“Relevance is a malleable term.”

I had dinner last night with Sophia Lass; bless her sweet nature. Ricardo was lucky to have her as his lawyer in my novel Jellyfish Have Eyes. She begged me not to steal her thunder by divulging the outcome of her efforts. Fair enough. What a ravenous appetite she had, and how she devoured dessert (chocolate soufflé with coffee ice cream)! This was the first time she had jumped out of Jellyfish Have Eyes and she looked bewildered.

Sophia was agitated. For her, today was the past, which she’d never seen before. But here she was, giving me an opportunity to explore her concept of “Relevancers,” a term she crafted for her strong closing arguments at Ricardo’s trial about relevance, and money of course. “Relevance is a malleable term,” she said, “that the camouflaged Relevancers…bend to their own advantage.”

Camouflaged? What does she mean?

I was impressed when she got carried away and said Relevancers were “individuals who undermine the soul, set the rules, define morality, command acceptability, substitute rituals for choices, insist on their version of goodness and compassion.”

I’ll never forget how her brilliance at that moment was met with silence, the deepest form of respect.

“Tell me more about the Relevancers,” I said.

“Relevancers were individuals who undermine the soul, set the rules, define morality, command acceptability, substitute rituals for choices, insist on their version of goodness and compassion.”

Sophia perked up.

“Ah, yes,” she said, looking proud. “Relevancers. I made that up at the spur of the moment. Pretty clever, eh?

“Very clever, Sophia. But tell me what you didn’t say in the novel. Exactly who are the Relevancers?”

With considerable hesitation, as if still crystallizing her thoughts, she said that the Relevancers were a sprawling network that sprouted up in a democracy that meant well for the people. They were constructive, especially at first, but paradoxically, they neglected individuals.

“They thought creativity could be administered,” she said. “Imagine that!”

“But who are “they?” I asked impatiently.

She fidgeted and wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “They’re no one in particular. They’re everyone. They’re the mood of the Nation, I suppose. They define political correctness. They’re as invisible as air, but control your cultural breath. They mean well, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, take science for example, since that’s what you stuck me with in your novel. Basic research in biology had its heyday at the end of the 20th century and was so successful that people dreamed of a medical utopia,” she said. “The consensus was, not without cause, that research needed to be directed strictly to help people. Anything else was immoral. No more futzing around with spending limited resources on larks. Priorities were to develop treatments, cure diseases, eliminate scary epidemics. The academic ivory tower was passé, crumbling. Relevancers ignored the fact that basic research – undirected academic freedom – took us to where we were.”

“They’re no one in particular. They’re everyone. They’re the mood of the Nation. They define political correctness. They’re as invisible as air, but control your cultural breath.”

Yes, I thought. She’s on my wavelength. But I still wanted her to be more specific. “But who exactly do you condemn as Relevancers, Sophia?” I asked. “Politicians? Researchers? Funding agencies? Entrepreneurs?”

“I told you, I don’t know exactly who they were in the novel, or who they might be now, here, forty-some years preceding the novel,” she said, getting exasperated. “Don’t you know? It’s your novel.”

I didn’t respond and waited for her opinion.

She obliged me. “I suppose Relevancers want basic research redefined from probing for knowledge to applying for benefit. I see these two forms of research as different endeavors. Almost everyone is a Relevancer where I live – in Jellyfish Have Eyes, that is – but that’s in the future, years ahead of now. The Nation was seduced by false promises of quick cures. Everyone felt entitled. Yet, and this confuses me, almost everyone I spoke to claimed to have a more liberal view of basic research, like Ricardo had. They appreciated probing for knowledge and supported academic freedom, but no one acted that way. “Thoughts aren’t actions,” I told them, but to no avail.

Sophia paused and wrinkled her nose again. She always did that when thinking.

Finally she said, “I guess Relevancers reflect the environment, the common view, which in the novel oozed a blend of fear and frustration and certainty in an unstable world. The Relevancers define a well-intentioned society missing the mark. There’re no specific people at fault, no one to blame. They mean well, poor souls.”

She sighed and sat back in her chair.

Interesting: suppression by the environment and mood without bad guys. Is Sophia on to something?