“I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.”
Bill sums up the fragility of man’s so-called dominance, that is, man’s supremacy hinges upon ideal conditions being met, specifically the condition of being able to see. He posits that if that condition is not fulfilled--being able to see--civilization, as we know it, may well collapse.
“It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that 'it can't happen here'-- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.”
Bill discusses the tendency of people to ignore disasters by naïvely thinking that they are somehow exempt from these events. He also states obliquely that in doing this they endanger themselves as this mindset diminishes the sense of the urgency to prepare ahead for calamities, which in turn leaves people dangerously unprepared to face disaster when it appears--which is always when anyone least expects.
“I don’t think we can blame anyone too much for the triffids. The extracts they give were very valuable in the circumstances. Nobody can ever see what a major discovery is going to lead to whether it is a new kind of engine or a triffid and we coped with them all right in normal conditions. We benefited quite a lot from them, as long as the conditions were to their disadvantage.”
Concerning accountability for the damage wrought by the triffids Bill points out that there isn’t any single person or group that can be impugned. After all, products derived from triffids helped so many people so not only were they tolerated but they were actually cultivated. Bill also states that no one could have foreseen the danger that triffids posed because humanity had managed to corral them under “normal” conditions; once this optimal condition, i.e. having sight, was removed from the equation, then the danger returned as a variable one again.
“Granted that they do have intelligence; then that would leave us with only one important superiority--sight. We can see, and they can’t. Take away our vision and our superiority is gone. Worse than that--our position becomes inferior to theirs because they are adapted to a sightless existence and we are not. In fact, if it were a choice for survival between a triffid and a blind man, I know which I’d put my money on.”
Walter Lucknor is an expert on triffid biology who surmises that it would be unwise for humanity to underestimate the danger posed by triffids. He states that if our optimal condition, i.e. our reliance on our sight, were to be somehow removed--perhaps foreshadowing on part of the author--humanity wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
“The world we lived in was wide and most of it was open to us with little trouble. Roads, railways, and shipping lines laced it, ready to carry one thousands of miles safely and in comfort. If we wanted to travel more swiftly still, and could afford it, we traveled by airplane. There was no need for anyone to take weapons or even precautions in those days. You could go just as you were to wherever you wished, with nothing to hinder you--other than a lot of forms and regulations. A world so tamed sounds utopian now.”
The hero reminisces about the conveniences the world prior to the mass blindness and the triffids was and realizes how many of these conveniences were actually luxuries that were taken for granted. He recalls these as practically distant memories of the past and not without an obvious twinge of regret and sadness.
“The way I see it, we’ve been given a flying start in a new kind of world. We’re endowed with a capital of enough of everything to begin with, but that isn’t going to last forever. We couldn’t eat up all the stuff that’s there for the taking, not in generations--if it would keep. But it isn’t going to keep. A lot of it is going to go bad pretty rapidly--and not only food--everything is going, more slowly, but quite surely, to drop to pieces…”
Not everyone views the apocalypse with fear and trepidation; some see it as a leveling of the playing field, such as in this case Wilfred Coker. He knows that with everything they have known is now gone and up for grabs for the most fortunate--or the most cunning and brutal.
