MISTER KNOW-IT-ALL

Miami Herald, The (FL)
July 2, 1989
Author: GENE WEINGARTEN Herald Tropic Editor

Joel Achenbach, mastermind of Tropic's iconoclastic weekly feature Why Things Are, has an answer for everything. Everything. He admits to no doubts.

Sometimes, as in today's cover story, his answers are the product of painstaking, conscientious inquiry into a topic of daunting complexity. Sometimes, his answers are bits of wild extemporanea -- a pebbly mixture of fact and conjecture, flavored by charmingly ruptured logic and unapologetic personal prejudice. But his answers always make sense, in a somewhat eccentric sort of way. Above all, they sound utterly authoritative -- even when the issue in question is subjective, legitimately open to opinion, essentially unknowable. I decided to test him with nine such questions, the nine questions below. I gave him a total of 18 minutes -- two minutes apiece -- to read, ponder, and type out the answers.

He finished early.

1. Are women and men fundamentally different in personality, capabilities, tastes? How?

One would hope so. Without gender differences life would be as fascinating as hovering around the keg at a Sigma Nu party. Men and women tend to mirror the qualities of their reproductive cells, those rangy footloose spermatozoa and those strong, impeccable, unflinching eggs. But maybe this is digging me a hole, so never mind.

2. Is a human being born good or evil, or is he a blank slate, to be shaped by environment and circumstance?

The human soul is a fugue of nature and nurture. Good is a relative quality; evil does not exist.

3. Do dumb animals have souls?

Yes, but they are not much more developed than the souls of your average member of the National Rifle Association.

4. Can intelligence be accurately measured? How?

A good test is to simply show the subject photographs of the band members in Metallica, Ratt, AC-DC and Def Leppard. The more of them you can identify by name, the lower your score.

5. Can we ever know, for certain, whether God exists?

That would eradicate faith -- He would not permit it.

6. Is there such a thing as good and bad art; i.e., is beauty an objective or subjective quality?

All art is good art, except perhaps some of Yoko's solo albums.

7. What will art be like in the year 2100? How about music? Architecture? Food?

The correspondents of 60 Minutes will have gallery openings in New York, where they will ask questions of the people who walk in the door. Music will be a sequence of computer-generated tones, composed by computer programs that have been, themselves, programmed by other computers. New buildings will be either made of adobe or carved into canyon walls. Food will be solely a decorative item, a garnish, all nutrition having been fulfilled by weekly injections.

8. How can there be so many religions, featuring so many different and competing explanations for our origins, purposes, etc? Is one right? Are none right?

Mankind strives ever toward the impossible goal of knowing Him. We should be applauded for our efforts and not made to feel guilty for the occasional inconsistency.

9. Is it better to be happy but useless, or to be miserable but creative?

Either would be preferable to the condition of the executive editor of Tropic: Miserable but useless.

Memo: FROM THE EDITOR
Section: TROPIC
Copyright (c) 1989 The Miami Herald