing at 11:00 P.M. the same day. Caitlin and her mother headed home after the taping; it was a short flight from New York to Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

Having heard Pearson’s name during her tour of the United Nations, Caitlin and Barb stopped to look at one of the busts of him inside the airport. Prior to serving as Canada’s prime minister, Pearson had been President of the UN General Assembly and had received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the preceding year’s Suez crisis.

It was dark by the time Caitlin and her mother got their car and started the boring seventy-five-minute highway drive to Waterloo. They had the car radio on—CHFI, “Toronto’s Perfect Music Mix”—which played songs that were agreeable to both of them, bopping between Shania Twain and Lady Gaga, Phil Collins and Lee Amodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Taylor Swift.

“Thanks for coming to New York, Mom,” Caitlin said.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. It’s been—God, twenty years, I guess—since I saw a Broadway play.”

“Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Caitlin.

“It was. Ellen Page was great as Annie Sullivan, and that kid they had playing Helen was brilliant.”

“But, um, Helen’s dad . . . before the war ended, he kept slaves,” Caitlin said.

Her mother nodded. “I know.”

“But he seemed like a good man. How could he have done that?”

“Well, not to forgive him, but we have to judge people by the morals of their time, and morality improves as time goes by.”

“I know it changes,” Caitlin said, “and for sure freeing slaves was an improvement. But you’re saying it generally improves?”

“Oh, yes. There’s a definite moral arrow through time—and, as a matter of fact, it’s all due to game theory.”

They were passing a giant truck. “How so?” asked Caitlin.

“Well, remember what Webmind said at the UN. There are zero-sum games and nonzero-sum games, right? Tennis is zero-sum: for every winner there’s a loser. But a cooperative venture can be nonzero-sum: if we hire a contractor to finish the basement”—Caitlin knew this was a sore point between her parents—“and we’re happy with the work that’s done, well, everybody wins: we get a finished basement, and the contractor gets paid fairly for his work.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said.

“Clearly, cooperation is all for the good. But members of primitive societies rarely cooperated with anyone outside their close personal circles; they saw anyone else as not fully human—or, to put it more technically, as not worthy of moral consideration. When the Old Testament said, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ it only meant Israelites should get along with other Israelites; it didn’t mean you should accord moral consideration to non-Israelites—that’d be crazy talk. But as we move forward through time, we see a widening of who deserves moral consideration until today most people in most places agree that all humans, regardless of geographic location, ethnicity, religion, or what have you, deserve it. Like I said, a definite moral arrow to time.”

“But what’s that got to do with nonzero-sumness?” asked Caitlin.

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