Abnormal was another word for crazy. So maybe that was why so many people were arriving at the conclusion that the world was headed that way. But it was not. Actually, the world was anomalous, a natural product of abnormal expectations in the human mind. The world of men was not a fixed system. It was not of a single piece but composed of many individuals and diverse elements, classes, types. Therefore, anomalous — because everyone expected everyone else to think and feel and view the world precisely as (or within narrow limits, the same as) he or she did. The world was not crazy, nor was it endowed with a natural sameness. And that was the problem for mankind. In complexity, things were never equal.

Men who could discuss learnedly the chemical composition of a distant star occupied the same time and space as aboriginal peoples who believed that star to be a tiny light imbedded in some celestial web suspended just beyond the earth. Men who right now were devising exotic environmental systems for human colonies in space share the planet with others who devoutly insist that man's adventures upon the moon were actually filmed in Hollywood as some godless hoax upon the world.

Anomalies, sure. They sprang naturally from the conflicting world views held by individuals who were not, in any sense, equals. If a man or woman is the sum total of all his or her experiences, how then can there be any claim of sameness between a Nobel physicist and an Australian bushman — or, for that matter, between a Beverly Hills housewife and her counterpart in Karachi. How do you get these widely disparate individuals to share a common world view when their basic thought processes do not follow the same track? More than a difference in language, or even in social cultures, the difference that divides is a conceptual chasm: the one simply cannot communicate with the other except toward the most elemental biological needs.

So... back to Square One.