I guess we’ve all come across the joke that the Camel is “a Horse, designed by a Committee.”
Of course, it’s not a joke we would likely make, if we were standing near a herd of camels. I understand they’re reputed to have nasty tempers.
And probably, if we were thinking of joining a non-motorized caravan across the Sahara Desert, we would think twice about pissing off the camels.
But here in Colorado, the joke seems relatively harmless. At least, our horses enjoy it.
A joke is funny because it contains an element of ‘truth’. And the central truth implied by the camel joke is that decisions made by a committee are necessarily defective.
So we can honestly find ourselves wondering, “Was the Camel really designed by a Committee?”
In fact, was the whole Universe designed by a Committee?
This isn’t a question that gets much traction in Western philosophy, and especially not among Christians, who make up about 63% of the population here in the U.S.A. Christians generally agree that the universe was created by an omniscient, omnipotent being — God — and that the creation is perfect, even if the humans living in it are not.
But many other religions, down through history, have taught that there’s a committee of gods involved in running the show, and that these gods don’t always agree.
The Nordic peoples, back in their more pagan days, recognized a bunch of male and female gods, including Odin, Thor, Loki, Frigg, Sága, and Eir. (We don’t hear much about the female Nordic gods, living as we do in a patriarchy.) The Greeks worshiped more than a dozen of gods — Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, Hades, Persephone, and the rest of them — and the Romans revered a similar committee of gods, up until the day Constantine the Great converted to Christianity.
The Hindus still worship a plethora of gods, I do believe.
So we have plenty of historical indications that not only the Camel, but also the entire Universe, may have been designed by a Committee.
I will offer… as examples… the Platypus, the Okapi, the Snub-nosed Monkey, and the Panda Ant.
But it’s not just weird creatures like the Platypus who suggest a Committee-driven design process for the world around us.
Take, for instance, childbirth.
Would any sensible designer make this process so needlessly difficult and painful? I mean, if you really wanted humans to be fruitful and multiply… this is what you’d come up with?
Obviously, a Committee decision.
And why would a sensible designer make a universe where some animals kill and eat other animals, in order to survive? Couldn’t all the animals just eat grass? Nobody thought of that?
More evidence for my Committee theory.
And maybe the worst idea of all: humans, and our tendency to intentionally murder each other… for whatever reason, or even for no reason at all.
I mean, in a weird way, having some animals kill other animals and eat them, makes a certain kind of sense. But we humans kill each other… and then, we don’t eat what we killed.
Need more examples? How about the U.S. Congress?
And let me be very clear, I don’t actually blame the Congress — because the entire U.S. government was designed by a committee.
And here we are, making jokes about the Camel.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.