Brrrrrrrr ... You Say You Want A Devolution ...
Science would have us believe that we have evolved from lower forms of life.
The first round of evolution apparently didn't fare too well. Life forms sort of took the wrong turnpike, and instead of creating thoughtful, sentient beings, evolution produced those huge and unruly creatures know as dinosaurs. That era ended with some sort of cosmic catastrophe. Someone clicked the reset button on the global deep freeze and cleared the table of most life forms.
Phase two saw all kinds of wriggly wiggly things that somehow, through the power of hocus and pocus, created WWE wrestlers and the rest of the human race.
So far, so good.
We seem to be trucking along at a feverish, 10 mph over the speed limit, pace. After, all, we have conquered so many frontiers in science, medicine, religion, roller ball, well, just about anything you can think of. We have poked our noses into the how and why of everything to improve the quality of our lives.
Some of this tinkering didn't turn out so well. After all, some wag figured out how to split the atom and create one whopper of a bomb. So, about 140,000 Japanese had to become molten flesh puddles on the side walks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before someone suggested that maybe such a bomb wasn't really a great idea after all. So it goes. We still have them of course. After all, one never knows better than Jim Jones when mass suicide might be the last and only alternative.
You have to admit that it's been quite a ride, and certainly not all bad. We have made great advances in most areas of our lives.
Take the giant flat-screen, high-definition, DDD, surround-sound TV, for example, stuck right up on the wall where your Chairman Mao poster used to be. Cripes almighty, Sunday football never looked better.
Then there's double-stuffed Oreos®, Pop-Tarts®, hybrid cars for high breed folks with a chunk of collateral cash under their beds, lightning-fast computers, iPhones, iPods, iPads, and iDon't-Know-What-Elses.
Oh, and let's not forget the pills. We have all kinds of pills for just about everything or anything that ails you. We have pills that will ease a bad headache, pills that will stop you from farting, and even pills that will defend against the attack of those pro-recreational spermatozoa, because some people simply want the fun of sex but not the consequence.
Most importantly, we have created pills that have prolonged life beyond anyone's wildest expectations. How great is that? We may have managed to create a generation of seniors like never before — let's call it Gen-ZZZ — near the end, near that final, consummate sleep, but chemically still hanging in there, baby, still hanging in there. Sure, they're maybe not real functional, maybe not real happy sitting in dirty Depends®, but even though they may not have a clue about who they are or what's going on around them, ain't nobody passing through the golden gates of eternity until all else fails.
Yes, through the centuries, we have proved that humankind is limited only by the depth and height of imagination. I've come to believe that anything is possible, and the future is so bright, I may have to keep wearing my shades until I reach my own exclamation mark or whatever punctuation might metaphorically signal my still-in-all-likelihood-inevitable end.
Of course, things could go wrong.
What if the evolutionary process were to reverse itself? What if we begin to devolve, slip backwards in time through the annals of natural selection, or slide down the greasy great chain of being? What if we begin to turn back into those wriggly wiggly things that first climbed out of the primordial swamp?
Think about it. There are signs that devolution has already begun. I mean, we have rap music, mixed martial arts fighting, women with cannonball-hard boobs, the Hair Club For Men®, drug addicts, alcoholics-in-denial, terrorists, oh the list seems endless with regards to how far we have de-progressed.
Somewhere along the line, I think a switch might have clicked into reverse mode, and it's only a matter of time before we find ourselves yearning to crawl back into our neighbourhood wetlands, bogs, and moors to try out our new gills.
I don't mind the idea of devolution so much. I suspect it might be better that the alternative, say, another unexpected catastrophe that leaves us dead in the streets while the earth fills up the void with frigid Arctic waters, for what I guess would be another go at getting it right.
Science would have us believe that we have evolved from lower forms of life.
The first round of evolution apparently didn't fare too well. Life forms sort of took the wrong turnpike, and instead of creating thoughtful, sentient beings, evolution produced those huge and unruly creatures know as dinosaurs. That era ended with some sort of cosmic catastrophe. Someone clicked the reset button on the global deep freeze and cleared the table of most life forms.
Phase two saw all kinds of wriggly wiggly things that somehow, through the power of hocus and pocus, created WWE wrestlers and the rest of the human race.
So far, so good.
We seem to be trucking along at a feverish, 10 mph over the speed limit, pace. After, all, we have conquered so many frontiers in science, medicine, religion, roller ball, well, just about anything you can think of. We have poked our noses into the how and why of everything to improve the quality of our lives.
Some of this tinkering didn't turn out so well. After all, some wag figured out how to split the atom and create one whopper of a bomb. So, about 140,000 Japanese had to become molten flesh puddles on the side walks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before someone suggested that maybe such a bomb wasn't really a great idea after all. So it goes. We still have them of course. After all, one never knows better than Jim Jones when mass suicide might be the last and only alternative.
You have to admit that it's been quite a ride, and certainly not all bad. We have made great advances in most areas of our lives.
Take the giant flat-screen, high-definition, DDD, surround-sound TV, for example, stuck right up on the wall where your Chairman Mao poster used to be. Cripes almighty, Sunday football never looked better.
Then there's double-stuffed Oreos®, Pop-Tarts®, hybrid cars for high breed folks with a chunk of collateral cash under their beds, lightning-fast computers, iPhones, iPods, iPads, and iDon't-Know-What-Elses.
Oh, and let's not forget the pills. We have all kinds of pills for just about everything or anything that ails you. We have pills that will ease a bad headache, pills that will stop you from farting, and even pills that will defend against the attack of those pro-recreational spermatozoa, because some people simply want the fun of sex but not the consequence.
Most importantly, we have created pills that have prolonged life beyond anyone's wildest expectations. How great is that? We may have managed to create a generation of seniors like never before — let's call it Gen-ZZZ — near the end, near that final, consummate sleep, but chemically still hanging in there, baby, still hanging in there. Sure, they're maybe not real functional, maybe not real happy sitting in dirty Depends®, but even though they may not have a clue about who they are or what's going on around them, ain't nobody passing through the golden gates of eternity until all else fails.
Yes, through the centuries, we have proved that humankind is limited only by the depth and height of imagination. I've come to believe that anything is possible, and the future is so bright, I may have to keep wearing my shades until I reach my own exclamation mark or whatever punctuation might metaphorically signal my still-in-all-likelihood-inevitable end.
Of course, things could go wrong.
What if the evolutionary process were to reverse itself? What if we begin to devolve, slip backwards in time through the annals of natural selection, or slide down the greasy great chain of being? What if we begin to turn back into those wriggly wiggly things that first climbed out of the primordial swamp?
Think about it. There are signs that devolution has already begun. I mean, we have rap music, mixed martial arts fighting, women with cannonball-hard boobs, the Hair Club For Men®, drug addicts, alcoholics-in-denial, terrorists, oh the list seems endless with regards to how far we have de-progressed.
Somewhere along the line, I think a switch might have clicked into reverse mode, and it's only a matter of time before we find ourselves yearning to crawl back into our neighbourhood wetlands, bogs, and moors to try out our new gills.
I don't mind the idea of devolution so much. I suspect it might be better that the alternative, say, another unexpected catastrophe that leaves us dead in the streets while the earth fills up the void with frigid Arctic waters, for what I guess would be another go at getting it right.
you have been thinking about going in reverse quite a bit lately...I'd like to turn a few things around myself..hmmmm
ReplyDeleteI am rather content going forward simply because there are things I don't want to see, hear, smell, or touch ever again. Life is good these days ... yes indeedy!
ReplyDelete