Stories of Ourselves: "Report on the Threatened City" by Doris Lessing

If it were so simple – that it knew that within five years its city was to be destroyed, or partly destroyed, and that it was indifferent – we should have to say: This species lacks the first quality necessary to any animal species; it lacks the will to live.

This will entail a detailed description of a species and a condition absolutely without precedent in our experience of the inhabited planets.

These intervals were because, except for its unique destructiveness and belligerence, this species is not the most remarkable or interesting of those made available to our study by our Technological Revolution in its Space Phase.

We chose material for the craft that would manifest as their substance light – which is why we always used maximum their planet light as landing times. These craft were visible, if at all, as strong moonlight.

But they showed an awareness of our presence by other symptoms – headache and nausea. They were angry because of this damage being done to them – which they could have alleviated by moving farther off; but at the same time, they were feeling pride.

Everyone in the System knows that this species is in the process of self-destruction, or part destruction. This is endemic.

Rather, each grouping is a war-making function, since its economies, its individual lives, its movements, are all subservient to the need to prepare for or wage war.

This complete domination of a land area by its war-making machinery is not always visible to the inhabitants of that area, as this species is able, while making war or preparing for it, to think of itself as peace-loving – yes, indeed, this is germane to our theme, the essence of it.

But so many individuals now have seen things for themselves that there are everywhere all kinds of dissident or sullen subgroupings.

These are of all ages and they cut across the largest and most widespread subculture of them all, that of the young of the species who have grown up in a society of total war-preparedness, who are naturally reluctant to face a future that can only mean early death or maiming and who react in the way mentioned earlier, with a disinclination to take part in the administration of their various societies.

They would be prepared to publicise what they had seen in their own news sheets or to spread it by word of mouth; but, unlike their elders, most of them seem unable to understand the extent to which they are subjugated to the needs of war, they would never put themselves in a position where their authorities could capture or question them.

We decided to abandon the first phase in the belief that the material was running straight through their mental apparatus like water through sieves because it was so foreign to the existing mental furniture of their minds that they were not able to recognise what we were saying.

It was when we heard the doctor talking to the guards that we first heard the fact of the previous catastrophe. This was such a shock to us that we could not then take in its implications.

But we decided at once to leave our hosts, who, being in any case unconscious, would not be any use to us for some time, even if this method of conveying warnings had turned out to be efficacious – and it obviously was not – and make different plans.

...to recapitulate, we left the doctor and the guards in discussion of the past catastrophe, in which 200 miles of ground were ripped open, hundreds of people were killed and the whole city was shaken down in fragments.

This circumlocution is still quite common. In other words, a fire being a smaller, more manageable phenomenon, they preferred, and sometimes still prefer, to use that word, instead of the word for the uncontrollable shaking of the earth itself.

We on our planet assume, because it is our mental structure and that of all the species we have examined, that if a new fact is made evident by material progress, or by a new and hitherto unexpected juxtaposition of ideas, then it is accepted as a fact, a truth – until an evolutionary development bypasses it.

We choose this moment to suggest, though of necessity briefly, that in future visits to this planet, with information of use to this species (if it survives), infinite care must be taken to prepare plenipotentiaries who resemble in every respect the most orthodox and harmless members of the society.

We choose this moment to suggest, though of necessity briefly, that in future visits to this planet, with information of use to this species (if it survives), infinite care must be taken to prepare plenipotentiaries who resemble in every respect the most orthodox and harmless members of the society.

Women’s garb is infinitely variable, but always changing, suddenly and dramatically, from one norm or pattern to another.

The cutting and arranging of their head fur is also important. Women and the young enjoy latitude in this, too, but we had to see that our head fur was cut short and kept flattened.

In short, they do not find frightening discussion about the timing, the nature, the power of probable earth convulsions, but they are hostile to suggestions about the possible transfer of population or rebuilding of the city elsewhere.

It is almost as if they were afflicted with a powerful lassitude, a lack of vital energy, which must resist change, because it is so easily exhausted.

THE FIVE YEARS OF UNREMITTING TOIL HAVE TAKEN THEIR TOLL.

We had learned enough to avoid the direct ‘Why don’t you take such and such steps?’ since we had learnt that this approach caused some sort of block or fault in their functioning, but approached like this: ‘Let us discuss the factors militating against the taking of such and such a step’; for instance, making sure that new buildings were not erected close to the areas where tremors or vibrations must occur.

Opinion concerning earth disturbance was virtually unanimous.

For instance: before the violence engendered by this subject closed the conference, we had gathered that the reason a particularly large and expensive group of buildings was built directly in the line of maximum earth disturbance was that that part of the city commands high ‘rents’ – that is, people are prepared to pay more to live and work in that area than elsewhere.

Nor can the willingness of the builders and planners to erect buildings in the maximum danger area to be put down to callousness, since in many cases the individuals concerned themselves live and work there...

The young ones working at the institute in menial and assistive positions were all of a different subculture, patterned on the older animals in clothing and behaviour.

This is when disturbing or unpalatable ideas are put into ritual form and acted out in public to small groups or relayed by a technical device, ‘television’, which enables visual images to be transmitted simultaneously to millions of people.

A sequence of events that may fall outside their formal code of morality, or be on its border line, will be acted out, causing violent approval or disapproval – it is a form of catharsis.

This way of trying out, of acclimatising unfamiliar ideas, goes on all the time, side by side with ritual acting-out of situations that are familiar and banal – thus making them appear more interesting.

This way of trying out, of acclimatising unfamiliar ideas, goes on all the time, side by side with ritual acting-out of situations that are familiar and banal – thus making them appear more interesting.

It is this: that a society that is doomed to catastrophe, and that is unable to prepare for it, can expect that few people will survive except those already keyed to chaos and disaster. The civil, the ordered, the conforming, the well-tempered, can expect to fall victim at first exposure. But the vagabonds, criminals, mad, extremely poor, will have the means to survive.

The view of this section is that they are from our Naval Department 15, and it is our contention that as they have no right to access to this terrain, which is under the aegis of War Department 4, we should blast them to hell and gone next time they try it on.

The view of this section is that they are from our Naval Department 15, and it is our contention that as they have no right to access to this terrain, which is under the aegis of War Department 4, we should blast them to hell and gone next time they try it on.

Must report also two further landings to the south of the city, both in the same place and separated by an interval of three weeks. These two craft identical with the series of 55 alighting to north of city last year.

We further suggest that the facetiousness of the phrase ‘little green men’ might mask an attitude of mind that is inimical to a sober evaluation or assessment of this possibility.

We further suggest that the facetiousness of the phrase ‘little green men’ might mask an attitude of mind that is inimical to a sober evaluation or assessment of this possibility.

We consider it advisable to cordon off the area, although this might precipitate extreme panic situation.