So here's the thing. With the world still spiraling from: a sub prime melt down, racist uprisings, and the doom of a lifetime in debt, many of us are still looking for the bright side. But, much like Vader the dark side keeps creeping further in. And who could blame us? The X and Y generations still reel from the childhood promises of fame, fortune and an American dream that’s since been taxed, sterilized and genetically modified into an oblique nightmare of Orwellian consequence.
Newsflash: People generally suck.
The older you get the more you realize you agree less and less with pretty much anybody. That’s because you are connected to 7 billion brains that don’t think like you. There was a time, not that long ago, when you would maybe meet a few hundred people in a lifetime. In modern times that would be the equivalent to elementary school. If you still only knew the people from first through fifth grade, I’m sure you’d have a lot in common. You would think similarly. You would have the same needs and share an outlook on the world crafted from a microcosm of human experience. But we “evolved”.
And you may think the internet is awesome sauce incarnate but globalizing the economy and furthering military agendas has been like giving a lion opposable thumbs and a shotgun and saying “have at it, Simba”. Because, simply put, we were not designed to wield this kind of power. Hell, we can’t even handle Facebook without turning it into an egocentric cesspool of needless selfies and opinions, cowardly spewed from behind a computer screen. So why would we think we can handle nuclear science and unchecked expansion? We are a population of 7 billion that lives on a planet that can sustain about 9 billion. In 1901 there were only 1.5 billion of us. If you’re decent in math you might have heard a slight “ticking” sound. That would be the time bomb you now realize is about to go off. But don’t worry. Because it’s not that bad.
I know our situation sounds grim, but if you consider it in a different light - step out of the dark side for a moment – you may just feel better about the whole thing. Think of it in terms of an athlete at the Special Olympics. When a physically challenged runner overcomes every obstacle imaginable in order to stand atop the podium, we don’t thumb our noses at them in disdain for not competing in the standard Olympic Games (unless you’re just a complete tool). No, we celebrate their achievement and accomplishments amongst all the adversity. We honor the sheer will it took to reach beyond their limitations. Well guess what? Homo Sapiens, as a species, are disabled. So cut us some slack.
We’ve been slumping over this earth for over two hundred thousand years and only in the last hundred have we been able to drive, fly, reach space and photograph the atom. And I think if Stan Lee was born in the old west he’d think we were mutants, because Human Beings have simply outgrown their design. We are incapable of wielding the knowledge we’ve attained with any grace because we don’t live long enough to appreciate where the knowledge came from. Nor do we expect to live long enough to truly concern ourselves with the ramifications of our actions. Our egos propel our thirst to evolve yet the very fact we believe ourselves to be the center of the universe presents us with one simple truth. We are not evolved. We are just those same barbarians with better tools.
Do the math. There are estimated to be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the known universe. That’s a lot of planets. Are we really so arrogant as to believe that of all those planets, only ours had the audacity to breed any form of life - intelligent or otherwise. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are about 1 in 175 million. That means you basically have a better chance at winning the lottery three times in a row than you do at belonging to the only occupied planet. Regardless of your religion the math is the same.
So you wanted a bright side? Well there it is. With 200 billion planets similar to earth it’s quite possible that someone’s doing worse than we are. We may not be Star Wars but we’re probably not Battlefield Earth either. The bottom line is we’re basically just starting to figure all this out. We are just another cog in a much grander machine and if we can just stop taking ourselves so seriously for a second we may find solace in the settling notion of our own imperfection. After all, there is probably no greater proof of intelligent life than the fact that they haven’t troubled themselves to bother with us. I mean, if you had the chance to talk to cancer would you really want to?
So sit back, have a drink and take a look at the stars. There’s probably some Trump up there with his finger already on the button and a President Hillary bribery scandal already in print. Might as well enjoy the show…for as long as it lasts.
Jayme is Canadian.
(The model is Brad Bohannon (@brad_bohannon1)
