The Way of the Dodo

I’m on a mission to call attention to the stupidity and cowardice and inadequacies of human beings as a whole.

Many people in the world make it part of their religion to tout the Glories of Humankind. Humankind, also stupidly called Man, as if the half that birthed and suckled it never existed, is supposed to be created in God’s image. We are supposed to be the Pinnacle of Creation. Our Superior Intelligence is presented as one proof of this alleged fact.

Yes, we are undeniably the most intelligent species on this planet, when we have had our coffee. But we humans also account for all the most grievous stupidity that inflicts Earth, and the total amount of stupid human behavior outweighs the total amount of actual intelligent human behavior by at least a factor of ten, in both the amount of behavior generated and in the consequences incurred.

If a creature is a genius one hour every day, but throughout the remainder of the day the same creature is so stupid it can’t figure out how to exist without persistently contributing significantly to the successful ongoing dismantling of the biosphere of a planet 40 million meters in circumference, then that creature is – in sum total -- dreadfully, pathetically, and laughably, stupid.

If we were created in God’s image, then God is stupider than the dodo. The dodo only managed to get itself extinct by being so stupid as to trust human beings. Humans are so stupid as to be utterly untrustworthy, even toward defenseless dodos. That’s stupider, and if it continues, humans will not only be as extinct as dodos already are, but they will have made of themselves much bigger jackasses in the course of becoming so, by taking down everybody else around them in the process except for an assortment of lucky germs and insects.

This rant is brought to you by a man typing in the morning of March 20, 2006, contemplating the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, a war which was never urgently necessary, whose “victory” is costing more than $80,000,000,000 a year, not counting deaths, anguish, and other mere secondary costs.

This rant also comes from a guy who regularly hears people in the local homeless service community, some of them exceptionally intelligent people, when they have had their coffee, say that we need to practice “triage” to solve homelessness in King County and the rest of the country.

French wool traders used “triage” to mean “choose” or “select.” Napoleon’s surgeon used it in a medical context to describe the systematic prioritization of battle wounded for medical care, under emergency conditions, when there is a shortage of medical resources, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time.

Where is the shortage of resources to solve homelessness, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time, in a country that can afford an Iraq War at more than $80,000,000,000 a year for three or for ten years, or however long it may take, whenever it feels itself in the freaking mood?

The ridiculousness of the situation we find ourselves in was brought home to me yesterday afternoon. I was waiting for a bus in front of the King County Courthouse. As the bus approached, a young man walked across the street to my side, slowly, and steadily, directly in the path of the oncoming bus, deliberately forcing the driver to brake for him 40 feet before the stop, endangering the safety of the passengers on board.

The man got on the bus, and the driver asked him why he had walked in front of her bus. His defiant answer was, “I have a Purple Heart”.

That pretty much summed up the stupidity of the situation we’re in. Question: Why are we squandering our nation’s resources in Iraq? Answer: 9-11. It’s our country’s collective Purple Heart, and in our collective stupidity, it justifies any and all cowardly recklessness.

We are thus so much a part of Humanity.