Page 66 - Big Idea

The Big Idea – Act 3

INTELLECTUAL: What you might call tempting fate, for example,
if your plan were to poke a stick into a different hornet’s nest every
day for a month. Your will to continue the task would cease to exist
after the first mistake. Now, what are the odds that any one of the
disasters you enumerated will come to pass?

I cannot say with certainty, and, of course, others will assign different
probabilities than mine. But favorable outcomes with regard to the
weather, the food, the people, the politics, and building materials
themselves are not highly probable; each, by itself, may not be
unfavorable enough to deter our efforts.

Taken as a chain, however, the chance of nothing going wrong is
almost infinitesimal; it’s as if you kept dividing a pile of sand until the
remainder could not be seen or felt.

RIVAL 1: So, now what do you believe: what you want or what you
calculate?

INTELLECTUAL: I suppose I cannot believe them both, if they
contradict each other.

RIVAL 1: Oh, you could; but then, you wouldn’t be much of a
philosopher, would you?

INTELLECTUAL: I do not like your motives in leading me to this
conclusion, but I cannot escape its implications. This will not be the
first time my reason has denied my desire. So long. I hope the others
can implement The Big Idea. (exits right, slowly)

RIVAL 2: You did it again, boss! They talked themselves out of it!

DEFEATIST: Wait a minute: none of those arguments apply to me
at all. I have no desires to deny, and the probability of concatenated
outcomes doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Whatever way things
work out is all the same to me. I have no good reason to leave.

RIVAL 1: Oh, no? (gestures to RIVAL 2, who picks up club and
drives DEFEATIST off stage to left) That is a very good reason.

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