17: another way

rec·on·dite
1. dealing with very profound, difficult, or abstruse subject matter: "a recondite treatise."
2. beyond ordinary knowledge or understanding; esoteric: "recondite principles."
3. little known; obscure: "a recondite fact."

"Not only are they born without love, but they lack even the capacity. There is no word in their language to describe it, no neuron package in their brains to understand it, no hormone responses associated with it. They don't miss it at all, because they've never known what it is. Intimacy is as foreign a concept to them as infinity is to us. When they touch one another to procreate, they feel no depth to the act. There is physical pleasure - evolution did not deprive them of that - but no devotion, no passion, no jealousy, no desire for emotional union. Sex is just something practical. There isn't any of the significance that human poets have spent generations trying to capture.

"Many of them have read about love in their scientific journals, as a biochemical response, acquired through natural selection, to stimulate monogamy. They see it as a mechanism to protect offspring, shared by humans and many lower forms of intelligence. Imagine the dynamic of a lion's pride, with one male and many hunting females, and see how alien it is to your understanding. You may study it, but you will never experience it. This is something like how they see us.

"Needless to say, they are far more rational creatures. Their passions are harder to stir and their emotions are subsidiary to their logic. Their wars are fewer and their advances quick and decisive. They argue, yes, and their regard for life is naturally less extravagant - they see little value in others beyond their own interest, and what's more, they shamelessly admit to it. When they fight it is without hesitation and it is bloody as hell. But it is also quick and pointed, and it is never undertaken in the name of God or a dead princess.

"Is it a better way to exist? How does one measure the success of a species, by their progress or their happiness? In one they excel, but in the other they have a seeming deficiency so inherent as to go without notice. We caricature them as lifeless automatons, as creatures so helplessly inept and unaware of it that they could not possibly find contentedness. But this is so false as to be pretentious. In fact, it is not a deficiency at all - they are happy. They have desires and pleasures, satisfactions of both the superficial and the soul. How can we say they lack anything? To them, love is an aberration, a waylaid evolutionary trajectory that causes as much pain as it does pleasure. They believe they are better off. We tell them they're not, try to describe all they are missing out on, but what are our words to the actual experience? How can we argue in terms they can understand?"

She shook her head. "It is what we are that matters, James. They see life one way, we see it another. We live in different languages. Neither better nor worse, simply different. We have meaning in love, they have meaning without it; but we both have it somehow, and that is what's important. Neither of us is missing something, but to one another, we are and always will be alien."