It’s a long story.
A long story, because it took a long time for the disaster to really hit us.
Luckily, in a humor column, we can jump back centuries in the matter of a few sentences, or even in a single sentence.
So, in this case, we’re going back to 500 BC and a guy named Pythagoras, born and raised on the island of Samos, off the coast of what is today known as Turkey but back then was called something else. Maybe Anatolia? Who can remember that kind of stuff.
But maybe it’s not important to remember, because Pythagoras moved to southern Italy when he was about 40 years old, and attracted a following of young, wannabe philosophers. He also invented the Pythagorean Theorem, which states that, for any right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This discovery has been useful, ever since, when teaching 8th grade math classes.
He came up with a bunch of other interesting ideas, like, that the world was round instead of flat. And that we should all be vegetarians.
But the one we need to consider, is the idea that reality was eternal and built on changeless mathematical truths. Some Greek philosophers took that idea and ran with it — as philosophers are prone to do. One smart guy, named Plato, theorized that the things we observe are reflections or shadows of changeless Forms we’re unable to experience in their essence.
We notice a common theme here. Namely, “changeless”.
And that’s pretty much how the world was in those days. Constant. Steadfast. Stable. Consistent. Unchanging. Dependable.
Sure, the cycle of seasons brought different types of changes, and minor social and political changes were noticed. Wars, for example, were noticed. And famines. Volcanoes and earthquakes, of course. But the underlying essence of reality was thought to be changeless.
For instance, you didn’t have to buy a new phone every two years to keep up with technology.
Then, just when things were going great — unchangably, steadfastly great — along comes Charles Darwin. (Who was not a vegetarian, by the way.)
Darwin writes a couple of books, claiming that, No, reality is not constant and dependable. In fact, he writes, every species — including the human species — is constantly undergoing systematic improvement as the result of “survival of the fittest”. The monkey that’s just a bit smarter than the other monkeys will be more successful and produce more offspring, and gradually that monkey’s descendants will be writing books entitled “On the Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man”.
“Descent” is right.
We used to live in an unchanging reality. Nothing was getting noticeably worse, or better. God made the world and then basically dusted off His hands and told everyone to be fruitful and multiply.
Along comes Charles Darwin, telling everyone that not only is every species supposed to constantly improve, but that, in fact, we can’t stop a species from constantly improving. Including humans. Our children are supposed to be richer and smarter than we are.
It’s “natural selection” that makes every species get better and better. Like, it’s a law of nature.
His books were very popular with the social elites, who unfortunately misinterpreted his meaning.
They thought now everything was supposed to constantly evolve.
Next thing you know, the car companies are coming out with a new model every year. The $20 typewriter — a perfectly suitable machine for writing humor columns — evolves into a $2,000 computer. Twitter evolves into ‘X’.
Now I have to buy a new phone every two years, or else be stuck in the Stone Age.
Even America is not good enough. We have to make it great again, by laying off half the federal government.
Actually, the Stone Age probably wasn’t so bad. I wonder what the cave dwellers would think of America in 2025?
Like the title said, “The Descent of Man”.